Metrical Exercise: Trochaic Tetrameter (Waiting for MRI poem series)

MRI won't be till Thursday;
waiting is a practiced sense;
anyone can face life's dangers—
takes the strong to bear suspense.

MRI with contrast or not,
little magnets map the brain.
Soon I'll feel my body changing,
entering another plane.

All I am is quarks and gluons,
energy and impulse-filled;
There is no material realm here,
and these quanta can't be killed.

So I wait without much straining;
courage comes from quanta, too.
I'm the field of every being;
parts of me are parts of you.

Don't look toward a grave to see me;
my old soul has other plans;
All of me will dance with helium,
I'll be sun, and leaves, and grass.

BETWEEN ECLIPSES*

A razor cuts your wrists, but
what cut you off from me?
Is true love quart'red below?

When (blew) an azure sky
separates the chambered clouds,
which Earth will you then save,
which elements recycle?

These eclipses should portend,
but I would always be
the bastard that I am,
had the maidlienest, brightest star
eclipsed upon this gesture.

Fin.

* To Harrow Marrow: Whatever these eclipses portend, what saves you is not salvation with its grace, but the grace of no salvation.

I AM NOT YOUR INSECT

Your underfoot, your exterminated, your bug. My unabashedly hairy legs, whose gymnopèdes twitch like a chorus for a fatal Sharon Stone, delight in ces mouvements qui déplace les lignes, in the motion, the quiver, le mort, the catch. Mother Kali, you have made me what I am: feminine, brilliant, entirely without fear. Like my mother, I watch and pray for prey—that it be there, that it give gore, that I feel it die, that there be more.

I have lost your fingers

You are as thick as molasses, brown as oak, and your ears are crêpes suzettes; your cheerful legs are also thick. The pupils of your eyes are small bridges to disaster (after). Your cheekbones cut the cumulus clouds, and your toes are decimal wonders; your pancreas is a mighty fortress to our God. I remember your kidneys, plumlike, and shaped like violas. All your orifices tell of wonders; surely your ass is a wiry insect that I feel but cannot see (woe is me). Your breasts dance; your aureoles are gazelles that sleep in meadows more blue than green. Your vulva is an apple already peeled, as wet as fresh moraine, alive as snow.

I have lost your fingers and must find them again.

I am the new poetry editor for MadHat Annual!

Dear friends, I am pleased to be joining the MadHat team as poetry editor for the amazing MadHat Annual. Thanks to editor-in-chief Marc Vincenz and team MadHat Alex Cigale, Jonathan Penton, and Clare L. Martin. More anon!

Happy Bloomsday!

Last year, I erased Ulysses to create 18 found poems, one for each episode. Here is "Calypso:"

Thick giblet soup, fried hencod's roes,
grilled mutton kidneys, a fine
tang of urine.

Gelid light and air in the kitchen;
out of doors gentle summer morning
everywhere.

The coals reddening.
A slice of bread and butter
Cup of tea.

O-Cat-Mkgnao!
Warmbubbled milk on a
saucer.
Gurgh.

Ham and eggs, no.
Better a pork kidney.
Still perhaps: once.

Her prime sausages.
To catch up and walk
behind her, behind
her moving hams.

Bread and butter,
sugar, spoon,
her cream
Yes.

Daddy's Elusive Love

I spent my whole life seeking it,
wrecking, reeking, eking it,
in hydra-headed phalluses;
in aliases & pal-louses;
in papapapapaMedusas;
in mirrors & seducers.

I looked for it in boxers,
in the dumps of ten detoxes,
in the roll of rundown rockers,
in anal & banal boys.

I slept with legions
in every single region;
I made love to none;
loved only one.

But it all goes back to Daddy:
Daddy, I'm your caddy;
I know you wanted a laddy;
sorry I wasn't a lady.

Family history
is largely hysterical mystery.
This old cold sold hold blow on me
is moldy geneaology.

Mersad Mostaghimi's Translation of "Your Probability Amplitude" into Farsi

I am delighted that Mersad Mostaghimi, a physics student, has translated my poem "Your Probability Amplitude" into Persian for his Iranian classmates. My gratitude also to Mohammad Mostaghimi, who has translated so many of my poems into Farsi for his blog.

(این هم یک ترجمه از خودم از این شعر که البته نمیدونم با سواد اندک من هم از زبان انگلیسی و هم از شعر و ادبیات فارسی آیا ترجمه خوبی هست یا خیر امید که بپسندید.)

دامنه احتمال تو

من به اوج میرسم
و بوزونی که میدرخشد در دیدگان.


آن سان که یک نیروی ضعیف در واپاشی رادیویی.

جاذبه موقعیتی

مغناطشی:

من مشاهده میکنم و حواس من باز میگردانند ذرات را به نیرو ره میگیرند در رد پایشان هوا و هوس درون امواج را

Your Probability Amplitude

I glance and
a boson blinks
into view.

A strong interaction
beckons

even as
a weak force
radios decay.

The gravity
of the situation

the magnetism:

I observe and
my attention

turns particles into power
tracks into trails
whims into waves.

Your Probability Amplitude

I glance and
a boson blinks
into view.

A strong interaction
beckons

even as
a weak force
radios decay.

The gravity
of the situation

the magnetism:

I observe and
my attention

turns particles into power
tracks into trails
whims into waves.

Mikhail Niziaev's beautiful Russian translation of my poem "Mapping":

Here is Mikhail Niziaev's (Низяев Михаил) beautiful Russian translation of my poem "Mapping":

Голуби летят в скорописи стаи, изящные дуги,
Кроме этого, шедшие впереди или позади, в срочном самостоятельный полет.
Ниже ивы наклоняется, тонкие и редкие, глядя на искры,
Как наркоман в утренней торговли людьми улице.
Такой человек, как вы, протягивает мне мочи кубок, и спит.

Я вам уже говорил, здесь, в дверях тыс.
Несчастная домов: есть нечто большее место
Чем время и пространство в одиночестве.
Приходите, неохотно тратить
День: посмотрите на несвязанных звезды, несобранные огни
Без имени или дома или в созвездии свои собственные,
И представьте себе использовать со мной, все, что не поместилось.

Mapping

The pigeons fly in cursive flocks, graceful arcs,
Except this one, gone ahead or left behind, in urgent solo flight.
Below a willow leans, thin and sparse, looking for sparks,
Like an addict in the morning’s trafficked street.
A man like you hands me a urine cup, and sleeps.

I have told you before, here at the doorway of a thousand
Unhappy homes: there is something more of place
Than time or space in loneliness. Come, reluctantly spend
The day: Look at the unconnected stars, the uncollected lights
Without name or home or constellation of their own,
And imagine a use with me for all that doesn’t fit.

Mapping

The pigeons fly in cursive flocks, graceful arcs,
Except this one, gone ahead or left behind, in urgent solo flight.
Below a willow leans, thin and sparse, looking for sparks,
Like an addict in the morning’s trafficked street.
A man like you hands me a urine cup, and sleeps.

I have told you before, here at the doorway of a thousand
Unhappy homes: there is something more of place
Than time or space in loneliness. Come, reluctantly spend
The day: Look at the unconnected stars, the uncollected lights
Without name or home or constellation of their own,
And imagine a use with me for all that doesn’t fit.

Saturn series June 9 to feature Larissa Shmailo, plus open mic

Saturn Poetry - Monday June 9, 2014
Featuring Larissa Shmailo, Priscilla Galligan and Robert Masterson
at Shades of Green Pub & Restaurant
125 E. 15th Street, between 3rd Ave & Irving Place, near all Union Square subways
8:00 pm to 10:30 pm, Sign up at 7:45.
Open mike surrounds features
$3. donation requested plus a drink or two to support this great venue

About Larissa Shmailo...
Larissa Shmailo's newest collection of poetry is #specialcharacters (Unlikely Books). Larissa is the editor of the anthology Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry and founder of The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses. She translated Victory over the Sun for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's landmark restaging of the multimedia opera and has been a translator on the Bible in Russia for the American Bible Society. Her other books of poetry are In Paran (BlazeVOX [books]), the chapbook, A Cure for Suicide (Cervena Barva Press), and the e-book, Fib Sequence (Argotist Ebooks); her poetry CDs are The No-Net World and Exorcism (SongCrew), for which she received the New Century Best Spoken Word Album award.
About Larissa Shmailo https://www.facebook.com/LarissaShmailoPoetryandProse
About #specialcharacters http://www.unlikelystories.org/unlikely_books/specialcharacters.shtml

About Priscilla Galligan...
Priscilla Galligan (@cillagalligan) is a researcher, grant and freelance writer/poet.while poems and flash fiction are currently published in several magazines online. She is currently working on an historical novel. She will be reading from her collection of 60 poems; Decibels , forthcoming in September 2014. Broadsides will be available.

About Robert Masterson...
Robert Masterson, professor of English at the City University of New York's Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City, has authored Artificial Rats & Electric Cats, Trial by Water, and Garnish Trouble. His work appears in numerous publications and he holds degrees from the University of New Mexico, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado; and Shaanxi Normal University, the People's Republic of China.

A Sop for Cerberus

He needed me. Alone at the gates of Hell,
He looked at me, his six rheumy eyes
Fixing me imploringly. So I fed him meat
And with a leap, he jumped onto my back:
The animal musk and the weight of him,
The great paws, the salivating jaw,
The hot muzzle and demon-bloody wounds,
Startling. But I found I could carry him,
And brought him home to keep:
The dead do not play; the dead do not speak.

Poem in Random House Anthology

My poem, "In Paran," will appear in the new Random House anthology of metrical verse edited by Annie Finch. I learned this yesterday, on my birthday. I know it was your beautiful birthday wishes that materialized this gift for me (yes, I believe in magic). Thank you!