"I am not your insect" in Noon Anthology

Delighted that my poem "I am not your insect" is included in Noon: An Anthology of Short Poems (Isobar Press of Tokyo and London) edited by Philip Rowland. The text of the poem, which appears in my collection #specialcharacters (Unlikely Books 2014) follows below.

I am not your insect
Your underfoot, your exterminated, your bug. My unabashedly hairy legs, whose gymnopédies 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.

From "Mirror, or a Flash in the Pan" in #specialcharacters

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Today, Ritar watches television; soon there will be no cable, so she must watch and watch and watch, drinking the gin she buys instead of meat and vegetables.

She sees that the reality shows have created a Malthusian generation. You’re eliminated. Fired. Out. Go home.

The reality shows train people in servitude as the 21^st century wants it.

Despite humiliating, impossible challenges, despite verbal and physical abuse, no one wants to go home.

Perhaps there is no home to go to.

And despite the horror of going home, as though all contestants were ACAs born into hellholes, no one cares when someone goes home.

Contestants grovel before the judges and snipe at other contestants.

Fired. Out. Go home.

Snipe willingly, enthusiastically and eagerly.

Go home.

“At least it wasn’t me.” They not only think, they say.

Do it to Julia.

Competitors detract from one another, the performances of other competitors. Their characters. Their looks. Meanly.

It is, Ritar sees, class war: The judges are from the upper classes; contestants are usually poor. The shows deign to allow one working class hopeful entrée to their world, at least temporarily. Fame, if short-lived. The promise, if not the substance, of wealth. Temporarily, for a lottery time.

Do it to Julia.

As in the Project Runway episode with Team Luxe. In which the team, losing, made a pact not to “throw any of their members under the bus,” not to scapegoat anyone to go home. Solidarity, temporarily. And the persistent attempts, ultimately successful, of the judges to make them––the team, not the judges––choose someone to be sent home.

“Someone’s goin’ down,” snarled Michael Kors, later characterizing the group’s attempts at loyalty and cooperation as stupid, explaining “You have to be more self-sufficient.”

Betrayal and treachery, now termed self–sufficiency.

“Who is the weakest?”

“We don’t want to…”

“WHO is the weakest?”

“We…”

“WHO…”

“…Michael…”

“Michael…”

“Michael.”

“Michael!”

 “MICHAEL!!!!!!!!!”

Do it to Julia.

And the winner of Season 7 tells the world that he is inspired by Russian and German military fashion, walking with his lead model, who is wrapped in a swastika.

Do it to Julia.

And the lexicon of all these shows, television staples in a time of unemployment, is:

STEP IT UP!

Step it up.

Work harder (for less money.)

.

Because you are inadequate.

Because your performance (painting, cooking, comedy routine, dance, enterprise, design, sewing, attitude) was not good enough. Was lousy, in fact. Should never have seen the light of day. Sucked.

Ditto: your face, pores, hair, legs, teeth, butt, breath, facial expression, feet.

Sucked.

Your too-happy, too-sensitive, too-creative, too-too-too-too self.

Sucked. Sucks.

And it wasn’t because we asked too much. Gave humiliating tasks. Judged unfairly.

IT WAS BECAUSE YOU WERE NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

DIDN’T MEASURE UP.

SUCKED.

Ciao. Auf wiedersehn. Toodles.

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The Gospel According to Magdalene

I.

1. I saw you first, writing in the sand

I couldn't hear you: They were cursing me, throwing stones, screaming

Bitch Cunt Whore Bitch Cunt Whore

2. I couldn't hear you: You were quiet and the pimp was holding me,

Whispering in my ear,

Telling me I was a man's woman

A natural born whore,

And Mama smiled and turned her head, paid the mortgage on my back,

And spit on me. You parasite, she hissed, you little bitch,

You made Papa bad.

3. So I ran, ran, ran, ran, ran for my life

In any direction I could

Like a dead leaf I rode the wind

I didn’t know

That you were the cloud that would carry me

Didn't feel

Your wind beneath my veins

Didn't hear

The birds I followed with my eyes

I flew without breath, running for my life.

4. I couldn't hear you, you were so quiet

I still don't know why

And the pimp’s voice was soft, hissing in my ear, telling me

I was damned if I didn't

And the tricks were leering, saying

I was damned if I did, but do me baby,

Just do me now

And their women, their thin, cold women

Just told me I was damned.

5. I saw you first, writing in the sand

Even as I ran for my life:

The mob turned to you, saying,

Rabbi, should we kill her?

And you laughed:

And I saw the word you had written in the brown sand,

And your hand writing twice just in case I didn't see,

And I saw the word as I fell to the soft sand,

The word of beginning, the word in your hand,

And I took the word, all the words, and wrote them all over

and I laughed and I wrote and was free

Chapter 5. Stations

I was there, I saw your face

When you fell for the third time

When the cross dragged you under

When they nailed you at last.

I was there, I saw your face

When the pain of betrayal

Would have made any man

Sell his soul to be dead

I was there, I saw your face

When you cried to the Heavens

Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachtani?

And the heavens  split open

For the grace of despair

For that prayer of despair

For the gift of despair.

Revelation: The Second Coming

It's time for the second coming, boy where have you been ? I've missed you.

I just called to say

that the boys are back in town and I'm with them

and we're ready to rock

ready to rumble

ready to roll

I know I’ve been quiet

But I’ve been thinking about you, no one else: I guess lⁱve been shy

haven't spoken my mind

they told me not to,

told me it wasn't nice

for a girl;

told me not to drop the cross, not to climb the mountain, not to teach in church

but like you say, fuck ‘em

I don't care what people say

so come see about me

I can stay out late tonight

I want to come with you

be your biker chick, your angel, your new cross, a true cross ,a cross with breasts

I will soothe your Armageddon, your Jihad; I will be your avenging angel

I will be on your side this time

cause you are my vehicle baby

and the kingdom of heaven is mine on your wheels

let me be your cross

this time , next time, now:

I will raise an army call down jihad make your missiles rise make your scud blow

baby:

I will kick down the walls of your tomb

I will blow all hell

Satan’s slaves, I am your worst nightmare

this time next time now

raise an army for you

harrow hell and

find some roughnecks to kick down the walls of your tomb

listen centurion: the soul of a woman was created below now you know why

centurion, i am your worst nightmare

hell hath no fury like a woman whose man has been gone a long time

but that's all right, baby, I always believed in you I knew you would come back for your woman

I will not let you be crucified again.

Reading for Seattle AWP 2014 for Madhat and Fulcrum

Reading of my poems "In Paran," "Bloom," "Father of a Ghost (after Stephen Dedalus's Theory of Hamlet), and "Letter to Lermontov." Video by Jonathan Penton
Madhat/Fulcrum Seattle 2014 AWP reading

Countdown to Louisiana!

Dear Louisiana friends, I am so excited to be visiting the legendary cities of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette for the very first time. I'll be reading from my books In Paran, #specialcharacters, and my new novel, Patient Women. I hope to see you at my readings there!

 

Tuesday, November 3, 7pm-9pm

Elevator Projects

451 Florida St., Suite 102, Baton Rouge

(in the downtown Chase building)

No cover, wine provided

Readers include Xander Bilyk (New Orleans), Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Eureka Springs, AR), Michael Harold (Shreveport), Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson (Lafayette), Dylan Krieger (Baton Rouge), and Larissa Shmailo (NYC)

Thursday, November 5, 6pm sharp-8pm sharp:

Crescent City Books

230 Chartres St., New Orleans

No cover, wine provided

Readers include Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Eureka Springs, AR), Michael Harold (Shreveport), Carolyn Hembree (New Orleans), Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson (Lafayette), Christopher Shipman (New Orleans), and Larissa Shmailo (NYC)

Friday, November 6, 7:30 pm-9:30pm

The Ballet Académie

200 Polk St., Lafayette

No cover, wine provided

Readers include Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Eureka Springs, AR), Michael Harold (Shreveport), Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson (Lafayette), Dylan Krieger (Baton Rouge), Larissa Shmailo (NYC), and John Warner Smith (Baton Rouge)

Terrific review of #specialcharacters in The Brooklyn Rail

I'm thrilled at Chris Campanioni's brilliant review of my poetry collection, #specialcharacters.  Let me know what you think! 

Brooklyn Rail review of #specialcharacters

Interview on PennSound

I'm delighted my interview by Leonard Schwartz on PennSound's Cross-Cultural Poetics show is now up! We discuss my collection, #specialcharacters, Aleksei Kruchenych, and why Russians read poetry and Americans don't.

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/XCP.php#316

An excerpt from "Mirror, or a Flash in the Pan"

An excerpt from "Mirror, or a Flash in the Pan," from my new collection #specialcharacters, available from Amazon and Unlikely Books.

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Ritar dislikes children, but is writing a story, to be illustrated, about an adorable and precocious little girl who plans to visit “Parrots,” France. She starts drinking again after long sobriety during the process, downing large tumblers of cheap gin, until she tears the pages up and sets them on fire in the sink. She sobers up long enough to send out her sex genre piece, recycled from the last rejection.

Proposal 1, Mass Market: The Cult
A retired vice cop receives a letter from Hetera, a call girl he was obsessed with in the ‘70s. In her urgent correspondence, she writes to him of a complicated conspiracy to gaslight her. The conspirators are mobsters, rock stars, aristocrats, Park Avenue psychiatrists, Nazis, and a who’s who of writers and artists. As he follows her story, it will take him through the secret lives of the rich and famous; to sordid vaults of porn and prostitution; to the heyday of Studio 54 and Plato’s Retreat and Salvador Dali’s sex parties for artists and the poor; Warhol’s Factory; and down to the last chance A.A. meetings on the old Bowery. Is this the madness, mania, and mayhem of a professional party girl—or is Hetera the victim of a real cult?

. . . the papers, her eternal poet's rustling of papers . . . holding them in his hand, Henry had a palpable moment of remembering her in his hand, under his command, when the most important thing in the world was to be inside her. He shook it off. As a young policeman, a detective on vice still hoping to write the definitive novel, she was his muse, the Whore of Mensa, mad but gorgeous and brilliant, maniacally oversexed, and obsessed, at least for a few months, with him. The sex, he remembered, getting an erection from the memory, the constant sex, and the writing, page after page of poems and stories and the first full novel, raw, flawed, but energetic, alive, so alive . . . then her cure, her overweight, her depression; he was relieved when she married another. And he forgot her among more conventional women, went to law school and lived a solid upper-middle class life, but he never forgot what was possible in intensity between two people.

We will love like dogwood.
Kiss like cranes.
Die like moths,
I promise . . .

Ritar drinks another tumbler of gin, and writes another proposal.

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Review of #specialcharacters in the Cape Times, Cape Town, South Africa

Dalachinsky, King, Kolm, Nikolayev, Penton, Shmailo, Vincenz 5/11

First Review of #specialcharacters

Thanks to Meredith Sue Willis for her review of #specialcharacters in Books for Readers #169 (April 17). She writes:

I thought this was going to be all poetry, but it is much more experimental than that, ending with a wonderful piece about a woman who is close to the end of the line with aging, mental illness, and poverty. It's called "MIRROR, or a Flash in the Pan." It is very close to fiction, although it certainly has passages of poetry. It's an excellent piece, crystal clear and shockingly honest. The collection also includes what is rightfully maybe Shmailo's most famous (popular?) poem, available to read on line, "The Other Woman's Cunt". This one is angry, raunchy, vicious and -- by the way! -- hilarious.

There is a fair amount of typographical experimentation and deep connections to literature and mythology, but at its heart, as a whole, the book has the remarkable quality of being extremely moving even when you aren't sure what's going on.

That's a serious statement, too, because you have the feeling that things that look like games on the surface – for example, a short poem called " t(his), (he)re" – are in fact the only way Shmailo could have written what she wanted to write. This is highly recommended as both interesting experimental work and for its powerful emotional connections. .

http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive166-170.html#issue169