December 4th: Nicole Mauro

 

Going Rogue
(When I Heard the Song of What I See)
by Sarah Palin, Emily Dickinson, and Nicole Mauro  

Then, a trap.

The black-suited, laptop-toting condom-wearing bananas who said they began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually swung from the trees came to me with stories, stories about duplicating creatures—mammoths with horns boinging not out of fjords, but beekers. On the continent of Iceland. Right in front of Scotland and the Chinese.

My face sliding off in the sunshine. Despite, the world vision of Cashmere I confidently see… 

…the insects pass, but then they’re telling me that my pupils are small houseflies in the grass, and that these insects’ ancestors have always been trapped. In amberrock—like me. And then they’re telling me that the amberrock we’re all trapped in is from BC. And then they’re telling me that these insects in amberrock from BC are from what sprang my son Track. And you. And me. And then I said Nah, Earth’s bits of little blackness are just places where the whites of our eyes have rolled back. It’s like the condom has tightened, you see. It’s like there are two kinds of Summer’s Army—the one in California is a cluster of pansies, or scrub on the alluvial plane; the other in Fallujah is the one where bittervetch seed sticks to the buttstock of an M-16.

Same difference, I know. Both are situations—one is crunchy green, and the other a mass in Asia Minor flowergrow. 

Sing with closed lips, migrant/soldier. Whose feet know the flat earth, despite its other eye, the round world—whose   bits come in bundles, in parcels, in blow-apart batches. Lest anybody spy the blood. There are not enough traps for the houseflies. Nor houses, for that matter. 
 

Nicole Mauro’s poems and criticism have appeared in publications such as Jacket, How2, Western Humanities Review, and absent, among others. She is the author of six chapbooks, one full-length poetry collection, The Contortions (Dusie Books, 2009), and her second book, Tax-Dollar Super-Sonnet Featuring Sarah Palin as Poet, is forthcoming from Black Radish Books in 2011. She is the co-editor of an interdisciplinary book about sidewalks titled Intersection: Sidewalks and Public Space (with Marci Nelligan, ChainArts, 2008). She lives in the San Francisco bay area with her husband Patrick, and daughters Nina and Faye, where she teaches rhetoric and language at the University of San Francisco.
 

December 3rd: Kirsten Kaschock

HEARTH 

or 

YOU DON'T NEED A CHIMNEY IN GEORGIA

Without sin, I’d have no one to love--no one 

around whom to organize my love

as furniture gathers itself around a television. 

Love: the semi-circular arrangement of love-like 

feelings around an object designated for love.  

No sin means no locus for passion.  No crux.  

Sinnerless--I’d have no center in which I might be 

entertained, no soft place to sit and, like a gun, focus 

all of my terrible energy.  No site on which to 

rivet my love like love was eyes or fasten it all 

buttony—round and remote but intent 

upon the docudrama of the sinner's life

—which is sin, which I hate.

 Kirsten Kaschock's first book of poetry, Unfathoms, is available from Slope Editions.  A Beautiful Name for a Girl is upcoming from Ahsahta Press in January.  Her first novel, Sleight, is scheduled to be published by Coffee House Press in 2011.  She is currently a PhD fellow in dance at Temple University.  Kirsten will be making merry with her three sons and their father and partaking in both much egg nog and joy.

December 2nd: Melissa Severin

Your Own Personal Advent

Life attempts to unregret itself.
The sky is a sign:

Venus and Jupiter reflect a decade, a mis-
incarnation. Leaving home

backs get smaller, unfamiliar
obstacles like the river's name

you misspelled. Aggrieved,
the trains ebb out of stations,

clouds as snow from planes
above them. Both of us

have luck. Behind a steeple
the nine of cups and king of wands

intoxicatingly disregard careful
wishes. They prefer unpredictable games

to keep you near. The pleasure,
the pain sing along--

twin saws bowed with sugars and stains;
take this moment and bask in it.

These are the makings undoing
themselves. These are the best

and worst times felled in every forest.
One gone among many.

Melissa Severin lives in Chicago, IL. Her chapbook, Brute Fact, is available from dancing girl press and she sometimes writes about Liverpool FC at Empire of the Kop.

December 1st: Dana Guthrie Martin

To Eggnog
Eggnog, you are a good candidate for governor
of my mouth: You require so little of me
and give so little in return. I am excited
about the phlegm you produce in my throat;
it’s as if senility has set in, finally. Come here,
let me show you what pi means. It is like a woman,
going on and on about nothing. Pi never ends,
the way your flavor does not end. You agitate
my palate and make an informal home
of my gastrointestinal tract. The same quandary
always separates us, like this elegant expanse
of IKEA laminate. Tired of your liquidity,
I want you to harden into bone. You, tired
of my nullification, want to know why I never
pour you into the glass of your choosing.






This poem is a transliteration / homophonic translation of Catullus. 


Dana Guthrie Martin and her partner live in the Seattle area. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals. Her chapbooks include The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press, 2009) and In the Space Where I Was, forthcoming from Slack Buddha Press. She writes at My Gorgeous Somewhere (http://mygorgeoussomewhere.org). For 30 days, she will be carrying her trash around with her in a clear backpack and reporting on the experience at Post/Think (http://postthink.org).

December 2010 Advent Calendar de Animals, Glittery Trinkets & World Peace!

December 2010
Advent Calendar de Animals, Glittery Trinkets & World Peace!
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
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5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
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