The Steinach Operation

A place of semi-natural vigor.

4.30.2006

"So long, stupid April." Elisa Gabbert says good-bye to NaPoWriMo.

ANTICLIMACTIC BLOGPOEM


I'm so invested in my self-image
as a choker I would have let myself down
if I hadn't let everyone else down.

4.29.2006

Elisa Gabbert's penultimate (cue welling).

BLOGPOEM W/ LINES FROM SPAM


We were on the last train. The armageddon train.
Approaching our deaths asymptotically.
I read over the shoulder of the woman next to me.
Her book was filled with sentences of such profundity
they’d invented a new font to print them in.
The footnotes assured me this was not an allegory.
The kid across from us was clutching a permission slip.
He said he was going on a field trip to see a dead body.
Aren’t we all, kid, I said, aren’t we all.
He said he’d had to forge his mom’s signature.
I told him that we’d all committed our forgeries.
Every train has its crazy but this train
had five or six, shuffling from end to end
and mumbling the wisdoms of the itinerant insane.
Stay on the porch with the door closed, of course.
Of course. Conklin dropped his cane on the rug.

The young man to my left said he’d just turned twenty-one
and was ready to get totally wasted.
I said we were all about to get totally wasted.
Bombed out of our minds and bodies. Eternally bombed.
All right, all right. Let me get my breath.
He said, “Check out that bitch
with the leopard-skin pants. She’s got a smoking ass.”
I would have killed for one last cigarette
before we all went down in flames. To dust. To ash.
Would you rather I took a nerve out of your neck?
There’s nothing free in this world, I said.
You pay $1.25 to ride your own hearse.
Self-appointed the basket of! Ideological carryout!
Sleazy motherhood of bloodstream.

I loved these people, these beautiful jerks.
I didn’t want to die with them.
I couldn’t bear their innocence.
They weren’t ready to inherit the earth.
Godchildren the homesick. Synthetic toothpick,
sublet it. An essay of glass.

4.28.2006

It's Friday, and I'm in love. And apparently so is Elisa Gabbert.

IMPOSSIBLE LOVE POEM


I'm in love with a cul-de-sac. Sultry citronella,
slow cars pulling around with their heads
peering out to spectate my legs dangling off

of the porch swing. You can't kiss a killer bee.
I'm in love with a punctuation mark. Skeptical
brow of a tilde, mathematical moustache, half

an infinity sign, the sensual swoop. You can't
kiss a proximity. I'm in love with a frequency.
The sexual radio, it hums me awake and purrs

me to sleep, rocks me on its waveform. I'm lulled,
I'm buzzed, I'm six feet deep. You can't kiss in
different time signatures, different keys. I'm in love

with a sabotage, this sexy-ugly motherfucker
Trojan-horsing me, creeping into my poem
during my drunkenness's time-lapse photography.

You can't kiss your worst, your closest enemy.

4.27.2006

4/27, NaPoWriMo. Elisa Gabbert splotches on my blodge.

BLOGPOEM FOR THE READER


You asked me to write a blogpoem for you.
This blogpoem's for you.
Post this blodgepoem on your blodgesplotch
and know that
every poem I write is for you.
For you, about you, and in some ways by you.
I stole part of this poem from you for you.
I stole some peaches from the peach farm for you
and baked them into this poem.
This poem contains the perfect peach
and that peach is for you.
I captured this gypsy moth for you,
trapped in it the poem and killed it for you.
I gave up Jainism for you.
I like you better than Jainism
and better than most insects.
I like you better than sex.
This poem is a way of having sex with you,
a way of penetrating you,
of leaving my smell on you.
My poem calls out your name in its sleep.
Your poem, I mean.
All my poems are your poems.
All my poems are free
and occupy no space in your bag
when you shoplift them.
Steal this blogpoem.
Open your mouth so it can fly in.
This poem has wings
that open and shut like the hinge
on your door, the tab on your beer can.
This poem was designed to snap off and
be carried in your perfectly empty hand.

4.25.2006

Hump Day. How appropriate, Elisa.

BLOGPOEM W/ BLUE BALLS


Dude. How could you seduce me w/
your date-rape-drug metaphor, your
beautiful, your bisexual non sequitur,
& then make like a tree for the neon
SORTIE sign of our moment’s theater?
You missed a great scene: the fields
on screen just exploded into lushness
like contagious brushfire, like they’d
nabbed a horrifically gorgeous rash.
Now the moment’s over; can’t even
save the stubs ‘cause the tix’ve been
digitized. But it’s all in my mind—
your bloodshot, your gut-shot eyes,
your phraseology all sibilant & slant-
rhymed like a pseudo-sonnet from
the Portuguese. DUDE. Your sweat
Chinese-water-tortures me, you make
my heart feel like a would-be Houdini,
etc.

'Til Tuesday. EG. 4/25. NaPoWriMo.

BLOGPOEM AFTER WALTER BENJAMIN


Every time you reproduce a piece of art
you remove some of its aura & that’s why
your mix tape didn’t impress me much,
it was so fucking aura-less
but in the film
version of the novelization of this poem
I play myself but have fantastic breasts
& there are probably some blood baths

& also when my fangy tooth catches
on my lip men everywhere crumple
w/ the ecstasy & agony of it & really

who needs aura in yr movie when
you’re so hot it breaks people’s knees.

4.24.2006

The So and So Series


CHECK OUT: The new So and So Series site!

REMINDER: The So and So Series kicks off on May 6th at 8pm. It will be run out of the Lily Pad (formerly the Zeitgeist) in Inman Square (Cambridge, MA). This first reading will feature poets on Kitchen Press (a micro independent press publishing chapbooks out of NYC). Justin Marks (editor of Kitchen Press and LIT magazine) will be reading from YOU BEING YOU BY PROXY, Ana Bozicevic-Bowling (co-editor of RealPoetik) will be reading from MORNING NEWS, I will be reading from WIDE TREE, and Erin Burke will be reading from her forthcoming chapbook.

The second reading (6/3), will feature the staff of Ploughshares: David Daniel, Rob Arnold, Simeon Berry, and Elisa Gabbert. Stay tuned for details.

Elisa Gabbert got a case of the Mondays. 4/24, NaPoWriMo.

BLOGPOEM GOES META


Woke up feeling bloggy.
Had a blog in my throat.
It came from the blog.
Just a blog in the machine.
Blogged down with work.
Went out for a blog.
Blog Day Afternoon.
Blog days of summer.
Raining cats and blogs.
London blog.
Can't see through the blog.
Blog is the new Paris.
What's the blog idea?
Town's not blog enough for the both of us.
Don't let the bed blogs bite.
Getting bloggy with it.
Blog it in.
Blog your product.
Cat's out of the blog.
Cat got your blog?
It's a grand old blog.
Blog 'n' roll.
Stop, drop and blog.
Ain't too proud to blog.
I'm blogging you please.
Throw another blog on the fire.
Take the blog of e.
Bright Lights, Blog City.
The Blog Chill.
The Blog Sleep.
Blog Brother.
That hits the blog.
Out, damn blog!
It's blogger than us.
It bloggles the mind.

4.23.2006

Ahhh...my I-don't-have-to-run day. And another NaPoWriMo number from Elisa Gabbert.

ORNITHOLOGICAL BLOGPOEM


You will be woken by the chirping of the birds, which is the sound
of their egos escaping from their bodies in loud and irregular streams.
They are acupuncture birds; where the chirps fall on your eardrums
corresponds to where you experience the pain. The birds have PhDs.
They chirp out chapters from their dissertations. The birds do not agree
that irony is dead. One of the birds has tried repeatedly to fall to its death
but always starts flying at the last second. The birds are excessively
vain about their wings. They have been known to assemble themselves
into bridges and other structures. An obelisk of feathers. Do not feed
the birds; they are following a strict high-protein diet. The birds are
control freaks. Do not, under any circumstances, try to touch their beaks.
One of the birds has assumed a leadership role. Another bird is plotting
to assassinate it. Some items have gone missing from the kitchen.
There is no such thing as Africanized birds. The birds are capable
of eating almost anything but are far too discriminating. If you are
lucky one morning the birds may chirp selections from your favorite
opera. The birds are especially fond of Wagner. What would you like
to hear? They have a very long waiting list and are nepotistic. Do not
be afraid of angering the birds. What angers the birds is fear.

4.22.2006

S-a-t-u-r-d-a-y NIGHT! EG's poem is like Sputnik...round an dpointy in places. I'm preety drunkers.

PSEUDO-SONNET BLOGPOEM


As soon as you failed the rabbit test, I began to miss
our former ignorance, which had had a kind of purity
of tone, a great resounding MAYBE ricocheting like
a superball back & forth at blur-speed 'tween our L & R
bedroom walls. Back then our life was like a movie
about sex; sex was our subtext. This bed our sadistic,
our plastic set. What have we to look forward to now?
Giotto crayons swallowed whole and then thrown up
on us. My pet, the statistics are against us. My bags
have been packed, I've got a foolproof escape plan.
I will program my away message to say: By the time
you receive my reply it may have been scrambled
into something inhuman & nonrecognizable by the un-
known forces that lurk beyond the event horizon.

4.21.2006

This is how she do it...it's Friday night. Elisa Gabbert droppin' it on 4/21 for NaPoWriMo.

RUN-ON BLOGPOEM


All week Jen watched the circus out her window;
Chris has no windows, just postcards of paintings

& he gazes at the wall of his cube w/ distant eyes
like he wants to stick his hand thru the pane

of Magritte-colored sky, like when I was sixteen
& drove drunk at night w/ my hand thrust out like

a blade the wind would cut itself in half against
& be twinned forever; it could not be unsevered;

then 2000 yrs went by & the wind had been split
& split again into infinitesimal/infinite wires

that wrapped around the world like fishing line
& sliced every surface like skates on ice

but the world healed over & forgot the limns
of the wind wires; the land unremembers them

& every fall the pussy willows catch fire
& the gay hotel with them, all up in smoke,

blown away like an eyelash, sublimated
to a graphite smudge in the sky above the stadium,

the ashy thumbprint of September, the slow,
pretty fade—we watch it from our offices,

the world growing over itself, internalizing
its landmines, archiving its war crimes.

4.20.2006

Eee Gee, back again...WHOOMP, here it is. C'mon party people.

BLOGPOEM@SEA


When I was trapped on the island
I had plenty of time to read but nothing to read
except what I spelled out myself
in shells on the beach, my daily blog entry.
I did a lot of writing on the island
but eventually forgot how to read.
I finally learned to dance but learned I hate dancing.
I constantly thought I heard a phone ringing.
Or a microwave dinging.
I named my favorite trees and my least favorite trees.
Over time they all became my least favorite trees.
I often stared at my feet and hands.
I stared at fish bones and grains of sand.
I stared so long at the sky I went partially blind.
The clouds were shaped like things I'd never seen,
things that hadn't been invented yet.
I stared at the beach, at the place where the water
turned into the shore. It kept shifting.
I stared so long at the water it didn't look wet anymore.
I waited so long to be saved
I forgot what I was being saved for.
Why I was waving my hands.
Sometimes I thought I loved the island.
I ate some sand.
I kissed the land like a man saved.
I remembered a story about a man who ate an airplane.
Sometimes things washed up on the shore.
An umbrella. A crate.
Everything that arrived I partially ate.
Sometimes things washed up
that were invented while I was on the island.
Cloud-shaped things.
I waited for someone to invent an inflatable airplane.
Once I think I saw a plane
but I had forgotten what planes looked like
and what they were for.
Sometimes when I'd think about being saved
I wondered if I'd ever miss the island,
when I was miles away from the island.
When I could no longer kiss the island.
Now I sometimes wonder if I ever
made it off the island.

4.19.2006

Serial poet "EG" strikes again. 4/19, NaPoWriMo.

WHAT THE WORLD WAS LIKE


The beginning of time was like winning the lottery with a parking ticket.
The formation of stars was like an actual rabbit in an imaginary thicket.

The first movie was like a stranger knocking loudly on your trapdoor.
The first supper was like a police sketch of what killed the dinosaurs.

The first nightmare was like the decaying negative of a well-known photograph.
The Grand Canyon was like a basement apartment emitting the sound of a phonograph.

Being born was like challenging the record for longest game of Monopoly.
Going to church was like balancing a house of cards on the back of a flea.

Landing on the moon was like a funeral for a goldfish.
Going to college was like dialing a phone with your fist.

Falling in love was like swallowing a piece of a clastic heart.
The Manhattan project was like hitting the bull’s eye with a spastic dart.

Getting married was like the smell of the closed-down Laundromat.
The break-up of the Pangaea was like misplacing your grandfather’s favorite hat.

Running the marathon was like a harp crashing down on the sidewalk.
Building Paris was like spotting a whale from the skywalk.

Setting the fields on fire was like putting in contact lenses for the first time.
Debriefing the participants was like setting their eyeglasses on fire.

The reading of the will was like drowning in a cup of warm tea.
Downsizing the company was like eating breakfast in bed with the enemy.

Decimating the angels was like kissing in thunder snow.
Designing their graveyard was like looking in a mirror through a periscope.

Getting electrocuted was like dropping an anchor on a seagull.
Lucid dreaming was like fucking inside a burnt-out light bulb.

Writing my biography was like sewing leaves onto a dead tree.
Reading my biography was like pulling the legs off a dead millipede.

The pre-party was like water-skiing off the back of a hearse.
The after-party was like an abortion in reverse.

Growing old was like slow-dancing with your doppelganger.
Dying was like writing your name in the sand with a wire hanger.

4.18.2006

4/18's Dose of EG...for a nasty case of NaPoWriMo.

LOUSY DAY BLOGPOEM


Was the end of a lousy day. Drank too much &
everyone agreed my emotions were implausible.
Once again I couldn't prove the theorem,
once again I had no love for anyone or vice-versa
(anyone had no love for me). There was no art
on the train & then it never came, made me late
for my appointment with the firing squad,
my last disappointment. Day was a wash
but its poem was a sidekick that tried to cheer
it up. The day rode along mostly lost in thought
& the traffic had died out for the most part
& the poem was the day's faithful sidecar.
Stuck around to listen to the fusillade.

4.17.2006

Matt Rasmussen reviewed.


Check out the Nate Pritts review of FINGERGUN at The Burning Chair.

Elisa Gabbert extends her hit streak, writes NaPoWriMo poem for 4/17. Experts say she's the next Paul Molitor.

RENAISSANCE BLOGPOEM


Already today’s sky is replacing
yesterday’s sky in my mind.

It, like all skies, was an unforgettable
sky, but nonetheless I’m starting

to forget it, as the sky comes cresting over
yesterday’s horizon like a monster wave—

as it comes scrolling upward like
film credits to tell us our new names—

I can’t rewind or skip back to my fave
scenes, of one wing flapping,

one-half of a white horse galloping. . . .

*

Like a lesser Michelangelo

my poem had inessential parts
so I rolled it down a great hill and

they broke off. Now my poem is a sphere
I hold in my palm—it’s the size

of a spider’s eye. I cast it out
into the wind. I know tomorrow

the wind will blow me another one.

4.16.2006

NaPoWriMo, 4/16. EG's Every-poem-I-write poem.

BLOGPOEM W/ EPIGRAPH
Every poem in my work folder is a letter of resignation.” –Bill Knott


Every poem I write is a rejection slip.
Every poem I write is a radar blip.

Every poem I write goes out for cigarettes and never comes home.
Every poem I write has Stockholm Syndrome.

Every poem I write is a love letter to an enemy.
Every poem I write is a cry for help inside a fortune cookie.

Every poem I write is an abandoned mine.
Every poem I write is a police outline.

Every poem I write is hooked on MTV.
Every poem I write is not as good as the movie.

Every poem I write is a stone dropped down into the chasm.
Every poem I write is an anachronism.

Every poem I write is an unreturned phone call.
Every poem I write is an uncaught fly ball.

Every poem I write is a portrait of my brother.
Every poem I write is a teenage mother.

Every poem I write is the unknown soldier.
Every poem I write carries my weight on its shoulders.

Every poem I write is a Turing machine.
Every poem I write tells me it’s only a dream.

Every poem I write is a newly discovered, endangered bird.
Every poem I write is a never-before-heard, unpronounceable word.

Every poem I write is a Wikipedia entry.
Every poem I write is a message in an invisible bottle, floating on an invisible sea.

Every poem I write is a pointed letter to an invisible editor.
Every poem I write is to you as a bull is to the matador.

Every poem I write is a removable tattoo.
Every poem I write has abandonment issues.

Every poem I write is painstakingly engraved on a grain of rice.
Every poem I write is being carved into an already melting block of ice.

Every poem I write is a deus ex machina.
Every poem I write wants 2 increase its length + stamina.

Every poem I write is a tape being eaten.
Every poem I write is a horse being beaten.

Every poem I write is a note passed under an invisible table to my lover.
Every poem I write is a party tainted by the pre-nostalgia for my hangover.

Every poem I write has a plot hole I could walk through, because the hole is me-shaped.
Every poem I write is an autorape.

4.15.2006

4/15. If April has Ides, Elisa Gabbert's NaPoWriMo poem heeds not.

EPISTOLARY BLOGPOEM


Thanks for sending the engine. Wasn't sure
how to use it, I think I spontaneously combusted.
That link was awesome, after I clicked on it
I couldn't see or smell anything for 15 minutes.
Also thanks for the thumbnails. I like the part
where the ocean gets tiny. My coworkers
really loved the video of Patty Hearst and
one of them got fired. Thanks for the Google
Maps API. I designed a zero-sum cosmos
so when my page views go up your fruit punch
tastes worse. Thanks for forwarding the message
from your dad, for a second there I totally forgot
I existed. And thanks for telling me about that
contest. That night I had this dream where
it was so cold in the woods I had to crawl inside
a dead stag. Remind me to show you how I turned
Shakespeare's tragedies into Power Point slides.
Thanks for sending me your manuscript. Your talk
was sold out so I went to the park and gave
all my money to a stranger and caught up
with a swarm of bees and got some good ideas
for the epilogue to my murder-suicide.

4.14.2006

ARA VORA NARROWLY ESCAPES DEFEAT. Moves on to third round of Emergenza Music Festival.



Details about round three's show at The Paradise Rock Club & Lounge to come.

4/14. NaPoWriMo. Gabbert, Schmabbert. April is the longest month.

BLOGPOEM AFTER TONY TOST


We can’t assume that today is not the last day, or that yesterday wasn’t.
In scientific terms this sentence contains very little information.
I can’t escape the feeling that my poems think they’re better than me.
The world doesn’t need this sentence, or has convinced itself of such.
At least one sentence in the English language makes an implicit connection between poems and barn owls.
I desperately want you to notice me without me having to exert much effort to make you do so.
For the purposes of this sentence you may assume that “you” means you.
As of the end of this sentence the author no longer supports the poetic gang rape of starlings.
If there is a God he doesn’t give fuck all about sentences.
Within our lifetimes technology will advance to the point that I could email myself to you.
I too am guilty of making assumptions about birds.
If we are nothing more than bits I wonder which one of us has more bits.
Do I like you, or do I like the idea of me liking you?

4.13.2006

Read it and weep. EG. 4/13. NaPoWriMo.

DISASTERPOEM (FOR KR)


I want to drive under the overpass all night,
turn the stripe of light, the light’s blink
to a strobe effect—turn the light epileptic—

the interior goes orange, night-orange, the orange
of black—the edges go sharp/slack, sharp/
slack. I think So this is how it feels to be high

I always think that when I’m high . . .
& I play & replay the film clip of K
when she stood up to go—when the towering

wave of her drunkenness hit, flattened her
there—when she fell like a building
down into itself, its own empty air—

freeze frame & rewind—those heart-breaking
legs, collapsible spires—it never gets old.
She’s with me now, half-asleep in the back

& ice-cold & now the moths are coming,
the moths of spring—moving toward the car
as it moves toward them—we will pass

thru each other’s fields. Don’t be afraid, K—
though afterward we may not remember
who we were before the crash.

4.12.2006

Elisa Gabbert gets busy on 4/12 for NaPoWriMo

BLOGPOEM OF YOUR DREAMS


Welcome to the abandoned hotel. The somewhat haunted hotel.
The hotel of your dreams. Your triskaidekaphobia dreams.
The dream in which you lost your virginity, in the suite
where the ghosts of past lovers fight over the sheets.
The window looks out over pear trees. You gaze out
the window with your lover. You don’t trust your lover,
that’s part of your dream. Everything is part of your dream:
the too-small buttonholes, the broken TV. The taste
of the pears, which verge on too sweet. You are scribbling
on hotel stationery at the start of your dream: I write this
from Room 13. My lover is here, in the abandoned hotel.
He grows stranger each day. I don’t understand his language,
his name. We only know each other’s fear. Our hunger,
too. We vow that we’ll get to the pears before the crows
if it’s the last thing we do. Writing these sentences may be
the last thing I do. My lover wants to throw them in the fire.
He is pacing by the window. We think we hear crows.
We are terrified by our desire.

4.11.2006

It's 4/11. It's NaPoWriMo. It's Elisa Gabbert.

BLOGPOEM THE LITANY


It wasn’t really flying. More like a breeze
stiff enough to blow me with my toes
just dragging thru the tulip fields. The tulips
need cross-kingdom interaction. The bees
need a day off. Amsterdam needs a Richter’s
scale of quaintness. The museums need
hyperlinks. The clouds need a comment box.
The insects need a revolution, the bridges
need mnemonics, the canals need lucid
dreams. They need to read the memoirs
of a river. Staff pick: the Ganges’. The kids
need more advanced diversions, they need
a hovering trike: Hummingbird™. Society
needs more tulips, yet more—the fields
are wide. The people need more opiates, or less.
One way or the other they are not satisfied.

4.10.2006

EG's 4/10 NaPoWriMo Lovely

BLOGPOEM W/ ELLIPSES


. . . fixed my car. Kind of
miss the dent, when I see
the anti-hole where it used
to be. Where do holes go
to die? Their cemetery
sure would seem a waste
of space, all those graves
of graves. Can't throw
any of the dirt back in
without crushing the holes
to another death. So no one
can mourn them again. . . .
I've started practicing
creative apathy. Can't
spend all day in transit
among various funerals.
Everybody's got the
same epitaph anyway:
Was Alive. Is Not. Tried
To Save Life Thru Not
Caring. Died Bored.

4.09.2006

EG's 4/9 NaPoWriMo Installment

BLOGPOEMS ARE IDEAS


Time capsules are so retro I want to send one back
into the past, with a note on each item of kitsch—
some popular snack package or a poignant hat—
that says Totally you, or You go like this. Maybe
I could fool the reverse-archaeologists into thinking
I'm their future king. People were stupider then,
less evolved than us because they didn't have to learn
how to overcome cancer or master the joystick.
They had simple concerns that didn't require calculus
or metaphysics, like ridding mice from the pantry
and putting out occasional house fires. And yet,
as far as we've come, technology still lags behind
our desires. For instance science hasn't solved
the problem of weather: how much of it there is,
and how it is literally everywhere.

4.08.2006

EG's 4/8 Poem for NaPoWriMo

BLGPM W/ DTHWSH


Take me to the library; I'm in the mood
to get murdered. Mm, murder in the stacks:
shove the LING shelving over and let those
uncracked grammars in teal and burnt umber
make papery work of the burying. Chris,
this is me courting depression, or it courting
me. I'm not seduced by death, just death's
techniques—the way it lets me let it buy me
a drink. Then drives me home with the lights
off, in stealth mode. I want that void IN me.
Speed-reading the convoluted passages
at my left brain's innermost vortices.
We vector cliffward, we pin the needle
like there's nothing more to lose than
this week's top score on Pole Position.
Fuck you, existence: I'm playing to win.

4.07.2006

Zach Schomburg Reviews WIDE TREE

E.G.'s NaPoWriMo Entry for 4/7

BLOGPOEM AS MEME, OR
BLOGPOEM AFTER DANIEL DENNETT


If it really wanted to get through to you
this poem would do better as an ant virus,
with DNA designed to make the ant think
I've fucking got to climb that grass blade,
thereby facilitating its being eaten by
a grazing cow. Because the virus wants
to be inside the cow. Or thinks it does—
but actually it's my virus in the virus
that makes it think that. My virus
is waiting for you to eat the cow.
That would be a great poem, because
while it was doing that I could, you know,
have a beer or work on my frittata skills,
or write the virus poem instead of
the poem about it.

4.06.2006

NaPoWriMo: The 4/6 Stylings of Elisa Gabbert

BLOGPOEM W/ AUTORAPE


There are no new words, words I haven't mis-
pronounced or –used before, so I'm starting over—
with that A-hole who gave me an Atomic Harvest
tape and his debate club shirt that said
Making the world safe for hypocrisy; he saw
all those kids get killed in the bonfire, left a creepy
note on my car that I balled up and tossed
in the dumpster. I was eating an eggplant
parmesan sub, I lost that too. This is my fake
abecedarian, blasphemous chiclet diary entry
read by no one. Feels like getting caught
telling jokes to myself that I've already heard.
They pretty much tell themselves, I pretty much
just sync them up with my laugh track. I'd like
masturbation better if it could be a surprise attack.

4.05.2006

E.G.'s 4/5 NaPoWriMo Offering

BLOGPOEM FOR JOE (W/ PEACH)


He's your first friend named Joe: funny, isn't it?
With a name like Joe, it seems as though
you should have met him before. He reminds you
of someone, he will always remind you
of the first Joe, because he is. It makes you feel
warm, but then you start to wonder if it's him
you like or just the name—but you can't
go smoke on the deck with the name Joe,
can't take it to a show. You can't get a call
from the name Joe, though until you pick it up
it kind of looks that way. You can, I guess,
write a poem about the name, but the name
can't read it. Or won't. No, you decide,
it's Joe: this Joe and not the idea-of-Joe,
the meaning-of-Joe, not the concept
but the instance, the example of Joe (e.g.,
Joe). It's like you just took a bite of
the most perfect peach in all of Venice,
and now you never want a peach again. You
want this one to be the last you'll ever know.

4.04.2006

E.G.'s 4/4 NaPoWriMo Entry

BLOGPOEM THE SECOND


How can you google me if you don't know me
yet? I'm not the typo of anyone else's name
and maybe there already is a "backwards poet."
A coccyx poet, poet of the fractal on a Post-It.
The poet of "chaise longue" not "chaise lounge."
In a frontispiece skirt, the poet nostalgic
for advent calendar chocolates. But is it possible
that someone besides me was complimented
three times on Saturday night for her haircut,
NOT HAVING GOTTEN A HAIRCUT?
Nevermind: a better game is to try to think
of something that's NOT possible. But
before we start playing let me establish that
I believe anything is possible.

4.03.2006

Elisa Gabbert Chimes in for NaPoWriMo




BLOGPOEM FOR APRIL

You can't invent a color, only name it,
like how I just named those contrails Benjamin
and then the sky behind them Benjamin II.
Now, retronymically, I refer to Ben as Ben I.
If he becomes famous, they'll stop calling
clouds "clouds" and call them "nonlinear
clouds" or "pre-Benjamin" for clarity.
I can think about fame all day, and
compose apologies for my friends' friends
who I've variously snubbed, write them
into emails with personalized P.S.'s:
P.S. My love for you extends forever
in all directions, or sometimes seems to.
P.S. I include a swatch of Yves Klein blue.
P.S. If the sky is a piano store and clouds
are baby grands, we just hang out in the back
and listen to a Casiotone's preprogrammeds.
P.S. This P.S. is my email's last will
and testament. It's leaving everything
to you. P.S. Like my love for you,
like the infinite crystalline watchface of
God of the sky, my email will never die.