NEW POETRY
 
Franz Wright
Jenn Morea
Ted Pelton
Susan M. Schultz
Amanda Nadelberg
Standard Schaefer
Matthew Cooperman
Ed Taylor
Coralie Reed
Gretchen Mattox
Mark Rudman
Ales Debeljak
Simon Perchik
 
 
NEW CRITICISM
 
Bendall on Wagner
Schroeder on Mullen
Thompson on Gibson
Minor on Tran
Rippey on Hannah

ED TAYLOR : Cold is coming A king





Sargasso Sea

Shoes like drowning mouths

Sidewalk sky round
hole of a jar
on a hill

I am saying something here
find your own corner
whore

I wish I had glasses
half full or half empty

No roses
No soap

My love lies bleeding
bleeding o lord thou
kayoed with one punch

What do a zoo and a Maori tattoo
have in common
You

I predict the winner
You guess of what
Together we are a science
or bible

Sails belly somewhere
Here the calm is killing me








Droit de Seigneur


The bolls of light harvested

If you make me know something
is that sex

The monster comes daily
taking what the village
still gives

Every night like a necklace
Broken the pieces scatter-
ed

In water it can
disappear the rain
a depth
Like sun

Blue green white
a page a day
Travel in shadow
Deep fur
a knowing

Cold is coming
a king

Bow before you speak
creature








Punch and Judy


objects on the sill, white
like the sill
the curtain is white

behind, bottle green outside
the window

a tall cup broad at the top, narrowing down
a low wide plastic box

the mug steaming
the box half open
unable to close, broken
the leaves trembling

this is where you come in








Aubade


magnolia gleams like a tree of tongues
someone on a porch bangs boards
this Sunday city where even air hisses

I sleep with a painter to get whites whiter
last night was Manhattan & navigation combined
today looks more like a wall


this
is going nowhere

but that is another story








Bulletin


the day as a room made of paper
above & all around

trails of snails of planes
forensic accounting

pick the beads up from the bone
at your throat
                        let them fall
like birdsong along the limb of
the street's last tree

before the empty park
where trash gathers
like prisoners at a fence
to watch the living

what it is like to be dead
but have to finish
the sentence

that is all
static








Still Life With Guilt


A hydrant is red as Stalingrad.
Around it is only stalling.

You dream
an infanta cradling skinned hare or greyhound.

Rain is a snow of glass.
Sweep up pieces and lick the blood on a hand,
on hands.

The cleaning unending.








Resurrection


you take one step in a field
watch a foal at hay
stiff & twitching

Two things:  caulking a hull
& caulking a hull

three meals a day & a ray
of orchard

four white balls in a lotto drawing
bobbing like bottles with messages

five smart guys stick their hands in hives
get stuck in honey

six ways from Sunday to Monday

seven & seven equals too weak to fight
the waves of waves

eight is a NASCAR event
eternity of left turns & a loud crowd
pulling right like an oar

cat of nine tails twitching
missing its absent owners who left it
outside

Wren-10-tin come in from the code
this cold still a killer

double ones eleven chopsticks for copycats
the news hour

at twelve take a first step away from the edge
the black car at the curb & you now willing

to walk where you are going








Roaches


The night today is thin.
See through it.
Behind one star is just another,
late again.
                         This
happens every day,
it seems.
             There is confusion
concerning time,
who should be where
& why.
Am I awake, asleep,
burned by reentry
or launch.

The jets fly high.
In the foxhole the fox.
A scar of horizon,
blade of sun dull enough.

Spare us one more day.
It is busy here
when the light snaps
off.








Mystery of Perseverance

       for Fernando Pessoa

What is going on outside.  Is there jousting.
What horns blow.  Why.  Are there clouds &
sounds.  Former.  Previous to. 

Alleviated septum no longer bound by anatomy
free to divide the sky.  Ha.  A small yoke. 
Some thing making easier the haul uphill
what is dug from earth.








Poor Loser


Memory stick.  Get a load of this.
Take the load off.  Get it on,
the appendix of your life.
Filtering time – keep what, how decide.
The male anglerfish, all gonad, all memory.
Never mind.

A unit polluted by the past.
What you bring to the party.




 

 

(c) 2005 Slope. Slope is ISSN # 1536-0164.