Crash Course Reading Series

Stirrings

Strange breezes…

fecund winds…

a tear of scarf flapping in the bare lilacs… 

something stirs. 

Crash Course #4 : Feuds + Brews

No rest for the weary. Onward and forward and through and thru.

Crash Course #4 will soon be upon us.
Wednesday, August 26th
7pm-10pm
Back Alley Gallery
262 East 4th Street LL#2
Lowertown-St. Paul, MN

This month we are presented with another DuelingBanjo (tm) of a theme. In honor of “National Canned Beer Month”, we will be celebrating with founders and celebrants of the Back Alley Gallery. In that vein;

THEME #1 : Poems inspiried by / directed toward / influenced by / in repsonse to CANNED BEER.
We will have many supplies of said beer on site to aid in the reading of these works.

THEME #2 : Comes to us from Ellen Skoro. Her request is that we go into a specific memory; more specifically, the worst fight we have ever had with a family member. Enter it, write through / about / around it.

For some of us, perhaps these two themes will intersect. For others, not so much. Either way, I would encourage you to write multiple peices on each theme. How often do you get to read outloud? Bring a couple, the more the merrier. We will drink canned beer, we will read poems, we will polish the stone.

Till then, consider these words from W.H. Auden;

“Whatever his future life as a wage earner, a citizen, a family man may be, to the end of his days his life as a poet will be without anticipation. He will never be able to say: ‘Tommorow I will write a poem and, thanks to my training and experience, I already know I shall do a good job.’ In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.”

-vapor cloud.

Poems from Crash Course #3

Here is a selection of the poems read at Crash Course #3 : The Future.

Please feel free to send me more, if you read, or if you were unable to attend but made some new work.

+++++++++++

Ben Weaver

Untitled

¾ of a mile ahead
in the heat at the side
of the road
her underwear half ways off
the moon in a puddle
a smudge of pollen at her throat
the lilacs and wood paneling
on hidden steps
under the crashing airbus

I’m going to touch the bottom
she says and then disappears
what next
The ice still melting in her glass
Welcome ghost welcome star

There might be change lost between
the couch cushions
fallen from the pockets of
my friends, my mother
the pockets of those who owned the
couch before
there in the unshinning darkness
under asses and graham cracker crumbs
with popcorn and dog hair
stranger to stranger to stranger
to one day be found
ahead of their time

then the sirens in the distance
behind the burning carpet factory
behind the 5 car pile up
before the hospital
as with the whistle before the train
the coyotes before the city
who now live in the city
along railroad tracks
streambeds and berry patches

On the out skirts of neighborhoods with no shade
But with streets and cul de sacs named after trees
where it never actually gets dark
where it always smells like dryer sheets

according to the pictures in the paper
Pirates no longer wear eye patches
Or have peg legs
The pope is bullet proof
There are too many rabbits
Too many deer
Nursing homes fill and empty
Instead of dying the old ones pee into
Plastic bags and take pills
While the young ugly ones do it alone
Choosing fabric and seat assignments
On the expense account
On the commuter train
The expectations projected
Never quite reached the lover or the family
The weather then forecasted and read
Prepared for or avoided entirely
Dragging the long hand and the short
Hand like arrows from a quiver
The water drips from her
Shoulders and through the slats
In the dock back into the lake
This time the present
forms its lines in the future
As the song from the
ice cream truck gets closer

++++++++++

Patrick Barry

Father’s Day: a Film
(marathon training, week two)

Today is a Sunday like any other summer Sunday—
unlike the Sunday that topped all Sundays,
that autumn Sunday that would come to define me
when you crossed the finish
and collapsed
a modern day Pheidippides.

It was your last race, your last of anything.

It was the last of anything that I remember clearly—all else
has taken the form of the formless, a gray ether.

It was a dream of yours to run a marathon,
just like it was a dream of yours to own a green MGB.

You never did either, 35 years is hardly an adequate chance.
I’ve searched for someone to blame
and can’t point any fingers—yet. 

I used to think I wouldn’t make it to half your age.  17
and I’d collapse—half as healthy, half as worthy to live and die.

I’m 23 and still convinced I’ll die the way you did.  The appealing
and inevitable headline:
Son dies as did his father: ran himself to death.

A romantic tragic-comedy novel would soon follow
and eventually be filmed—
a Criterion Collection cult classic
with an indistinguishable distinction between fate
and self-fulfilling prophecy.
Gray ether would abound. 

It would make a whole lot of perfect senseless sense.   

I would buy a green MGB and drive it once.  I would run a marathon
and collapse upon its completion.
It would be a Sunday like any other Sunday. 

I would be 36 years old.

++++++++++

Bill Caperton

Cherry Pit / Crystal Vision

Sunday afternoon,
bent over a bowl pitting cherries,
fingers thick with Door county gore,
sweet and sour fumes,
rolling a pit
across the backs of my teeth,
I drift backward, walking the hills above Whipple,
thick air hanging over asphalt,
sucking wild honey
out of snapdragon blossoms,
and it somehow feels
like a place I’m moving toward,
not some long past memory vision,
and I feel the future coming
in my children – unknown,
unformed flecks of brain dust,
atomic mysteries, silent and separate,
and I can taste what they will taste
in the thin straw-lipped flowers
letting go of what they strained
so long for, bent toward
the sun, always passing out of reach,
cooled by the moon, by night rain,
waiting for our footsteps.
We are waiting for ourselves
for a long, long time.
We will know it when
we see it.

++++++++++

Andrew Cahak

EX-COPCARS

In the future, all cars will be ex-copcars.  That’s the only way I see things going down.  See, I plan on getting harder, like a hammer; and I plan on getting fatter, too.  In the future, we’ll all carry hammers, all the time, because we’ll need to; because there’s a million jobs for hammers in this town.   The poor drunks, leaning against the shop walls, they’ll lend us some jar booze and we’ll get real, real low in a hurry.  We’ll dance stupidly in the streetlight and then pile into our old cruisers.  Rounding corners in want of a siren, so we’ll let our lips go slack and push the sound out ourselves.  Midnights spent cooling curbside.  The itches, the spilled ejaculate and there is paint everywhere.  There are no cycles, though; this is a line.  With time, I’ll be the dog in your back seat (my belly will burn on the hot vinyl); I’ll be the wolf.  I’ll be the donkey and the bees and the honey between the two.  The mechanic and the body artist.  And That Girl will look up and I’ll be holding just a brush, no hammer in sight (for once).  I can feel it all compressing, I know it’s all blurring.  My tongue rolls out of the corner of my mouth and bobs, juice dripping onto my clothes; I don’t care.  There is no room for care anymore.  Carelessness is the best sauce a steak can have.  I long for the day when I will rot away.  The junkyard, that’s where it all belongs, anyway.  So, let’s cook, we’ll build a feast.  An unforgettable pleasure.  A time that was.  A smash.

++++++++++

Mark Fleury

AWAKE PORTAL

The latest, having to be midnight, and palatial as a
Beheading, my lung mirror has taken refuge in your

Gate. It’s squeak, mouse-matched, can’t dull

Flames whose aims, oil-sprawled, shape shift
From inhaled, sweet smelling pollution, into a living
Language that can’t exclude filth that’s sold

By the barrel. And paid for with emptied gums,
Eye sockets and souls from live wired

Thoughts traded for sleeping pills. As the
Chill fills ice, the sold, worm-dirtied mind
Stays high on the coursing

Blood, deserted or under the scalpel, of holy
Flesh, buried alive underneath eyelids of

The sand falling, hands to mouth, throat.
To quench maps of thirst. Worlds burst open
Caskets of money in their televisions. And vision

Hangs from the hook. Books have been floated
Down the streams of banks to oceans of brains
About hearts cut and coins flashing up through

Sewers flooding veins of human remains.
Then there’s the blue cat skeleton, helping itself

To the ghosts of the rotting meat washed ashore.
Once winged, heroic thoughts of peace, now strange
Smoldering feelings decayed to

Teeth of smiles. There’s a picture of some of
Their exposed wires in your blue purse. Next to
The jewels stolen from the eyes of your

Pharmacist. It’s that coldness that makes the
Petals fall from the flowers. The frost can only

Touch the bluest parts of the flame’s withering stem
That is a metaphor, like the multiple

Vibrations that are poetry, for the
Oneness that is God’s Light

In relation to the spaciousness that precedes
The void that is external reality. Eyes shake

Like train cars without brakes. Snakes shed
The skins of the stems to

Reveal freight of diamonded

Coal taken from bassinets. Crumpled up pages

Came of age on that journey
That includes stars becoming lakes.
Can you feel the ache in the abdomen of
Their wet fuse that can’t be lit?

The blaze of glory has drowned. Cities
That loomed large have become small towns
Compared to the Atlantis I’m no longer
Ashamed of. It’s been threaded

Together like the bridges
From LSD cars to Mars. There are forests

In outer space, car chases that have stained
The last page of my wine glass. Looks like the

Blood of apes can travel far, at least from
Spirits to bottles behind a neighborhood bar.
Don’t let space-heads fool you, Spirit is Form,

First a window, then the alcohol that cleans it.
It can run on the vapors of the steam engine
That is your most teeth-clenched rage, ageing

The machinery of your conspiracies.

The Future

Crash Course #3

Monday - July 27th
Common Roots Cafe
26th and Lyndale Ave. South
http://www.commonrootscafe.com
8pm - 9:30pm

Writing focus for next Crash Course, as directed by Andrew Cahak (http://www.cahak.com/).

THE FUTURE

Write poems regarding the future. Simple and wide. Go forth.

In his introduction, Andrew mentioned that this was in part inspired by the Askeleton song “the future”. In honor of this, I present you with one mans vision of THE FUTURE;

Askeleton: The Future

Thoughts and Reflections?

Lastly, to all who atteneded Crash Course #2; Please send me any poems from said event that you would like published to this site.

Crash Course Email

Crash Course # 2

In the interest in keeping our theme for next friday at the top of mind, Im reworking it to the top-of-blog. Here, then, is a condensed description of friday’s meeting.

Crash Course #2
Friday, June 26th
5:30pm-7:30pm

Bedlam Theater (Upstairs Patio)

Topic/Theme:

Your 8th grade girlfriend/boyfriends bedroom.

Take this place / space / time as your starting point, and write from there.

As a corollary, I’d also invite you to write some poems which take place, or take their images STRICTLY from the things (objects, memories) in your own, current bedroom.

See you then…

Also, props and thanks to Hans @ Micawbers Bookstore for giving us a shout in his blog;

Mr. Micawbers Enters the Internets

First Meeting - Poems - Curses and Inspirations

Here is a selection of the poems read at the inaugural Crash Course. Subject/Object was Curse Poems, and Imitation/Inspirations. Read on…

____________________

“Early” - Ellen Fitzgerald Skoro

I put your fingers in my mouth
while you are still asleep.
I hold them in my mouth
so still
and my tongue rolls softly
(I can’t help it)
like a fish rolling in water.

Your fingers taste like break
and the salty dirt of the day.

The cats scratch insistently
at our door,
chirping and trilling their hungry cries.

Wake up to me.
Wake up to me.

____________________

from: In The Name of The Anger (Trinity’s Father)
by Mark Fleury

Of all the shadescapes
That make up the inside of my skull when clouds
Of thunder give the sky shape,
My favorite lightning begins and ends
In that our personalities complete 
Each other’s source.

Liquid electricity lighting
Up the bottoms of the dark gray bulging
Almost made the clouds look solid.
So using tide as guide, I had to give in
A little to ebb’s flow of you in me
Toward the world.

Lean carved numbers: that One is different
Before the symbol’s added to it,
Together becoming two: how the Cross
Heals and straightens its broken back
To earn its wings. Four Sacred Directions:

Each is loaded: west, what Spirit/breath
Becomes to equal south; north: first/last name
Of my brother and/or sister to equal east.
Just like who I am for you
And who you are for me add up to
The destinations of all four points. Dusk just means
Inhale my prayer, exhale my life.

____________________

Flamenco Variations - Bill Caperton

1.
Dark song, stones in the well
of your throat.
Pigeons rising in a fractal of wing.
About what?
Your feet describing a new geometry,
lost text resurrected,
small wheel.
I like the way your hem keeps climbing,
the singer claps in time.
Even now you spiral away.
Foot slam
I am trying to pull
Foot slam
your smell into my fists.
So this is feeling better?
Unreadable glyphs,
wire
bent to improve reception.
Outer
space
receding through the night.

2.
Slow dark dance, dry plains echo,
skinny birds throw their growing
shadows about.
About what?
Alley made of cobbles, wet
with rain, over which
you glide. Darkened doors,
six beers turning
my soft brains starry.
You keep slipping
foot slam
past the corners
foot slam
out of the grave,
back inside.
But we dance a while
in between, across oceans.
I walk with black hair in my throat.
Low
tide
rising through my chest.

Bedroom Poems

Heres a little Dorothy Parker bedroom-related poem to warm it up!

Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom

Dorothy Parker

Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend -
Bed awaits me at the end.

Though I go in pride and strength,
I’ll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I’m bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Up, and out, and on; and then
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall -
I’m a fool to rise at all!

Innagural Meeting

An experiement a long time coming. A desire for an input/outlet mechanism. This reading series is a work in progress, the aim of which is to inspire new work, in the spirit of creating a collective in which to share. It will evolve and change. Here is the basic outline;

Each month, a member of the group will select a theme / form / idea / image on which to focus. This can be as general as “wind” or as specific as “sestina using end words begining with q”. Following this directive, you are invited to create poetry relating to this theme / form / idea etc.

We will then come together for a reading of said work. The idea here is not nesecarily to have super polished work, but rather to see what kinds of avenues open up for us when pressed to write outside of our comfort / crutch zones. Ideally it will be interesting, suprising, enlightening, and fun to see what angles different people approach the center from.

What we have now then, is a deadline.

Saturday, May 30th : 6pm - 8pm

331 Club - Minneapolis MN

This will be the first meeting. In the spirit of keeping the opening open, we’ve got 2 options for this meeting. Bring what you will, share generously, and please pass this info on to anyone you know who may be interested in participating.

OPTION 1: Pick one of the poems / poets that has most disturbed /
disrupted your universe. Focus on 1 of their poems in particular. Now
write a poem in homage, reverence, informed-by, following from, or in
some other way related to the poem you have chosen. For this exercise,
Id like if people would be willing to read their source text as well
as their own work.

OPTION 2: Curse poems. Curse something, or someone. Put a hex, call
down locusts, etc etc. Be specific as a you like. The more bile the
better, I think.

Here is a sample curse poem, by Frank Bidart. Pretty heavy. Dig it;

Curse

May breath for a dead moment cease as jerking your

head upward you hear as if in slow motion floor

collapse evenly upon floor as one hundred and ten

floors descend upon you.

May what you have made descend upon you.
May the listening ears of your victims their eyes their

breath

enter you, and eat like acid
the bubble of rectitude that allowed you breath.

May their breath now, in eternity, be your breath.

*

Now, as you wished, you cannot for us
not be. May this be your single profit.

Of your rectitude at last disenthralled, you
seek the dead. Each time you enter them

they spit you out. The dead find you are not food.

Out of the great secret of morals, the imagination to enter
the skin of another, what I have made is a curse.

-Frank Bidart