it is the establishment—that 1%
who have given us the habit
of blame. Scapegoating. We have to
restructure our minds, shake habits
ground into our brains by TV, they are
diversion tactics, to make us forget
what we want. The resignation of a dean, a mayor
changes nothing            blaming a figurehead
brings no true change

Note: it’s not scapegoating to lay blame on those
who physically harm: pepper spray, maim, taser, shoot
their children, their mothers, their own gentle brothers—
get them off the streets for good if we can but remember
no dean or mayor (no governor, president) truly controls
their own police force:             they are mercenaries
paid lackeys

who see their own oppression in our faces
and try to destroy their pain by annihilating us

Nov 23, 2011, San Francisco

~~~~~

Over the span of her remarkable career, Diane di Prima has published 43 books of poetry and prose and, as per Allen Ginsberg, “broke barriers of race- class identity and delivered a major body of verse brilliant in its particularity.” She is presently the Poet Laureate of San Francisco.

A way for us to begin when beginnings have passed us.
Before you saw him you knew exactly where you wanted to put your hands.
Casually, the light in that room became what you remembered of summer.
Days of slow mornings, days of nothing but nights.
Even in a time like ours, war ends and love too.
For now I will write about love.
Going every day to that place in you that is homeless.
How quiet you were the first time you saw your mother cry.
I’m always here, yes, writing or thinking about you.
Just like that it was autumn and not spring for a long time.
Kindness was somewhere in his hands, how they shook after crossing the border.
Listening to Glass and then Brahms to feel changed, suddenly.
Mundane pleasures: coffee, orgasm, a walk down First Street.
Nights that return in the daytime and you need to sit down.
Oh I want to stop here, what more can I tell you?
President Clinton on television while we were children.
Quietly typing in a square of light in a room where you lived while people died.
Reason is not needed with us, he said.
So, “I want to know who you are,” who the “I,” who the “we” is.
Today I am returning to everyone at least once in my mind.
Until I die I want to keep telling Rachel I love her.
Voices in the house where you grew up in an afternoon, in one gaze.
What do we look for when we say, “where are you going right now?”
Xoxoxoxo   x
Years that pass fast and slowly through us.
Zero apologies today but of course, there were things we did and didn’t do.

~~~~~

Alex Dimitrov’s first book of poems, Begging for It, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in early 2013. He is the recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Prize for younger poets from The American Poetry Review and the founder of Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York City. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Yale Review, Slate, Tin House, and Boston Review.

~~~~~

Noelle Kocot is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, The Bigger World (Wave Books, 2011), and a book of translations of some of the poems of Tristan Corbière, Poet by Default (Wave Books, 2011). Her previous works include the discography Damon’s Room, (Wave Books Pamphlet Series, 2010), Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books, 2009) and Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave Books, 2006). She is also the author of 4 and The Raving Fortune (both from Four Way Books). Her poems have been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2001 and Best American Poetry 2012. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, The Fund for Poetry and the American Poetry Review. She currently lives in New Jersey.

I can’t even stand
my own skin anymore
or the golden crayon of the President and his audience
or the progress fast-track to a bright future
awaiting us just around the corner
with a rusty axe
or shiny words
echoing dully in damp rooms
basements and unfinished buildings
or the neon light of
giant supermarkets
or the chocolate in motley wrappers
past its expiration date

I can’t stand any longer
the almighty God of Soccer
the radiation that increases daily
or my own body of a porno menagerie extra
because I’m the son of Jesus’ son
temping
in evolution’s zoo
I carry a TV in my trunk
and a case of cold beer
a pack of marked cards
hat and pigeon eggs
for performances
in public housing
community centers
and party cells

I can’t stand
the piles of crumpled laundry
piles of unpaid bills
piles of insurance pyramids
and multi-level take-the-money-and-run pyramids
I can’t stand
dancing with people
the army camp around the bend
gladiators battling a helpless audience
the ritual murder of princesses in kindergartens
empty photo albums
wet matches
because pyres
ready long ago grow rotten in the mist

and you
circle NO
circle what they tell you
and later run back to your misery
back into sinks
into rubber shoes
into the carnival of turbo folk trance
because I’ll raise glasshouses of words for you
in your stead I’ll circle YES
for the future
we left waiting on the dead track
instead of you I’ll be
fresh meat for the billy clubs
the only one to blame for
the tear gas and burning containers
and I forgot to say that
I’ll make a list of everyone who
sat in the front row and clapped
and I’ll read it aloud in public when it’s time
I’ll keep that little secret for the day when
despair floods the suitcases
and my country becomes
my womb
my topsoil
my marble slab

and I’ll ask for my years back
and your years, for you who don’t know how to write appeals
I’ll demand back with interest
disability pay
for uneaten southern fruit
for suitcases languishing in the basement
for missed chances
I’ll ask the people who moved to warmer places to come back
those birds that couldn’t live in a hencoop
I’ll hire Terminator to return
to the past
and kill the ones who started all this
I want to say that too many people have gone away
and that all this has gone too far
because the Dominican Republic and New Zealand seek new victims
young blood of engineers packed in a little red passport

and you, Serbia
you sleeping beauty under the plum tree
remember your own history of heads bowed
five hundred years of slavery
a thousand years of slavery
ten thousand years of slavery
are years to you just grains of sand
in infinity’s necklace
and where’s that rage now, at too many defeats
and too little courage
aren’t you tired
of small trade
smuggling and flea markets
while your men wear torn socks
a quarter of a bread loaf and a salami under their arm
criminals
cut down forests 24 hours a day
and turn them into election posters

two hundred hungry leaches suck your blood
two hundred hungry leaches appoint the world’s four corners
two hundred hungry leaches replace the sky with lamp shades
and while hands
so impotent
drop on history’s clouds
only the agents keep working diligently
reaping reports
eavesdropping
and battering
they’re real pros
practiced NBA champs
a mighty eight with a coxswain
and carte blanche for excessive speed

ghosts and shadows
the fichus tree in the corner of the room and the chipboard desk
I eat seasonal fruits and think about the future
sign-posts are no longer valid
everybody lost their souls to cash
except the saints
and already
there’s too much tension in the streets
the Agency didn’t get the script
to the white magicians on time
the latest scenario
with a happy end

I’ll try to forget about death
but it’s so hard to stay silent
when you don’t fear
falling apart
beatings
imprisonment
I haven’t met real dissidents yet
the writers on a hunger strike
they’re keeping warm
in the dailies’ cultural supplements
you don’t traffic with eternity because it doesn’t exist
just a game of ego madness on the highway of
transience
before the gates
apostles in white Armani suits
point at the vast human desert
the agents kneel and beg forgiveness from five-year-olds
high-circulation dictators weep abandoned by all
hooked
on hazard
on the God role
on sedatives
on underage girls
on magic wands

pet that dog
the smart husky in front of the drugstore
he didn’t deserve such a fate
but he’s wiser than me
and he doesn’t bark on
moonless nights
sirens wail
mad dogs unleashed
police raid every decent party
student housing’s open after hours
orgies in every room
cheap booze
and hick blood whirling deep into the night
the silicone breasts of turbo icons
and hands up
I saw rock-n-roll’s future
passed out drunk in the cafeteria

armored cars glisten in the sun
faces from Wanted posters ride behind dark glass
no remorse in their eyes
but their fate is clear
the film’s almost over
and the thieves are still making a getaway
the film’s almost over
and still they grin nervously
what do I care
I decided what to do long ago
I’ll get up and go into the street
because my life’s main protagonist
must win
at high noon
alone
when the time comes

my rage doesn’t reach beyond the living room
the notes of a helpless man
are of no use to anyone
because souls are not innocent
and kids are not innocent
not even the sky is innocent
and I know there will be no remorse
or epiphany
the madmen have taken over the madhouse
they killed Corto
cremated Kafka
they’re camping out in front of the Kremlin
and I didn’t want that everyday-hero role
that’s for someone stronger and braver
and I didn’t want
that everyday rage
I wanted to be a tourist
to walk the rails
and be the older brother
to my own children

secret societies
telephones
searches
beatings
a stomach ulcer
the mask on the sports fan’s face
the horror feature on vacant ground
to describe
or to close my eyes
those shells with pearls of opaque glass
take them public
or are these outpourings of tenderness
just poor therapy
I’m ten years older
and that experience doesn’t make me any stronger
just sadder and more tired
I sit in my living room but I don’t see death
just misery all around me
the swollen corpse expelled by the tide

trans. by Ana Božičević

~~~~~

Zvonko Karanović is a poet and fiction writer born in 1959 in Niš, Serbia. Today he lives in Belgrade. A writer of distinctly urban sensibilities, steeped in the spirit of riot and revolt, he has written some of the most significant politically engaged poetry critiquing the 90’s regime in Serbia. He is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently Box Set, and three award-winning novels. His voice uniquely brings together American Beat and New York School traditions with the European and Eastern European surrealism and avant-garde. A dissident and countercultural icon, for many years he was an underground cult figure and a seminal influence on a whole generation of younger poets. Zvonko Karanović was awarded the 2011 international writers’ scholarship by the Heinrich Boll Foundation (Koln, Germany).

summons. Candelabra also
are still being discovered
buried, so many greyhounds
put to sleep after the race.

Do not let gradually poetry become complicit

in these withholdings
              of alarmings and light.

Let poetry continue the resurrections.

~~~

ADDENDUM

Who was it said AND

is the greatest
              miracle? Praise

be his/her name.

~~~

BENEFICENCE OF THE REAL

I said to the man, I do not know
if I am a good or a bad.

To be a good person,
he said, you must first be
a great animal.

(And so I let the crawl
come unto me.)

~~~

FOR THE DARK AND BLAZING TRUTHS

I.

And, we had not made the world.

First we were forced,
then freed to believe

we belong here. We are certain

of nothing except we are
not dead, and the dead are

more than us and harder to love.

II.

And, we had not made the world,

or the father and the mother
who will end, on an earth

that will end.

Or the fiction of Heaven, a detention
desired in the school
of our no longer being children.

III.

And, we had not made the world,

had not made the first child
or taught the first child to worship

where it meets
the mirror, where “I” is
the heading to
every exile and prayer is

for the exception, “Someone else,
lord, some one else.”

IV.

And, we had not made the world,

or the water raising a family of waters,
or the wind retenanting the trees,

or the squirrels that mete out their meals in tiny minefields,

or the fiction of the Garden,
or the apostrophe “s,”
which was the snake in that garden,

or the one tree in the vastness of all-going

to which we sometimes turn
to tell how far.

V.

In as many ways as the spider has known the wall.

As often as the wind,
              as often as the wind is

a child that must raise itself
every single time.

In the form of a cage,
              in the form of a cage
that will let the creature out:

We had not made the world.

VI.

First we were, then we were

freed to believe
we belong. We were given

names, a fellowship
made of earshot. We were given

bodies, a place to which others
might come. Were given

language, that monument
of admission, were given to believe

we belonged: “I am blue,”
says the breeze

thru the sky. “I am law,” say the trees
of their felled selves,

the pages. “I am here, with you,
under the public

and touchable trees,
vocabularies, incunabula

of our go-befores, fallen bits of bridge
for the going over

of the All Wall,” says the poet,

who also
had not made
the world.

~~~~~

Christina Davis is the author of Forth A Raven (Alice James Books, 2006) and a manuscript in progress, An Ethic. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Jubilat, LIT, Pleiades, Paris Review and other publications. She is currently the curator of poetry at the Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard University.

from “The country where everything is permitted”

We have the Sun by its mane. The firefighters have
written of everything in signs and still the fire-alarms are
sounding. A Letter to The World(s): you are all whores -
where there is good, you break it down until all that was
good is now whores – because this planet is an
incomprehensible whore-planet with nothing in it worth
comprehending. – She is a succubus. – She is the (third-
world) suicide of modern Philosophy (which she never
studied) – why debate the true-or-false-ness of this
demon-woman-hybrid – when all thought is the
awareness that she wants nothing to do with our human
organism and its every function – Doubt is a hysteria that
relieves the frustration of those who have undertaken to
make her up – You are not sages – you are spacemen -
see you later, then – the weed’s in the drawer – do you
really think you can handle what will happen next -
really, on this planet you’re barely on? – someone’s
demanded the total postponement of the mailmen’s
acidic routines – someone’s demanded all these
frightening grotesques be placed into a slow
bureaucracy until we learn through perseverance how to
ban all failures of expression – Behold her, she wants
you to take her Moos literally – Let’s go back to the times
of the steam-trains and the telegraph wires when you
could lose weight as easy as smoke lifts from a railroad
baroness – from page 50 of Dynamo 13: When someone
passes through pleasure, as through a room, he passes
between doubt and certainty – Pleasure is a plastic thing,
is placed in acid – it is what lasts the desire for it. Thus,
we, the Good and the Just, control our own separate
badnesses for the possibility of living without pain – Shed
the red strings of despair – The whale-bones in the
corset collapse at the feet of the endlessly weeping-
willows – the answering machine announces the undoing
of its animal-life – at this, the ham begins to dance again
- the nomadic houseboat rots in the harbor – the caravel
you keep in your lil’ Susie suitcase will never again run
its feet over saltwater – In the Kasba Noissette you strut
around with your nappy hair like one of those Pakistani
widows, sometimes wearing burgundy, sometimes
bustling around like a vacuum cleaner untying knots -
your boys wrestle over the last of the heroin – one falls
asleep in the hallway – in the lobby – in the lab – so he
can get injected with whatever it is that will let him take
off his face, finally – to abandon the mask and enter
tranquility as into sudden applause – the way one
unlaces a boot – They keep my mask in the ice-cube
compartment – in the fridge – for your dinner – Zap-ada! -
Someone must govern the foldaway beds of the
pedophiles – with their hands and asses out on full
display – O, Gallery of the Queen! – Crankily, the little
gentleman barges through – the unkempt bush of the
labiate-badlands – into the thick velvet. – The viola’s
small thighs, – slotted mandatorily under his arms, -
attend his final monument – He is their musician – he
plays “Love or Confusion” by Jimi Hendrix – And
suddenly his instrument is transformed into something
half-bicycle/half-machine-gun – Within the institution of
marriage and animal husbandry everyone sidles up to
the white enamel bar – and with a little help from the
bartender, the girls loosen up enough to waddle off
deeper into the cave to lie down in the hay – like dogs to
lick themselves thirsty – it’s not entirely the opposite of
disagreeable – Mr. Stationmasterrrrrrr – I am the phantom
ghost – I follow the sun because it is leading me to that
paradise – that is my fist – raining down on your little-
doll’s-tea-parties, you dear, you sweet little cabbages -
Meanwhile us admirals are strophe-ing ourselves -
sometimes the cream-cupboard darlings call out: help -
hup – TAXI! – Your luggage rotted – you can never
associate with the malt-shop-Suzies – you, with your
constantly shaven head – I will stand with you in the
shade of a fern, slowly rising into time, and lead our own
two selves, humble and certain, from scrutiny – But it
must be that I am constantly myself and chaos – and am
myself in every remnant of myself – albeit a traumatized
version of myself – on the coast, meeting some future
twin or ghost of myself – You want to take the subway – I
want to buy an ice cream cone – HA! – we are,
essentially, milksmiths – we love our beaten path and if
the sheepdog is crazy, there’s nothing we can do about
it – but graft our pleasure to this EXIT – You can’t take
the boys with you – the amateur sailors you keep on
balconies and on terraces to make it with at your
convenience – who you haven’t granted permission – to
overflow from their ashtrays – to inject themselves with
death – to sever – all that’s you from them – They’re
planning to steal your patio furniture – after putting away
all the leather accessories you keep them in – even their
adorable singlets – because the only life is a life of love -
Destroy – yours, theirs, and the others’ bright academy -
it isn’t necessary – to drink pure lemonade, with two ice
cubes, at all times, endlessly smoking menthols – Quit
your, their, and the others’ constant bitching – it isn’t
necessary – in your parents’ basements, where you hide
away, honing your pinball-skills – two lips and two shiny,
plasticized filets – like your grannies’ gigantic clits – the
cat with its hair standing on end —- like a cumbersome
anxiety – you don’t smoke the joint with me – I am here -
I am there – not here – the wet figs eat themselves – they
eat the other figs, the dates – the cherries – as thieves
tug at the policemen’s sausage – The cops stand around,
mutely eating horse-meat – they never speak – of their
own mythology – but pass into it like the legend of the
hidden airplanes – flying on a train somewhere -
preferring the rhythm of the tracks, passing under – you
wish a Happy Anniversary to the Israeli War – MAO is
becoming younger, bowed at the feet of his great AGE -
China advances – say it – the color-television hen agrees,
in Italian – sometimes mumbling in French or in English -
how at all times they will never love the men they are
saying they love here – the suns’ pin knows that when
the moon fills its basket that the other side of the basket
will be empty – speed’s superb and grandiose
demonettes – are their translucent green – and a trance -
and LUCID – and the winking green eyes’ confessions -
and I am persuaded by – the crisis of phosphorescence -
the 9 black arts of language will turn the palm trees in on
themselves – like conches turned to music – the same
palms feed the air – their exotic makings – each fruit the
color of television – each color for the color blind – a
constant green – little changes in the blue range – and
the red range – a little acid in the orange’s fluorescent -
something’s turning it yellow

~~~~~

Sophie Podolski was a Belgian poet and graphic artist. She published only one book during her short lifetime, Le pays où tout est permis (The Country Where Everything Is Permitted), in which the poems were reproduced in her own artistic handwriting. Podolski studied graphic design at the Académie de Boitsfort and was associated with the artistic community at Montfaucon Research Center. She suffered from schizophrenia and spent time in psychiatric clinics in Paris and Brussels. She attempted suicide in Brussels at the age of twenty-one and died ten days later as a result.

Paul Legault is the author of The Madeleine Poems (Omnidawn, 2010) and The Other Poems (Fence, 2011). He co-edits the translation press Telephone Books and works at the Academy of American Poets.

                      the world is a projection now
                      a tableau that we have carved out
                      all insistent on forfeiture
                      on the literature of our greats
                      for we have egos the size of deserts
                      and weapons for casting off our antecedents
                      we must spell it out in order to be made
visible
                      we have nothing but journey and scrub on
our hands
                      the limbs that spoil security are those that
arrest us
                      we fall under everything that is inconclusive
                      swell with pride of fable intent
                            we are not lost
                            we are a stereo of citizens
                            we are a dream team
                            we are without a guard against our
previous assaults
 
u-salt and table brine
x-amount of days upended
huddle and levy
buckle at the frame
take the bridge down
take the government apart
tear reckless through our streets
if not for you
for me
I don’t know how to be a wheel of ox
I don’t know how to spin and spin
I am not unlike those of us who feel powerless
I am startled by the gift of verbs
I am startled by the fist of nerves
I am not unlike those who pray secretly at home
I am not unlike those of us who long to occupy a zone
a zone of shift and radiance
a mechanism that pulls criteria into a radial orb
for without mechanism we are truly stagnant
we are rest and man
we are enemy and cheers
we are cargo of the junk-liner swiftly moving across the bay
for my ideas don’t resonate with a ton
for my ideas can’t be caught in a rainstorm
they aren’t hibiscus or exotic teas
they aren’t lemon or sour belches
for rock salt I have plenty
and time is only a figment
I am hobbling through Greek class
winnowing with the ferocity of a dwarfed senate
look at every building
as if building endlessly into the sky were an option
as if poised for business
am always open
trader of poem-stocks
house of cards and ridicule
this barrier is extreme
people should be allowed to pass freely
it’s a shame that nobody wants to help
it’s a shame that some people feel so all alone
as a commuter
am belonging to this train
allow the world to pass endlessly through me
a medicinal mariachi
I use fragrance in good humor
a circle-bucket for change
my pennies add up to nothing
not crack of dream or synesthesia
temporal lobe of epilepsy
I am without seizure
without Medicare or council
lacking the quota that speaks for a pig’s lair
have gathered the necessary tools
to apprehend speech and bubble my share
have hammered the sounds to sleep
if everything crumbles
will moss grow over?
humidity is a long shot away
in store for summer drought
and west coast fog
I pluck the city
when I’m tired I don’t sleep
rather transition towards absence
towards a halo of blank
I have shut the city down
and softly accompany the dreams of other people
those who I know nothing about
float my vessel through their spectral fantasies
let them lapse
let them make moves
I watch torture
witness negative capability split into fractions
the freight train can be occupied solely
with NYPD
for we the untied straits are a domi-
nation of substitutes
we opt for waves
our path becomes a convergence
of molecular fang
and bootleg teeth
cord after cord of erasure
techniques underscore the newsprint
nothing has meaning
vague after switchtime blurs hysteric
miss-hitters
spool of earth upturns the city
for we are rotten before our time
and what we have taken is only our ancestral homogeny
 
when you run and run
you fall down tunnel in egret snow
you’ve stowed away food under barbed wire
put it in such a position so that you know nobody will ever be able to find it
it is not poised for danger
for its movement clouds and clots
like blood garbage
waiting to be taken away
for what waits becomes reconfigured
speaks volumes of dietary
and later on deity
you don’t organize with subtle eccentric beliefs
too subtly hooked and rendered by prior stellar awakenings
roof where you surge fires
epic destroyer
from the hogwashed blossom bush you put in the shade
spoil from the rain
you are food
are edible god of editing
with soles you become a horse
with continents to shit on
if the very truths were not yours you could not make use of them
what was once yours
you say swallow me whole before you go
but there is nowhere to go
no one watches as death takes you
weightless you shift and sway
kick your stump for crow to move over
trail of ick and spat
the dead king weeping
patient without disgrace
I can crawl over you
I have punished the end of the known world

~~~~~

Paige Taggart lives in Brooklyn. Her chapbook DIGITAL MACRAMÉ was released by Poor Claudia (Feb 2011), and Polaroid Parade from Greying Ghost Press (July 2011). The Ice Poems are forthcoming with DoubleCross Press. Find more here: mactaggartjewelry.blogspot.com

manhattan was preoccupied with the price of beads.

chicago, illinois was preoccupied with du sable’s black fur trade.

tennessee was preoccupied with following the market in organic saline :: it had been
              trailing since jackson was in office.

massachusetts was preoccupied with the steep cost of religious pilgrimage.

tulsa, oklahoma was preoccupied with one kind of black gold :: it didn’t place much
              stock in the other kind.

alaska was preoccupied first with the rush on fur, then with the mining industry.

the dakotas were preoccupied with wheat as a cash crop :: they were railroaded into it.

minnesota was preoccupied with timber, which was grist for the mill.

texas was preoccupied with first one thing then another :: its economy flagged until oil
              surfaced.

missouri was preoccupied with the louisiana purchase.

arizona was preoccupied with a bankrupt christianizing mission :: it went from broke to
              broker.

alabama was preoccupied with agriculture from the start :: other futures foreclosed
              until it acquired a coastline.

mississippi was preoccupied with blankets and bullets, incorporating them into its
              culture in exchange for mounds and mounds of land.

~~~~~

Evie Shockley is the author of four collections of poetry—the new black (Wesleyan, 2011), a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and two chapbooks—as well as the critical study Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (Iowa, 2011).  Her poems and essays have appeared recently or are forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as Callaloo, The Nation, Cura, TriQuarterly Online, Contemporary Literature, Black Nature: A Century of African American Nature Poetry, A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line, and Home is Where: An Anthology of African American Poets from the Carolinas.  Shockley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where she teaches African American literature and creative writing.

Begin with what you owe
no one. Make
shit up. Make every child
believe or die trying
not to. Raise the dead.

RHODE  ISLAND

My exit strategy
rules. Get from Point A
to pointless. Take
their balls and go home.

TENNESSEE

Stop the Heavens
from crashing to the Earth.
This is the cry of the biggest
assholes in Heaven.

ARKANSAS

All violence and business
is personal. Love is systemic. Rules
are what rule the world.

NEW  YORK

Only the best
is my philosophy. Bankers
die first.

MINNESOTA

I make policy because
I’m part of this shit.
My advice is gold. My blood
is a medium of exchange.

MISSOURI

Where I come from
people die. My history
is history. My dream
is against your dream.

MICHIGAN

If the future is written
out of nothing
become nothing.

IOWA

Do not be afraid
of fear. The law is
what I do for fun. Economies
are how I fuck off.

NEW  MEXICO

Be competent in life. Suffer
no fools. Put to death the few
who put to death the many. Give back
to Caesar the shit that is his.

HAWAII

Last thing I want to do
is save the world. I’m in no state
and no century.

I make my own power.

~~~~~

Dan Hoy lives in Brooklyn, NY and is the author of Omegachurch (Solar Luxuriance, 2010), Polaroid (Wrath of Dynasty, 2010), and Glory Hole (Mal-O-Mar, 2009). He previously co-edited SOFT TARGETS (2006-2007), a magazine of art, philosophy, and literature, and currently contributes to the collective blog www.montevidayo.com. His personal site is www.thepinupstakes.com.

A bunch of stuff. Junk mail. Dead toilets.
No one needs to know pretty much about
that attitude I suppose. And a hundred others.
The inmates are running the asylum.
The humming of great machines soars above the plain.
We are sorry. We never meant
to do harm. Sunlight crashed through the veil,
pulled the mud out from under him.
Whether that explains the treaty of
this or that spring wardrobe is still unknown.

~~~~~

Photo by Lynn Davis

John Ashbery’s most recent collection of poems is Planisphere (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2009).  His Collected Poems 1956 – 1987 was published in 2008 by Library of America, and his translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations was recently published by Norton.  The first solo exhibition of his collages was held in 2008 at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery (New York), where his new collages will be on exhibit from October 20 through December 3, 2011.

© Copyright John Ashbery, 2011. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc.