IN LANDMARK ABORTION ANTHOLOGY

I am honored beyond measure to be included in CHOICE WORDS: WRITERS ON ABORTION. The book includes work by Audre Lorde, Margaret Atwood, Lucille Clifton, Amy Tan, Gloria Steinem, Ursula Le Guin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Joyce Carol Oates, Gloria Naylor, Dorothy Parker, Anne Sexton, Ntozake Shange, Sholeh Wolpe, Ai, Jean Rhys, Mahogany L. Browne, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Frank O’Hara, Vi Khi Nao, Sharon Olds, Judith Arcana, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, Molly Peacock, Carol Muske-Dukes, Mo Yan, Leslie Marmon Silko, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Kathy Acker, Langston Hughes, Sharon Doubiago, and many other classic and contemporary writers. Huge congrats to editor Annie Finch on this essential volume!

SALMON POETRY TO PUBLISH MY COLLECTION DORA/LORA

Wonderful news, my friends! I am ecstatic, delighted, thrilled that Salmon Poetry is publishing my fourth full-length poetry collection, DORA/LORA! Thanks to publisher Jessie Lendennie! 
r publishing me!

Translation of "VOW" by Iranian Poet Mohammad Mostaghimi

Iranian poet Mohammad Mostaghimi (Rahi) has translated a number of my poems into Persian. Below is his translation of my poem "Vow." POETS WANT PEACE!

VOW
We will love like dogwood
Kiss like cranes
Die like moths
I promise

لاريسا شمايلو 2007

پيمان بهار

ما عشق خواهيم ورزيد

مثل زغال اخته

بوسه خواهيم زد

مثل درناها

خواهيم مرد

مثل پروانگان

من نويد مي‌دهم

گزاشتار: محمّد مستقيمي(راهي)

OVER

Come out of the darkness about depression this holiday.

OVER

On the perfect roof, near a perfect ledge,

A small terra firma with a narrow edge,

No temporizing with last-minute balance,

No handhold, no foothold, no anchor, no ballast.

And once committed, once into the air,

No hovering, no kiting, no waiting there.

The polygonal street and the shining dark cars

Attacked at meters per second squared.

Once over, soon over: a thing done just once:

Like fireworks and New Years’ bells, fast and intense,

Quite finite, soon finished, thought long, slow begun,

And forgotten by others like the old year now done.

POEMS IN BENGALI JOURNAL SHADOWKRAFT

My poems "Terms of Allegiance" and "Anna Karenina #metoo" appear today in the bilingual Bengali - English journal SHADOWKRAFT. Thanks to 
editor Subhrasankar Das for the pubs!
READ POEMS HERE

https://shadowkraft.blogspot.com/2019/06/larissa-shmailo.html

"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.

RECORDING OF ANTIFASCISM POETRY FROM SLY BANG

Thanks to exceptional poet and blogger Don Yorty for recording this reading of poetry from my hybrid novel, SLY BANG. I read "How My Family Survived the Camps," "Lager NYC," and "Warsaw Ghetto."

https://donyorty.com/blog/201S9/04/27/larissa-shmailo-reads-sly-bang/

MY POEM "ABORTION HALLUCINATION IN CHOICE WORDS ANTHOLOGY

I am honored that my poem “Abortion Hallucination” has been selected for inclusion in the anthology CHOICE WORDS: WRITERS ON ABORTION from Haymarket. The anthology features work by Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Langston Hughes, Ursula LeGuin, Audre Lorde, Gloria Naylor, Joyce Carol Oates, Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, Dorothy Parker, Jean Rhys, Saniyya Salem, Anne Sexton, Ntozake Shange, Gloria Steinem, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, and many others. Thanks to editor Annie Finch for including me!

DEATH AT SEA

In memoriam my husband, Steven Charles Werner 

(May 3, 1955 - March 26, 1985)

The heart, someone wrote once,
Couldn’t walk a straight line,
Couldn’t pass the drunk test if it tried.

Some men play the odds; their heads count cards
But their hearts bet inside straights.
They can’t bluff, ever,
Show their hand, most times,
And always give the pot away.

Steven died at sea
Holding the dead man’s hand, aces up.
A poker-faced corpse surfaces on the water:
I see
The orange safety vest
Inflated around his neck
Mocking God and me
Now, now, now, now, now ---
Too late.

I held his wake in Vegas,
Sat Shiva in casinos
Where there were no windows, no daytime, no peace.
I put him in a casket,
A greedy one-armed bandit
It still asks me for coins
For its insatiable slot.

I hate the beach
The deadsea beach
The sunblocked snorkeled oily beach
The scuba lungs
The deadgrass skirts
The blind bikinied sunglass beach

I hate the sea
The soulless sea
The sentient, malevolent swampy sea
It don’t care if you live
It won’t cry if you die
It boasts like Yaweh
It spits in your eye
The sea
The stupid sea.

But I love the albatross
That took Steven’s soul,
And I love the lighthouse and the shore,
And I love all sailors, both sober and drunk,
That won’t kill a bird no matter what,
And I love the salt and I love the storm,
And I loved Steven, beyond most doubt,

And if I knew then
What I know now
Could I have walked on water
And pulled him out?

EXORCISM (FOUND POEM)

Adapted from “Group Dynamics,” People of the Lie─The Hope for Healing Human Evil by M. Scott Peck.

I stand on holy ground
I stand on holy ground
I stand on holy ground
I stand on holy ground
I stand on holy ground

Consecration: On the morning of March 16, 1968
Elements of Task Force Barker
Charlie Company Task Force Barker
Moved into a small group of hamlets
In the Quang Ngai province of South Vietnam
Collectively known as My Lai

It was a routine mission
To search and destroy
A typical mission
To search and destroy

The soldiers were poorly trained and hastily assembled
They were tired, poorly trained, and hastily assembled
They had sustained casualties from booby traps and mines
They had not engaged the enemy but sustained casualties
Had had no military success for over a month
The soldiers were poorly trained

The soldiers were probably not aware of the Geneva Convention
Which states it is a war crime to kill a civilian
A punishable crime to kill a civilian
To kill a soldier or enemy who has surrendered
Who is wounded and has laid down his arms
To kill a non-combatant

They were probably not aware of the Law of Land Warfare
In the Army Field Manual, the U.S. Army Field Manual
Which specifies that orders in violation of the Geneva Convention
Any order in violation of the Geneva Convention
Is illegal and not to be obeyed

The soldiers were poorly trained

The written orders were ambiguous
The My Lai orders were ambiguous
Just waste the place, a Louie said
A Louie might have said

Though essentially all elements of Task Force Barker
Were involved in some way in the My Lai operation
The primary element of ground troop involved
Was C Company 1st Battalion of the 20th infantry
Of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade

When Charlie Company moved into the hamlets of My Lai
They found no combatants not a single combatant
Only old men and children, unarmed women, men, and children
All civilian and unarmed

The troops of C Company killed five to six hundred
The troops of C Company killed five to six hundred
The troops of C Company killed five to six hundred
Civilians on that day

The killings took a long time

The people were killed in a variety of ways
In some instances troops would simply stand at a hut
And spray it with fire or throw hand grenades
In other instances villagers including small children
Were shot as they attempted to escape

The killings took a long time

The most largescale killings occurred at My Lai 4
There the first platoon of Charlie Company
Commanded by Lieutenant Calley
Herded villagers into groups of twenty or more
Who were then shot down by rifle fire
Machine guns and hand grenades

The killings took a long time

The number of soldiers can only be estimated
Perhaps only fifty actually killed the civilians
Perhaps just two hundred watched them shoot the civilians
Only just some two hundred directly witnessed the killings
By the end of the massacre approximately 500
Knew of operation My Lai

None of them reported the crimes

A helicopter pilot in flyby to the mission
A warrant officer in air support in flyby to the mission
Could see from the air what was happening in the hamlets
He landed, tried to talk to the troops on the ground
Then went airborne and radioed headquarters from his copter
Told his superior officers what he saw at My Lai
They did not seem concerned

The soldiers were poorly trained

Lieutenant Calley was convicted
For his crimes at My Lai 4
But not his Captain Medina
His superior officer
Not Lieutenant Colonel Barker
Who Commanded Task Force Barker
Nor Lieutenant Barker’s com
Who said,
Boys let’s bring that coonskin home…

In Iowa in ’66 a boy gets into trouble
Sells some pot and gets himself caught
And he gets himself in trouble
And the judge says join the Army
Or you’re going to do some hard time
The boy signs up for Nam

I stand on holy ground
I stand on holy ground
I stand on holy ground
I stand on holy ground.

My poem TERMS OF ALLEGIANCE in MATTER

TERMS OF ALLEGIANCE

(poem inspired by work as a “namer” for advertising)

My product needs you. Watch the silver surfaces, the waving waters, wonder why the woman is humiliating the man—hold that anxious thought. We have you now; pledge unconscious

allegiance to us. The words reverberate: aim, aptitude, authority; you are not sure you can measure up. Hold that feeling of self-doubt:  we will bring authenticity, balance, direction, a compass for your life. Now, buy Boson (never mind what it means, it is a solution).

We are anodyne, access to numbness and a world without doubt; we are the antidote.  Buy

Allele (the sound alone is uplifting, lulling). Buy Asana (our sharp penetrating products are as

beneficial as yoga). Watch: we offer you a bright shore, an ascendant future, halcyon nights, a

champion for your battles, a compass in the fog, clarity, concord, electric force.

In your indecisive world, you are on the cusp of a decision: leap! To buy is action, affirmation, connection; the diagram of your life is finally here! We are your doctrine and domain, your

emergent path to an elemental, firsthand, and entire existence.  We are your focus, your formula,

your fulcrum. The world is frightening and ridden with woes; you are daily subject to death by

a thousand cuts. We are your lightship, your sure haven, your journey’s landing, your way through the matrix’s maze, your locus, your hope.

STOP: Your problems, which are legion, cannot be solved outside of the mercantile world. We

control the immaterial and will share its aura if you buy. Without us, you are a zygote, small and unformed, without viability, validity, or worth. We are the membrane through which you must

pass.  Listen: you have problems you have never dreamed of which we alone can resolve. Buy

Synergy, buy Thoughtfulness, buy it all and survive.  Watch the silver surfaces, the waving water, the woman humiliating the man, and buy.

*** 

Larissa Shmailo is a poet, novelist, translator, editor, and critic. Her new novel is Sly Bang; her first novel is PatientWomen. Her poetry collections are Medusa’s Country, #specialcharacters , In Paran ,  A Cure for Suicide, and Fib Sequence . Her poetry albums are The No-Net World and Exorcism, for which she won the New Century Best Spoken Word Album award. Shmailo is the original English-language translator of the first Futurist opera Victory over the Sunby Alexei Kruchenych, performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and theaters and universities worldwide. Shmailo also edited the online anthology Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry. Please see more about Larissa at her website  www.larissashmailo.com

"I am not your insect" in NOON Anthology

Delighted that my poem "I am not your insect" will be 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.

Who Built the Starbucks Chain? (after Bertolt Brecht)

Who built the Starbucks chain?

Did Howard Schultz take the orders?
His name was on the board - did he froth the half-caf fraps,
drizzle the brew with caramel, write the names of
ill-tempered customers on cups? He "gave" benefits
while workers stood for double shifts -
did the barristas give something, too?
Did Schultz build the stores from brick, grow the beans?
Didn't thousands work for a little, or a lot,
less than their labor was worth
while Schultz skimmed the rest off the top,
like grande, venti foam?
it was Schultz, the latte Trump, who convinced America
that coffee should cost $8 a cup. Of course -
he did it all by himself, and by himself
took the tax breaks that would have paid
the barrista's health care and college
as a right, not a gift.
Why would he want a nation, needless and heedless,
if he can do it all alone?

Poems for Earth Day

Degree

Look up, the water is rising again; the ocher ocean

is warmer today. The sea mists rise, form grey clouds

named Harvey and Irma and Jose and they reign,

mad royalty, over earth. Hush: The brown waters

rush into tributaries, to rivers, to the troubled chopped 

sea, where carbons heat the surface of salt; one degree,

and it rises hotter, wetter, wilder, whipping waves

of wind, winding toward us, a Kitty, Leo, Marie; a child,

looking at the sea, will die today, Noah, alee.

Plate Histrionics

  

He throws a gold-lamé wedding-set saucer

at me, and spits, “There is no

 global warm-ing.”

Today, Irma evacuates Sarasota as b-

rother Harvey peers and jeers, Ozymandiu-

s-like, Houston and Florida, look upon me.

A-s th-ese li-nes are bro-ken, so the dream-

s of cities, and those hamlets and towns a-

way where we settled to breathe, hear our-

selves think.

Cat 5, there is no stronger. An

evil fidget spinner, Irma swirls out of a wet

hell, and I holler CLIMATE CHANGE.

It is the

imitation

Wedgewood gravy boat, h-

e throws that next, jjjjjjjust before she

A Sonnet Affected by Climate Change

The Earth is mud and shale gas, molten magma, metamorphic—

Oh Sis, Oh Bro—and igneous, blast changing in its last tic,

with a heady burst of ozone, all zones, a corpse that ends in water.

Without us, climate will survive, change fast, outlast—Oh Daughter:

The equatorial world endures, we fall, all bone, all copses sick. 

Paleoclimatology predicts our fate.

Put the conundrum on another generation’s plate?

No, it’s now: in Africa, desertification scorches,

torches farmland. (HUNGER!!!!)

And the people learn of a Great Satan, a nation

that throws away food. Do you see

that they will fight because they must?

Whom will they trust? What is terror after you’ve

watched your child die in the land’s rust?