ADVENT DAY EIGHTEEN: BETSY FAGIN

respect, communication, integrity, excellence

(for Sherron Watkins)

-tiny town of Optimism, population 6,000

-responsible for each other’s children

-a bite of ice cream sandwich

in the year of whistleblowers

why didn’t you just leave?

-do something right about wrong

from west coast to east

-remaking itself every seven years

innovation always

dark side of innovation is fraud

-too creative. never uninspired

-demoralized, I led the effort of invincibility

bright and sharp but crossed a line

-I pushed back, reprimanded

-took cover, switched positions

divisions comfort group think

-corporate mask kept

from digging deeper

{{respect communication integrity excellence}}

-value cracks in our façade

evil empire reputation

-crashing, eliminated hedged

with raptors

-rafters paper structure

paper companies

see circular, hidden losses

-shocked me to my core

-future market price like water

through a sieve

what was going on in the pit of your stomach?

-market panic

we will implode

-can those of us who’ve not grown

rich afford to stay?

-our value system messenger

would not be shot

-naive to the point of stupidity

grown up a lot since when

-I wanted to be sure

he took me seriously

-my analysis come clean

-I was moved downstairs

with rental furniture

-no real work to make me uncomfortable

-in December the ship sank

I got as much cash as I could

-opened cloud of witness

weight that burdens

-the race marked out for you

-so many villains made me a heroine

-choices I made sent an early grave

stressed execs die every day

-I should have gotten more

people to go with me

BETSY FAGIN is the author of All is not yet lost (Belladonna, 2015) and Names Disguised (Make Now Press, 2014) as well as a number of chapbooks. She is the current editor of the Poetry Project Newsletter.

ADVENT DAY SEVENTEEN: MARIA DAMON

OUR THEME TODAY

Our theme today: Nazism.

April nooses, cruel Hitler cream.

Improvised dressage with a unicorn in jodhpurs.

Today I’m Mother’s-Birthday-fatalistic,

turn on the waterworks, I’m on fire.

Kiss my feet, Hitler youth, in all your streaming

blondness braided

nooselike

a bog-person-to-be 

elaborate stitching and

all that ayahuasca in the 

moors and mosses.

I heard you can fuck yourself

through a crystal straw, though

it’s not important as long as

the single-horned bull plunges

further to the right.  The sa-

cred mysteries of street cred,

plastic money and due props

trine Hitler riding a unicorn,

I meant, riding down Wall 

Street on a moist mollusk

masquerading as a

fat narwhal, sleek as

Diana Nyad.  And 

that’s your card-reading 

for today.

Maria Damon is professor and chair of the Department of Humanities and Media Studies at the Pratt Institute of Art

ADVENT DAY SIXTEEN: Eileen Tabios

From “The Gilded Age of Kickstarters”

There Was A Company of Flexible Dancers

69 backers

$3,834

pledged of $10,000 goal

6 days to go

Heart

Determination

Vision

Hard work

Dedication

Belief

Passion

enervates Royal Flux Dance Company

to take you

on a magical journey

captivating and challenging your mind

leaving you on the edge

of your seat craving more…

For which we need money

Eileen R. Tabios just released INVENT(ST)ORY: Selected Catalog Poems & New. More info at eileenrtabios.com

ADVENT DAY FIFTEEN: Pattie McCarthy

Pattie McCarthy’s new book is called Quiet Book & is due out in Jamuary from Apogee Press.

ADVENT DAY FOURTEEN: JESS ROWAN

11.19.15 

for/after Douglas Kearney at Emergent Forms, Ashland, OR

_______________________________________

take a familiarity in hand

once i was many women

gathered in one face

once i was whole- ly un-selfed

i resemble many women

i hardly resemble myself here there the accidental name

already can imagine father abraham

one hand raised reverent faux or otherwise

had many sons

how many have delighted the blood

how many letters constitute a performance

how many letters did you write me

(always letters)

many sons what numbers

correspond had father abraham

in what sequence do the words

perform in what way do the words

allow themselves to be

performed

when human cruelty is performed

where & who are you / are you?

i am one of them

JJ Rowan is present at the moment. Her current moments take place in Southern Oregon, in the breath of a stride, and in her chapbook, the selected jesus (Shirt Pocket Press, 2015).

ADVENT DAY THIRTEEN: Rachel May

Finally, there was an avalanche in his heart, and his heart opened to it, instead of closing, which is what most hearts would do. The avalanche was gray and thick and full of rocks and angles, and it hurt his heart, but he refused to close the valves or reroute the avalanche to his arm or leg, where maybe it would hurt less. Someone had promised him that if he left his heart open, the avalanche would melt into something softer, and flow easy into his bloodstream, and loosen into nothing. He didn’t know if he believed this person. It didn’t make much sense, and it was all so much hurting, all this hurting, on and on and on, hurting endlessly. But, what could he do? The avalanches kept coming and he was tired of diverting them to his legs and arms. His legs and arms were all bruised and battered on the inside, and sore. Everything was sore. He couldn’t walk up hills anymore. He couldn’t hold his child. He couldn’t sing songs in the open air, with his arms spread wide. He said, “I am left with nothing, so what do I have to lose by opening my heart? Nothing.” Then he played some Janis Joplin and sang about freedom, and laughed at himself a little. So he let the avalanche come, and he waited for the ricocheting rock and the way the capillaries and arteries and veins felt like they were coming apart, and the way the various compartments of his heart felt like they were tearing and cutting and slicing open, so that maybe his whole heart would fall apart and he would be a body without a heart and he would die, because a body without a heart is nothing. But he said, “This is just the avalanche. It isn’t really breaking apart my body.” And he withstood it. And he waited. And then, after a very long time—most of his life and his child’s life and his wife’s life combined—the avalanche began to lose its corners and its sharpness and its cut, and it began to melt, and since he had endured these avalanches for a lifetime, and since he had spent a lifetime diverting them and rerouting them and looking for ways to manage and avoid them, and since at last, he had opened his heart to them and felt all the pain he’d avoided all those years—three thou- sand years of pain—when the avalanche abated, and his heart was still beating (ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump) as every living heart does, and he was still alive and his family was still alive and no older than when he’d started to let the avalanche run through his heart, he never, ever ever ever ever ever felt so good.

Rachel May's book, The Experiments: A Legend in Pictures & Words, prose and sewn images, is just out from Dusie, and a novel, The Benedictines, is forthcoming from Braddock Avenue Books (Feb 2015). Her first book, Quilting with a Modern Slant, was a Library Journal and Amazon.com Best Book of 2014. She's an Assistant Professor at Northern Michigan University.