NEW! Poem by Molly Bendall

Molly Bendall

ANIMAL HEIRS

If squinting made them
all sail steady,

I’d try to find them that way. Their oval terrain I’d learn. Who else
wants it? 

I’ve been stung
with a green heart and dragged

out backwards. That one snaps
and a year of ashes appear. Its bouldered head shifts and leans into its breeze.
Hoofprints deface

the little earth. Land of no requirements
and the sadness of not
listening. Sounds are just too wide. Here’s one who gallops against the rules. 

Aloneness is an image to work with so I sketch it
along the divots in the soil. I tick

gently to the voice-overs.

New members come around
lately, and I invite them
to see the armature. Because

now my knees are tired. Because now the faint reek
settles into musk. 

Because now I’m deaf
to where the clock leads me. 

Some are browsers

and frolic in an underworld.

The service there is witty. One sneers at
the hills folding against

the flat vista.
It huffs into its own squared chest. 

I could climb on its back and tour the lawlessness.

NEW! Poem by Tracy Truels

Tracy Truels 

BEDROOMS, GRASS, AND BLACK WATER

I cannot blame the starfish for they are small and hold on to things.

I woke up next to a man not my husband but who still kept me warm.
I once slept in the field like a buried body, so long slips of grass grew between my wrist bones.

When we sleep you sink into the bed like a fish thrown back into water,
so deep I don’t know if I could reach you with my arm.

We must take something unknown to our grave so that the ones we love will follow us.

I cannot blame the places I’ve slept. I held onto our bed until it broke like a dam.
The grass sleeps above our buried bodies, and the stars hold on to my things.

NEW! Review of Édouard Levé

Autoportrait by Édouard Levé. Translated by Lorin Stein. Dalkey Archive, $12.95.

Reviewed by Astoria Aviles


In one of many photographs taken during his three-month visit to the United States in 2002, esteemed French photographer and author Édouard Levé captures an abandoned home in Paris, Texas. The haze of the blue sky over cracked and sunburned white paneling with a boarded up window and crooked roof abide in direct contrast to the grand limestone architecture of Paris, France; and the overgrowth of dandelions surrounding the front certainly do not evoke the grandeur of the Parc du Champ de Mars. The home, titled Maison abandonnée a Paris, it would seem, has failed to live up to the expectations of a Parisian home. It is this disconnect of place and discordant existence that Levé sought to capture. The photograph is part of a series entitled Série Amérique, in which Levé visited American cities that shared a name with a city from a foreign country. In addition to Paris, Levé photographed in Berlin, Florence, Oxford, Canton, Rio, Amsterdam, and Rome, among others, all in the United States. 


During his travels, Levé wrote the third of his literary works, Autoportrait, published by P.O.L. three years later. The work is composed entirely of declarations, rather like a series of snapshots. Levé’s passion for capturing the moment is unequivocally an earnest one. Appropriately titled Self-portrait, Levé lists fragments of thoughts, ideas, memories, personal opinions and confessions to build a collage of himself. Each sentence exists on its own, almost devoid of a clear narrative or context, yet somehow relating to the whole of Levé, the man behind the lens. 


Such a fragmentary work, however, does not exist simply as a reflection of a passion for photographic spontaneity, but rather as an exhibition of a new kind of self-exegesis. Levé writes, “I dream of an objective prose, but there is no such thing” (55). Such decisiveness in Levé’s declarations engenders a level of objectivity, but his actuality lies in his uncanny ability to both engage and estrange a reader. The reader must learn to navigate through a constantly changing tide, and only after such adaptation can the reader begin to understand the meaning behind everything that has washed ashore. There are moments, however, where Levé is more explicit. In the midst of arbitrary fragments like “I would rather have someone tell me about an exhibition than see it with my own eyes. I do not lie” (55), or “I sleep in absolute darkness. I have dry skin” (98), Levé then interjects a series of statements that act as seismic reminders of the work as a whole:

I do not write memoirs. I do not write novels. I do not write short stories. I do not write plays. I do not write poems. I do not write mysteries. I do not write science fiction. I write fragments. I do not tell stories from things I’ve read or movies I’ve seen, I describe impressions, I make judgments. (96)

Levé’s work rejects the autobiographical narrative, the “I was born,” etc. and in such a rejection of chronology pulls the reader along with him in an extensive act of introspection. In a brief moment when describing his travels Levé writes, “I like meeting new people when I travel: these brief and inconsequential encounters have the thrill of beginnings and the sadness of separations” (23). Autoportrait is indeed a series of such encounters, where Levé himself demonstrates the objectivity of his prose, and consequently argues for an objectivity of memory. He is, in his fragmented self, written in black ink upon the white page, being read, reread, believed or disbelieved, recognized for his playfulness but remembered for his sincerity. 


Autoportrait was published in France in 2005. Levé killed himself two years later, just ten days after submitting the manuscript for his fourth work, Suicide, to his editor. His works had been published only in France until April 2011, when Suicide was published in English in the United States. This year, Autoportrait appeared from Dalkey Archive Press in a translation by Lorin Stein. When asked about the translation process, Stein describes the act of translating as being “part of a conversation” with Levé. To translate any text is to enter intimately into the reformation and recreation of a work. However, given Levé’s unsystematic work, recreating a narrative and objective voice presents a daunting challenge. Stein says that capturing Levé called for the translator “to disappear.” Given such dynamism and sense of detachment in each translated statement, Stein has indeed achieved his vanishing act. To recreate such an ardent work, in its erratic and intrepid composition of such a man, Stein has demonstrated his loyalty to Levé’s voice. 


When asked what contextual or informative materials he used in the process of translation, Stein mentions Joe Brainard, whose I Remember is similar in its deployment of declarative statements (most begin with “I remember”). Levé even directly mentions Brainard: “Joe Brainard is less affirmative than Walt Whitman” (28). While familiar with and evidently influenced by Brainard’s work, it is perhaps more pragmatic to consider Levé’s foremost passion for photography (take, for example, the Maison abandonnée a Paris). The discord between Paris, Texas, and Paris, France aside, there is an emptiness in the Maison abandonnée, something beyond the photograph. Levé’s picture is an argument for the striking disconnect between a home occupied in Paris, France, and a home abandoned in Paris, Texas. Yet, too, the photograph becomes reflexive of Levé’s work with the mundane or detached perspective. As he writes in the last pages of Autoportrait, “I prefer a ruin to a monument” (117). 

From both his photography and his literary works, Levé’s voice contains a passive yet surprising tone, blunt and frank in its delivery but also refreshingly sincere. Levé is present in every moment of this self-portrait, but his presence is inherently an absence. Such a work cannot be read without simultaneously being reread, for each fragment is part of Levé as a cell is part of a body. In the middle of the work Levé writes, “I am always shocked when people give me directions and they actually get me where I’m going: words become road” (88). Now, perhaps, despite the sharp turns and surprising dead ends, English-language readers can now navigate Levé’s road in Autoportrait. 

NEW! Poem by Jon Davis

Jon Davis

MONK PLAYS STRIDE


Outside now, gray sky leaning to rain now,
last leaves clinging, pale green now going paler,
light breeze now twitching, now battering the branches, 
while inside Monk is dragging the notes,
behaving himself in homage now, playing
in the dinner jacket now, trying
to play the cracks now between notes now
between beats now, the minor seconds, the slur now, 
sopping up gravy when no one is looking now,
left leg jitterbugging under the tablecloth,
all the madness stuffed now into that tremor,
all the clowning now, half in now
and half out now of every now game. 

NEW! Poem by Curtis D'Costa

Curtis D’Costa

PUZZLE BITS

Salmon; blue; yellow; repeat.

Then our strategic objectives shifted.

Umbrellas unfurled, fork chimed,

and the Dumpster stench

characteristic of seafood queso

staggered among tables and chairs.

This woman entering the café

blew her arm off at the elbow

lighting fireworks.

Corralling her heel with his ankle, this girl’s 

date shows her, with a twist of his knife,

the polite way to juice a lime.

“All the Girls are like, You Can't Multitask.
I'm like, Damn Fucking Right: That's why I, I
Focus and you have to Do a Bunch of Shit.
I I I offer, and and you can't even figure out
What You Want for Breakfast.  I'm like . . .”

She picks the bacon

from her teeth with a hairpin, far away,

heart bent on another,

the one who has rhythm and a full-time job,

the one who

The rain keeps pouring down; it won't even cool us off.

I had no idea turbulence could shake a plane so hard

NEW! Two poems by Andrew Michael Roberts

Andrew Michael Roberts

TWO POEMS


geometry of innocence

god is dreaming.

a colony of moths

unfurls in the mind,

a fortress of trees

gowned in smoke

through which you fall

sideways, like a leaf.

at the lakeshore,

walk softly.

water sleeps.

light buzzes in

the crustaceans' brains.

the mountains

with their eyes of ice

strike out at the thunder-vaults.

egrets, egrets if they succeed:

unfolding to take the place of the sky.

all shall be showered

in otherworldly poise.

here is a throne

while you wait

made of driftwood and bone,

and your ignorance crown

for which the world wars.

-met′əbol′ik

i have enchanted a housefly
with one piano note.

dirty little captain
of the men of death,

he's caught in a frequency,
blinking his thousand
unthinkable eyes.

near-dawn. an icicle slips
from its jaw along the roofline.

now behold the gaping smile of doom.

who am i but to judge?
i drink like a king,

i have a liver going to hell,
my cells at war with me.

you stalwart mutineers.
can you arrest time? no.

the rung note dissipates.
morning hesitates,

but comes.
morning like a broken bell,

a candle in the birdcage
where the blind bird was.

NEW! Poem by Doug Ramspeck

Doug Ramspeck

NOTES FOR THE MORNING ORBIT

and always the problem of prayer—

wind brushing over the hair on our arms,

the sunlight we hoard on our skin

that moment when

we invent a certain 

methodical throbbing to our hearts

a rhapsody of waking    a half-scissor 

of a leg kicking for the floor

the spirit breaking and entering

the daily orbit of regret spinning us

toward some cartoon apocalypse

the hours like a sleight of hand

NEW! Poem by Michelle Valois

Michelle Valois

LIVES OF THE DEAD

At 16, Confucius was a corn inspector. His job required neither wisdom nor self-scrutiny, only a keen eye for rot and the ability to hold large numbers in his head. Albert Einstein, also good with numbers, could not speak fluently until he was eleven years old. Emperor Louis Napoleon could speak five languages and was praised for his ability to keep silent in all of them. I know only two languages and can’t seem to keep my mouth shut in either, except for that month when I couldn’t speak at all, but we won’t talk about that today. Today we will talk about Thomas Edison, who was afraid of the dark. 

NEW! Poem by Kyle McCord

Kyle McCord

If you’re reading this,
I forgive you for eating me first.
Then Hector, our Mayan tour guide,
who doubtlessly ascended
the tree of wisdom
next to the fern of unwise disrobing
in public venues. 
Then at least four members
of the archeology club
while those scrappy kids
obediently translated
the sarcophagus’s inscription:
Please visit the gift shop
on your way out, vile desecrators.
I toot my rustic horn in approval. 
If you’re reading this,
beware Bachelor #1
whose love of long walks on sandy beaches
doesn’t survive the second date. 
Then the children come out of cryo
like greyhounds bounding
onto an orbital platform.
Bachelor #2,
the fleshless beast of nightmares,
shares your affection
for early Will Smith cinema
and couch surfing at polar research stations. 
When the wind rushes over his billboard empire
he secretes a sort of melancholy.
Rest assured, the SWAT teams
have him surrounded.
As for my effects,
buried beneath our makeshift mackerel factory,
you’ll find an alarmingly detailed biography
of Boris Kasparov
and a pictorial history of our years
as star-gazing antlers.
Scatter my leftovers
on the snow-drifted sea
where we birthed our young
and each day raised them
to be the most well-preserved ziggurats
ever to grace the stage. 

NEW! Poem by Terrell Terry

Terrell Terry

BURNISHED TRACE

Wherever is where we began:

tulips opened to the T without

introduction. Already in here.

It is a privilege, past the spot

of cramping bellies. Ones that

take you, living locked inside

walls. Speakers in other rooms,

through speakers through tunes.

Three thoughts that were said

amidst the muffle. Title taken,

so who cares what you name it?

Weren’t you told to be careful

about wild wishes that might go

the wrong way on permanently

permeated park benches. Touch

a wire of world store electro-

cutions, while jagged Mondays

just happen to recycle maladies.

We perspire, thinking nothing

of the waste. We’ll need water, 

not its stabbing fact. I too sense

the tide when wondering what

has happened to those woods.

NEW! Poem by Jacob Schepers

Jacob Schepers

HOW TO TALK OF YESTERDAY

Bring back the chilblains

though it costs you the wasps.

Compare the stings of both.

Toss out the digital clocks;

pinch droplets of bathwater

scintillating still into a saucer:

follow their trail till the baby

peels off the milk carton

back into your arms.

Forget the number four. Same goes

for all like-lettered words. Practice

that accent. You know which one.

Rescind the former laurels old loves

tied around your temples too tight

without brushing your nape enough.

Call your mother. Stay indoors.

Keep up that recovered tongue;

tune a piano, but sell your own, 

the one you never played 

unless prompted. Clean the eavestrough

and call your mother. Tell her

again what you meant to say

that time before you choked

on a fishbone.

NEW! Poem by Doug Ramspeck

Doug Ramspeck                                                                                   

CROW EYE

the hours stiffen and grow heavier

then a sugar maple 

shatters the window of a nursery

we are complicit in this

the entrails of clouds     patterns

of grief     calyx of decaying flowers 

crows watching with blank eyes 

here is the language 

of vessel and messenger

ancient and unyielding 

the catfish writhing on the riverbank where 

our fathers return 

to press down an unrelenting

boot until eyes are dead moons

NEW! Poem by Micah Bateman

Micah Bateman

IF EVERYWHERE THE SOUND OF RAIN BREAKING

Pentameter rain, maddening.

To make a guest of madness

In a house made to shelter,

A hearth by which to be made

Dry. A fire calls

And smoke relays.

Imperious wind, these leaves left

Trembling, all this 

Detritus of wedding

Sky to breath, roving clouds

Of pests destroying

Miles of cornscape. Imperious sky,

Summer called, wants his

Letterman’s jacket back. My mother

Sinks a blackened pan

Into a dishwater bath,

Gulf still slick with oil, rainbow swirls,

Several rains over several nights.

My father strings a deer up

By her neck, lets it drain,

The ground fed by more 

Than morning, one finding

Oneself in heaps of things

One can’t be made

Aware of but one tries.

Sloshing down a walk,

Yellow galoshes, a girl

In a rubber coat,

Paisley dress peeking out

With each arm’s stride,

Something on an eave

Sliding frictionless,

Hypotenuse, gutterward.

To Save, Ctrl + S.

NEW! Poem by Kristin Bock

Kristin Bock

I WISH I COULD WRITE A POEM ABOUT POLE-VAULTING ROBOTS


I turn my head to the window and a piece of foil lilting across the onion-field. If I were a pole-vaulting robot, I wouldn’t be thinking about windows or snowstorms or shiny, cold bellies. I wouldn’t fixate on my giant-heavy head or these yellow, watery eyes. No, if I were a pole-vaulting robot I’d run so fast my legs would become invisible. I’d be concerned with pageantry, white kites and waving. They jump for the fame, you know, and they believe this is a terrible sin. But hard as they try, pole-vaulting robots cannot turn away from their adoring fans. Without them, they would be mere cans crying into themselves. 

NEW! Poem by John Fenlon Hogan

John Fenlon Hogan

NOTES OF A PILGRIM


In a country where the earth
is flattened under the big sky’s heel,
15 miles from the interstate—
the closest town a town in which 
the children are below average
and no one turns out to vote,
no one upholds the Sabbath—
—a yellow dot on a map— 
                                   In this place 
which is adjacent to the middle
of nowhere, by which it means
to be no place at all, there is a phone 
booth where you can go to graffiti, 
bury past sins and ex-lovers,
or marvel at the inane. 
                                     But if 
you were drawn there as I was
drawn there, necessarily and by some 
powerful blank, as though searching 
for answers or a new way
of unwelling, then go to the store 
and buy sunscreen, bottled water, 
flashlights. Stuff your haystacks
in a backpack or cram them in your boots 
as if rocks, and carry them
like intentions. 
                       When your GPS 
no longer has a signal or runs
out of battery or otherwise goes
kaput, you can stop panicking—
the Mojave Phone Booth
will manifest itself to you
because you have been cleansed
by ambivalence, and by your own sense 
of proportion. You’ll notice that the glass 
has been shattered by some vagrant
or a person much like the person
you once were, or will come to be,
and The Book has been ripped from its cord 
not as an act of thievery 
but because you are not beyond 
such temptation. As it rings 
—and its ringing for you—
you think about power tools
or stuffed animals
or the family you abandoned
to get here. But the hand has a will 
on this occasion and has already 
grasped the receiver, lifted it— 
there’s no need to bring it
to the ear, no need to do anything, 
really, an all too steady voice
which is your own voice, strange, 
repeating like a glitch in the system: 
Not yet... Not yet... Not yet... 
Whereas the system has no glitch. 

RIP Malinda Markham

from Verse, Volume 18, Numbers 2 & 3

Malinda Markham

ANATOMY OF RESEMBLANCE

On beds in different rooms,

or distant, the woman shifts the angle of her foot. In the light,

her hair moves from red

to the dresser’s dull wood, a signature begun

from the moment her stocking

slips just enough to remind us she is there.

When the phone rings, only language is wrong.

If my jaw were not angled like that,

she and I could be almost

the same. This is the virtue of paint:

The scene controlled by turning the choulders

faintly to the left.

Can you hear the birds? I can’t say their name

in any language. That sound you hear

is not a door closing: No one

has entered the room. I repeat. There is no platform

for disbelief, no memory, even,

of the right word now,

but it begins in the manner of signal,

as in traffic or truth.

Farther to the left is the bookshelf, a mirror cut

by an electric cord.

If you can tell me how many steps it takes

to words I cannot mean, then.

And then.

NEW! Poem by Peter Shippy

Peter Shippy

MY RAGGED COMPANY

As the cellist played a gigue, Bach, 
at Virgil’s, a cantina on Salem Street

known for their garlic martinis, 
I overheard a man say to a woman: 

we’ll be flying to London to see Queen 
at Wembley, without Freddie Mercury, 

once again. And that’s how I knew 
how I knew it was spring, how I knew

it was time to wax my barque, my balls, 
wipe the dew off my cheval mirror

to reckon who’s the prettiest of all, 
and beckon the huntsman’s long knife.

NEW! Poem by Gary Fincke

Gary Fincke

THE SLEEP DIET


Like Beauty, she pricks herself,
Taking sedatives in the vein.
Whole days disappear. Always,
She rises to the mirror,
Remembering the distance
The drab adjectives travel.

The next meal is water, 
Lettuce and celery 
And the memory of bread.
She stills the teeth that need 
To tear through meat; she holds
Her sugar-loving tongue.

A week of elapsed time 
Is a size, a smaller
Circling of the waist and thighs.
A month, her husband says,
Promising his kiss
When she is perfect. So long
He hasn’t touched her he will
Excite her like a stranger.

During the fourth week
She dreams the brilliant alarm
Of his body, how she wakes
When he enters her,
How, afterward, he slips
Chocolate between her lips.

She is in love with sleep,
The way it lessens her.
Lying down is time travel,
Retreating until she
Retrieves her childish shape,
Her princess body.

NEW! Poem by Brendan Lorber

Brendan Lorber

INNER NO PARKING

for Lee Holloway

The moment is as it seems except 
for those in it — look at the empty 
space and then the hydrant that 
keeps it tantalizing in perpetuity

The bruised thumbnail creeps out 
from the smash it single moment in 
the door of James Spader’s Mercedes 
to the unknowable future like a loft 
where others will live someday
but who and when nobody knows

I say it with flowers and mirrors — 
contingencies that make the room 
without being the room itself

Same old me with new hair or 
teacher in the room where one 
waits for me to take place

Once the truth of the moment
is discovered the moment is past 
We know how last summer 
turned out and also that 
knowing means summer’s over

What little innocence we have 
predicated on failure to notice 
our own corruption The 
redemptive inability that rests 
in the dirtiness of our hands

Once yoga is perceived as 
money laundering it ceases to 
be either fraud or Bikram 
White carpets or spankings 
we are not allowed without
a long gaze that the sidelong 
glance knocks to the ground

The neither here nor there
that was always all around
The medium relies on unrealizable 
refreshments to order the moment 
The moment orders rusty nails 
with extra tetanus in case
it gets joined by another

You’ll know me by the empty 
booth I’ve left Betrayal begins 
by definition with a vow and exists 
as the precursor for otherwise
unattainable truth Into necessity

I nailed my thumb and saw
for once that I existed over time 
The you know unknown
I’d been trying not to embody
was right there about to 
emerge from the sun that
allowed it to live but only invisibly 

NEW! Poem by Amish Trivedi

Amish Trivedi

BODY MAP SYMPOSIUM

If we have a plan, it’s 

unbecoming: we could

do nothing and let things 

happen to us, but that

just isn’t how we roll. Places 

we fly over have cities

and culture and cracked 

sidewalks too. Lines

that form the right side 

of your face want to

take me away. Each inch 

is covered in

creases and I think
the room wants to sleep

with you. My relationship 

to my body

has changed and we’re

here to discuss exchanging

faces and making arbitrary 

lines and separating

families with borders. This is 

my story of the generations

and how they collapsed 

and came back stronger

than ever. My version 

carries with it a stigma

and an American flag 

traced on your

body from the legs
to your collarbones. I

know tattoos which create 

the most pain, and I

want you to become 

them: a graft of old

skin, inked, and 

replaced; remnants

of a letter 

never sent; and

covered marks 

exposed. Where our

organs begin is a 

story to be told

in flightless language, 

grounded and

menstruated. They 

expect us to come

running when lights 

burn brightly or

ends of words turn 

in meaningless

symbols and repercussions 

of other faults. We push

to know how, but 

only when connected

in series does darkness 

get purged and then

an open fear is held. With 

teeth marks drawing blood,

only lust can penetrate 

doubt. I know places

that force your head back 

and words that

make you sing, but 

unfortunately, wind

has come in and 

gotten us lost. I’ve got

the whole thing down 

to numbers, but a chart

would be helpful. Figures 

one through nine

could lead us into 

the right species but

my orientation is spread
and bursting. I can meet you

where you tell me, but I 

don’t know the way there

by divine causality. Dismemberment 

is not the side-effect

of any drug I am
aware of, though a response

to an externality
it may be. I have learned

to think in one hundred 

word bursts and

keep myself to one 

thousand and eight words

per day to keep from 

repeating sounds and phrases

I know. I don’t know if 

you’re a boy or a girl, or

sometimes nothing
at all, but any pointing

could be helpful. As long 

as I can hear you

to know where you are, I 

am happy, though

I’d prefer to see 

or taste. I know I

should have kissed you 

but did you have to

tell me that when you 

were putting your

break up speech 

together? Every day

has grown from that spot 

in my lungs and I

cannot suture new 

feelings together or

tell them which way to spread 

because I’m just as nowhere

to be found. Wanting 

to believe each thrust

will be the last, we 

speak only in words

which cannot be seen. I’ll 

leave you part of my nails

in my will, though I 

plan to use them

to scratch my way 

out. I will crawl

in to find where you 

go, but I know I

can come back whenever 

I want. As your

breath is caught
in my mouth, another

desire washes back 

over my central

arteries: to feel 

unwanted and

forgotten primes 

my blood for

exaltation. My next 

performance will be

“The Abstract,” a 

novel in seventeen

words, but on 

nine hundred and

fourteen pages. I want to 

pull my legs up

to my heart and 

burn them

all at once. We could
require immediate infiltration

if our arms were to 

end up behind us

in a fire or a 

mélange of different

noises. If lies go 

too deep, we can

consume them and 

make them a part

of our lineage. I have 

a lingering desire

to be placed on a 

somewhere-bound

bullet but to force it 

back into stasis is a

trouble worth waking 

up to. I cannot complete

my own words 

without seeing

which you want to 

use first, a decision

taken too hard to 

remain uncaring

about. I don’t 

want to steal your

lips, just lease them 

for my revolution, as

private as it 

might be. When

I press my flesh to yours, 

I hear tiny music escaping

and ceasing to form 

notes, much less a

sonic argument. These are 

supplemental words to a

love poem that was written 

in a bloody bathtub over-

looking language as a 

device: how could I

be the last to know? For those 

who look to the sky

hoping for a better figment 

of this imagined prophylaxis,

I want to hand you my 

non-vital organs in the

hopes you’ll find some new 

destruction for them. As my

anemia leads me, so does my 

bile. I want to discover

a reverberation to sink into and 

become part of its silicate. I

refuse to accept that this is

the last memorized passage that will 

make its way into our canon, but

only rejected vowel sounds 

will please our ears, wherever

we might find them.