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Sheena is a Punk Rocker
She, Sheena of the Jungle, the pulp-paged comics’ great white queen, she, Sheena, born in slumped-out England, born for young Will Eisner’s tabloid-writing scheme, born of Jerry Eigner’s drawing, Eisner’s jiggle-in-the-jungle dream. Reborn stateside nine months later (the money was better), reborn a soft-core smash-hit shiksa, Jumbo Comics break-out dame. Born first in the blur […]
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The Dream Farm for Rachel
I have never lived here. I have never lit a match here. Home-dipped candles build the walls by shadowing them, illumination’s fitful and declares, water runs out of my brows, my hair. How build a place you’ve never been. I’m imagining what you’ll say to me, prey animal, in the future in which I […]
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Familiars
The give and take of strength to create out of a labyrinth of seeking Your own One’s only close range between known and unknown To give and take alms Your arms around a frightened animal At close range, strength is enigmatic A strange creation Your own reach is your only familiar
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Screen on the World-side
Midway, I woke up, slid open a window. It had been raining; a tree was growing. Through screen, blinds, and the tree behind, a bird flew in under my eyes. The bird flying in, bird singing in the tree, the tree flying in, scary. I thought the blinds and screen could protect me, forgot smell, […]
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Monster
Think of her writing those lists, all those pithy observations. Famous people, famous books. You suffer, he said, from a surfeit of mimetic desire. There is only one solution: turn it and turn it, not again, but into a telephone. Yes, it may become literature, or it may simply become a crustacean and crawl away. […]
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Factory
The boredoms meet Styx. We stole the Saab you owned. Because clasp of a bracelet equals interest in Eric Gill vocalists wrote 1864 for Antler
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Orpheus, Beheaded
And as they floated down the gentle current The lyre made mournful sounds, and the tongue murmured In mournful harmony, and the banks echoed The strains of mourning. — from Metamorphoses, Book 11 (tr. Rolfe Humphries) Having descended into Hell; having found, led, and lost Eurydice; having re-ascended, […]
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The Peculiar Commonplace: On Two Lines from George Oppen
to save the commonplace save myself Tyger Tyger still burning in me burning — from “The Poem” These two lines of George Oppen’s, from his final book Primitive, encapsulate, among other things, his poetic stance. Oppen’s objective, from his first to last book, was unwavering: he sought the commonplace, which is, if not altogether […]
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Tulip World
A family experiences against tulips a number of lyric options. How many sides do you think the world is? — counting only on your thumbs, your narrative desires. In the pit of the windbreaker, hunger folds. On the flat, granules of distrust gain flanked by sun and gravity. Even the sky overcast. If the field […]