DAY TWENTY-TWO: LISA CATTRONE

HERE’S A LETTER FOR SANTA

WHEN HE FINALLY SHAVES HIS BEARD

OR

A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR ADVENT

 

 

I want to force my body into a moss

and bang my head into the ground.

 

I want all the dead people

to look like tropical fish.

 

I want a lifetime pass

made of rabbit hair.

 

I want

Donald Trump to die.

 

I want a sheet of webs

to hover 10 inches above every sea.

 

I want a rectangular device

that can call all the shots.

 

I want the whirring aorta in the ground

to show itself to us.

 

I want all the inventions

to be invented and to rest.

 

I want no more of this

and only that.

 

I want all eyes

on Brazil.

 

I want all people to understand

the hallucination.

 

I want the goo tubes

to be more user friendly.

 

I want to meet Grendel

when I’m less busy.

 

I want busy to look different

like with a third eye.

 

I want a beautiful

horse.

 

I want to grow

a blue tail.

 

I want you to approach the New Disasters

auf den Händen.

 

I want the German language to 

turn into a sparkling, female pig.

 

I want all the New Miracles to 

refract light.

 

I want to 

avoid the scene.

 

I want to talk to my grandmother

in the middle of the day.

 

I want to insist the word “poetry”

doesn’t exist.

 

I want to roll all thoughts

under my bed.

 

I want a smaller setting

for all high school students.

 

I want all prophets

to shave their beards.

 

I want to listen 

to every word at once for the remainder of my life.

 

I want

a nice, new dress. Red.

 

I want to say nothing

and never break silence.

Lisa Cattrone is a mother and a high school teacher 

living in California. Her first full length book called 

simple constructs for the lizzies is forthcoming 

next year from Trembling Pillow Press. She has two 

chapbooks, Mutations for Jenny and My Secret Life 

out from Horse Less Press.

ADVENT DAY TWENTY-ONE: WANDA PHIPPS

     Her

      inspired by a film by Spike Jonze

      intuitive HER

      adaptive HER

      helpful HER

      omnipresent HER

      effective HER

      persuasive HER

      perceptive HER

      hilarious HER

      wave HER

      particle HER

      particular HER

      operating HER

      system HER

      systematic HER

      operative HER

      operatic HER

      insistent HER

      logical HER

      compassionate HER

      desperate HER

      HER inside the hardware

      HER inside the mainframe

      HER inside the multiverse

      HER inside your mind space

      HER inside the ones and zeros

      HER without the smartphone

      HER without the cigarettes

      HER without grief

      HER without separation

      HER without the exes

      around HER the skyline

      around HER the ocean

      around HER the electromagnetic field

      around HER the transportation system

      around HER the full philosophy

      above HER the sound of birds

      above HER the open view

      above HER the infinite sweetness 

WANDA PHIPPS is a writer/performer living in NYC. Her books include Field of Wanting: Poems of Desire and Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems. Her poetry has been translated into Ukrainian, Hungarian, Arabic, Galician and Bangla. She has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Theater Translation Fund, and others. As a founding member of Yara Arts Group she has collaborated on numerous theatrical productions presented in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Siberia, and at La MaMa, E.T.C. in NYC. She’s curated reading series at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church and written about the arts for Time Out New York, Paper Magazine, and About.com. Check out her website: www.mindhoney.com.

photo credit: Ken Kerbs   

ADVENT DAY TWENTY: NICOLE MAURO

      IV

      Be-
      spectacled Clark
      attended regular
      meetings
      at the apartment
      where he remarked
      and remarked
      about the routines
      of ordinary bi-
      peds, their organs
      in garments, how
      one-
      breasted are the bow-wielding
      brave. He had seen a lovelorn
      on the pavement 
      on the way
      to the apartment, one
      with one
      leg. Diana's iris
      got large
      in the process
      so be-
      spectacled Clark
      stripped off
      his garments, and
      stayed.

 #4 from a series called Superzeroic, an anti-romance between Clark Kent and Diana Prince, aka Superman and Wonderwoman.

NICOLE MAURO'S poems and criticism 
have appeared in numerous publications. She lives 
in the Bay Area with her husband, and children.

ADVENT DAY NINETEEN: MICHELLE DETORIE!

HEARTSLEIGHT

Whose bells chatter in the pine needles that never sing

of winter, never glitter in the shag-shuffed ice of shivers:

those long ago seasons that crawled from polar reaches

and touched our skins and glinting shelters -- tools

rising to meet sunmelt. We put on our boots and coats.

At first

all was mudmelt, mudheart. A half-moon nursing

the hare-cubs, the wolf-girls.

But then a starched acceleration

of haunted winds, hot with our own hunger

blossomed along ravines:

ravenous sucking rivers full

of so many days, so many skins.

Sinews invisibly thick with every death --

exhausted, expressed.

What resurrection we’ve called forth!

Our own fat beasts full of animate wailing!

They are so like us -- the way we are, were --

slithering: shocked by fear, desire, starlight --

                    heartbreak, heartsleight.

But today, now, I am so tired.

                             I want to look away.

Tell me

that it’s going to be okay. That it already happened.

That it’s over. That we’re in heaven.

And then

let’s have a picnic. Let’s mark those moments

when the trees touch the clouds, when the grass

hums the sweet green song that thrums our bones

to blooming.

& after

let’s watch the constellations of kindness -- our familiars --

come softly out to bless us, safe and sound

                                          and blissfully stupid, 

                           all wrapped up in

this blue and beautiful house.

MICHELLE DETORIE is the author of numerous chapbooks including Fur Birds (Insert Press), How Hate Got Hand (eohippus labs), and Bellum Letters (Dusie). She also makes visual poems, poetry objects, and time-based poetry. Her first full-length collection, After-Cave, is just out with Ahsahta Press.  

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