a poem by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

One Bite

Miracle fruit changes the tongue. One bite,
and for hours all you eat is sweet. Placed
alone on a saucer, it quivers like it’s cold
from the ceramic, even in this Florida heat.

Small as a coffee bean, red as jam –
I can’t believe. The man who sold
it to my father on Interstate 542 had one
tooth, one sandal, and called me

‘Duttah, duttah.’ I wanted to ask what
is that, but the red buds teased me
into our car and away from his fruit stand.
One bite. And if you eat it whole, it softens

and swells your teeth like a mouthful
of mallow. So how long before you lose
a sandal and still walk? How long
before you lose the sweetness?


-- from Miracle Fruit by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

*

Fresh Mint

Just home after visiting best friends and family in Madison. Repotting a gift of fresh mint on the back deck: a wavering echo through the pines of the main stage headliner at Hodag Country Fest performing across Thunder Lake. Between us, a neighbor who I cannot see, singing along.

a poem by Andrew Michael Roberts

Lamb

God Forgets. He leaves the iron on and your beautiful city

burns to the ground. God touches you and you are it.

Alone in a Desert of Ash is a difficult game to win. Home

base is flame and smoke. Once God said Hunger. Once

he said Fuck, and how could we tell him

we'd figured it out on our own.

I'm waiting, God, for a watermelon. Say pomegranate.

Say city, say rib. An armadillo to sniff at my feel. It's

Armor and nothing else. Let's lift it like a mirror.

Put it to my ear like a shell. God puts the ocean

in an armadillo shell. It rattles of whalebones. I remember

water, but all the cacti are black. All the sand

is water beneath the ash, a calm buried sea.

God descends the sky like a spider. I can feel it.

He is everywhere, twiddling his thumbs.

I think he's waiting for me.

--Andrew Michael Roberts. Burnside Review 3.2. (2007).

may I ?

One thing I should have expected but did not is being asked to seek permissions from publications to quote lines from other sources in the book. Some publishers make it easy, providing online guidelines. Others I'm going to find more difficult. Permissions from Reuters to use a news headline from 2003 as a title of one of the poems (haven't found the door for that one yet). Or a quote from an interview on the radio that I cannot remember the title of the show for the life of me.

Heads up!

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing

They made us wear matching shirts

a poem by Jennifer Gresham

I discovered Jennifer Gresham for the first time in the latest issue of Crab Orchard Review. I liked what I read enough to pick up her first book (Diary of a Cell, Steel Toe Books, 2005). She's a biochemist who's trained herself to look inward to discover the universe, a trait which I love in any poet:


Phosphorescence

In the middle of the Indian Ocean
blue-green algae amasses

in glowing colonies, large
enough to make you nervous,

their phosphorescence not
the cryptic language you assume,

but simply the emission
of some earlier light --

the way a compliment can make you
become that person described,

why the memory of kindness
can find us in the dark.

- Jennifer Gresham Diary of a Cell, Steel Toe Books, 2005

***

the send button never looked so big

Thanks to all who commented on the last update. I'm happy to report I've emailed the final manuscript for publication to Black Lawrence Press.

12 short exciting months from now, we may be holding something in our hands.

just before the cement dries

I am down to the last few days before the final manuscript is due under contract to the publisher and have been proofing it nearly every night for the past two weeks. Terrified elation is the only description I can muster. Every time I reread the MS-Word Doc I imagine I'm reading the bound first edition, wondering, is that the right word? Did I break the line where I should have? and revising as appropriate. Some poems which did not pass the "who cares?" test (closely related to the "would I ever read you to a crowd?" test) did not survive the final cuts. I'm really excited, my friends. Shazam.

found poem

The following Kamasutra Arts to be studied:

Singing

Playing on musical instruments

Dancing

Union of dancing, singing, and playing instrumental music

Writing and drawing

Tattooing

Arraying and adorning an idol with rice and flowers

Spreading and arranging beds or couches of flowers, or flowers upon the ground

Colouring the teeth, garments, hair, nails and bodies, i.e. staining, dyeing, colouring and painting the same

Fixing stained glass into a floor

Playing on musical glasses filled with water

Storing and accumulating water in aqueducts, cisterns and reservoirs

Picture making, trimming and decorating

Stringing of rosaries, necklaces, garlands and wreaths

Scenic representations, stage playing Art of making ear ornaments Art of preparing perfumes and odours

Magic or sorcery

Quickness of hand or manual skill

Making parrots, flowers, tufts, tassels, bunches, bosses, knobs, etc., out of yarn or thread

Solution of riddles, enigmas, covert speeches, verbal puzzles and enigmatical questions

The art of mimicry or imitation

Reading, including chanting and intoning

Study of sentences difficult to pronounce.

Practice with sword, single stick, quarter staff and bow and arrow

Drawing inferences, reasoning or inferring

Architecture, or the art of building

Knowledge about gold and silver coins, and jewels and gems

Chemistry and mineralogy

Gardening; knowledge of treating the diseases of trees and plants, of nourishing them, determining their ages

Art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak

Art of applying perfumed ointments to the body, and of dressing the hair with unguents and perfumes and braiding it

The art of understanding writing in cypher, and the writing of words in a peculiar way

Knowledge of language and of the vernacular dialects

Art of framing mystical diagrams, of addressing spells and charms, and binding armlets

Mental exercises, such as completing stanzas or verses on receiving a part of them; or supplying one, two or three lines when the remaining lines are given indiscriminately from different verses, so as to make the whole an entire verse with regard to its meaning; or arranging the words of a verse written irregularly by separating the vowels from the consonants, or leaving them out altogether; or putting into verse or prose sentences represented by signs or symbols. There are many other such exercises.

Composing poems

Knowledge of dictionaries and vocabularies

Knowledge of ways of changing and disguising the appearance of persons

Knowledge of the art of changing the appearance of things, such as making cotton to appear as silk, coarse and common things to appear as fine and good

Various ways of gambling

Art of obtaining possession of the property of others by means of muntras or incantations

Skill in youthful sports

Knowledge of the rules of society, and of how to pay respect and compliments to others

Knowledge of the art of war, of arms, of armies, etc.

Knowledge of gymnastics

Art of knowing the character of a man from his features

Knowledge of scanning or constructing verses

Arithmetical recreations

Making artificial flowers

Making figures and images in clay


*

fishing for sonnets

A newish poem "Crank Bait" is now up at qarrtsiluni. Check out the entire "Water" issue here. My thanks to editors Lucy Kempton and Katherine Durham Oldmixon!

Rattle #28

I just discovered my poem "Maps" is up at the Rattle website.