Jerome Rothenberg

 

Navajo Animal Songs

1.

Chipmunk can't drag it along 
can't drag it along 

Chipmunk holds back his ears 

2. 

Chipmunk was standing 
jerking his feet 
with stripes 
he's a very short chipmunk 

3. 

Mole makes his pole redhot 
Says: I'll shove it up your ass 
Says: feel how it shakes your belly 

4. 

Wildcat was walking 
He ran down here 
He got his feet in the water 
He farted 
Wow, wow! says Wildcat 

5. 

A turkey is dancing near the rocks 
shoves out his pelvis 
woops-a-daisy we all go crazy 

6. 

Big Rabbit goes to see his baby 
pisses 
pissing all around him 

7. 

Pinionjay shits pebbles
now he's empty 

English versions by Jerome Rothenberg, after David McAllester

March 21, 2013

Craig Santos Perez

 

A Whole Foods in Hawai‘i

I dreamed of you tonight, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake, as I walked down on the sidewalk under plumeria trees with a vog headache looking at the Māhealani moon.

In my need fo’ grindz, and hungry fo’ modernity, I stumbled into the gentrified lights of Whole Foods, dreaming of your manifestos!
    What pineapples and what papayas! Busloads of tourists shopping at night! Bulk aisle full of hippies! Millennials in the kale! Settlers in the Kona coffee! And you, Richard Hamasaki, what were you doing kissing the ripe mangos?

I saw you, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake, broomless, ghostly janitor, sampling the poke in the seafood section and eyeing the smoked fish.
    I heard you ask questions of each: Who butchered the mahimahi? What price opah belly? Are you my ‘aumakua?
    I wandered in and out of the canned goods aisle following you, and followed in my imagination by Sir Spamalot.
    In our bourgeois fancy we strolled through the cooked foods 
section tasting hand-churned cheese, possessing every imported delicacy, and whispering to the cashier, “Go fuck yourself.”

Where are we going, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake? The doors of perception close in an hour. Which way does your pakalōlō point 
tonight?
    (I touch your book and dream of our huaka‘i in Whole Foods and feel dādā.)
    Will we sail all night through Honolulu streets? The coconut trees no have nuts, tarps up for the homeless, we’ll both be lonely.
    Will we cruise witnessing the ruined empire of America, past pink mopeds in driveways, home to our overpriced apartments?
    Ah, dear uncle, Buddhahead, ghostly poetry teacher, what Hawai‘i did you have when TheBus quit turning its wheels and you arrived in Waikīkī and stood watching the canoes disappear on the murky waters of the Ala Wai?

Red Ant Way

 

Ai (FlorenceAnthony)

Barquisimeto, Venezuela, October 27, 1561 

Today it rained vengefully and hard 
and my men deserted me. 
My kingdom was as close 
as calling it by name. Peru. 
I braid your hair, daughter, 
as you kneel with your head in my lap. 
I talk softly, stopping to press your face to my chest. 
Vera Cruz. Listen. My heart is speaking. 
I am the fishes, the five loaves. 
The women, the men I killed simply ate me. 
There is no dying, only living in death. 
I was their salvation. 
I am absolved by their hunger. 
El Dorado, the kingdom of gold, 
is only a tapestry I wove from their blood. 
Stand up. My enemies will kill me 
and they won't be merciful with you. 
I unsheathe my dagger. Your mouth opens. 
I can't hear you. I want to. Tell me you love me. 
You cover your mouth with your hands. 
I stab you, then fall beside your body. 
Vera Cruz. See my skin covered with gold dust 
and tongues of flame, 
Transfigured by the pentecost of my own despair. 
I, Aguirre the wanderer, Aguirre the traitor, 
the Gilded Man. 
Does God think that because it rains in torrents 
I am not to go to Peru and destroy the world? 
God. The boot heel an inch above your head is mine. 

God, say your prayers. 

Ai (Florence Anthony)

Riot Act, April 29, 1992

I'm going out and get something. 
I don't know what. 
I don't care. 
Whatever's out there, I'm going to get it. 
Look in those shop windows at boxes 
and boxes of Reeboks and Nikes 
to make me fly through the air 
like Michael Jordan 
like Magic. 
While I'm up there, I see Spike Lee. 
Looks like he's flying too 
straight through the glass 
that separates me 
from the virtual reality 
I watch everyday on TV. 
I know the difference between 
what it is and what it isn't. 
Just because I can't touch it 
doesn't mean it isn't real. 
All I have to do is smash the screen, 
reach in and take what I want. 
Break out of prison. 
South Central homey's newly risen 
from the night of living dead, 
but this time he lives, 
he gets to give the zombies 
a taste of their own medicine. 
Open wide and let me in, 
or else I'll set your world on fire, 
but you pretend that you don't hear. 
You haven't heard the word is coming down 
like the hammer of the gun 
of this black son, locked out of this big house, 
while massa looks out the window and sees only smoke. 
Massa doesn't see anything else, 
not because he can't, 
but because he won't. 
He'd rather hear me talking about mo' money, 
mo' honeys and gold chains 
and see me carrying my favorite things 
from looted stores 
than admit that underneath my Raider's cap, 
the aftermath is staring back 
unblinking through the camera's lens, 
courtesy of CNN, 
my arms loaded with boxes of shoes 
that I will sell at the swap meet 
to make a few cents on the declining dollar. 
And if I destroy myself 
and my neighborhood 
"ain't nobody's business, if I do," 
but the police are knocking hard 
at my door 
and before I can open it, 
they break it down 
and drag me in the yard. 
They take me in to be processed and charged, 
to await trial, 
while Americans forget 
the day the wealth finally trickled down 
to the rest of us.

Tommy Pico

 

from Junk

The covers up to our shoulders we lay in the couchbed of our

preconceptions, separating I steady walk back to the land where

 

I dunno you Took you long fuckin enough Now I’m stupid and

sugar-free and frothing The only thing harder than writing is

 

quitting candy And the only thing harder than quitting candy is

walking all day and buttering into bed in my body Now that I’m

 

fully inhabiting my cement maybe I’m closer to the sacral joy of

thinking into my ribcage? Convention says a book shd be this

 

long but I’m only interested in writing as long as you want to

read in one sitting My aura is a strawberry shortcake dessert

 

bar and the popular American corn snack Funyuns My safe

word is Go to hell Katy Perry pronounced “Catty” I’m writing a

 

sitcom about butts and counting called Number Two The tag-

line is “turn the other cheek” Most times I’m a maniac, other

 

times losing an arm wrestling match Sitting for longer and

longer but paying less and less attention, evolutionarily Is a load

 

easier to swallow with a “we” We’ve known for centuries that 

time is a bossy bird curdler Protrude from the green and calling

 

it “bud” Sometimes you need to read something more than once

My joint is Mary Jane The theme is harmony of a gradient Let’s

 

hold hands and walk to the water taxi in matching tank tops but

we call the tank tops “wedges” and the wedges are a chipwich

 

and our cherry Cokes are a summer afternoon where we can’t

do anything but lean into the grass at that carousel park in

 

Dumbo with the lap of the river and the dollhouse of lower

Manhattan face-fucking us while we neck and, later, face-fuck

Tommy Pico

 

You can't be an NDN person in today's world

 

You can't be an NDN person in today's world

 

and write a nature poem. I swore to myself I would never write a nature

poem. Let's be clear, I hate nature — hate its guts

 

I say to my audience. There is something smaller I say to myself:

 

I don't hate nature at all. Places have thoughts — hills have backs that love

being stroked by our eyes. The river gobbles down its tract as a metaphor

but also abt its day. The bluffs purr when we put down blankets at the

downturn of the sun and laugh at a couple on a obvi OkCupid date

 

and even more stellar, the jellybean moon sugars at me. She flies and

beams and I breathe.

 

Fuck that. I recant. I slap myself.

 

Let's say I live in NYC. Let's say I was the first person in my family to

graduate college. Let's say UGH I like watching New Girl on Hulu.

 

This is the difference:

 

Some see objects in the Earth, where I see lungs. Sky mother falls thru

a hole, lands on a turtle.

 

Hole is my favorite band.

Cedar Sigo

 

Guns of the Trees

A set of notes detailing the caves of an impeccable gentleman, a minotaur poet. The most devastating silence of the first ten books. A fantasy of Philip Lamantia as an action figure stripped naked with special audible scream switch buttons. Re-imagining Grace Cathedral as the great symphonic hall of coconuts, Oh the book is resting complete in a chinatown basement.

A poem I puked drying out at a hot springs in love winding through the dry hills of neem leaves, an exaggeration of music I thought younger poets admired. The trimmings I knew I could press new meaning in between. I was endlessly in the mood and working this lace front, that words as force walk the earth. I tried to show a sailor bounding through his life in silhouette.

I’d rather live on my own with my magic lantern. I’m sick of public schools that reek of church. Drink. Fuck. Breed. Light the top shelf. Pressed green woods with light standing even straighter. He is standing on my eyelids and his hair is crossed with mine. Giving flat girders to the dream poem. Its all about the filthy paint of a room that empties out at night. Scotch tape wrapped words 

guarding fissures of light. Brakhage and Bob Dylan jokes I wrote exclusively for money for The Recluse. Fished out from the threshing odds and ends. A song I thought was lost, the lines were nothing on there own. A diorama whose language goes ahead to shatter the glass. Billion dollar kick flips in your honor. A poem named for a race horse named for weed. 

A perfect approximation of the opening smile. His poetry would make great bronzed inuit blues. My feast was in the easy blood that flowed. A dark skittering travelogue I almost didn’t type up, the most break up like drivel. Number thirty five with lines from two sonnet cycles. Translations via Telephone, such civil war is in my love and hate. Lines in which I know the way

the music lays. I back away from the wall. I wanted the deepest impression, a line torn from its plush root. Occupy damaged or inspired, they are reverse black nazis in unfunded wheelchairs. I can’t keep up. Wiping black snot onto white sleeves. Another last ditch genius fuck. The morning after a long night hot in Fort Green. Back on the west coast writing it. Desk faces wall. A chinese distillation to 

illustrate the offing, panels for the walls of heaven really concealing its canals, haranguing the provencal into a blues again. It closes too tightly. Trample it down to its esteemed place in language arts. In homage to his wealth, and willingness to go down on his masters. A matter of course under Bismark bridges. Its more a leaving off of the grime sometimes, entered cities of boiling red dust.

Tommy Pico

 

from Feed

Me n Leo yakkity yak yak’dabout writer’sblockand the starchy long stroke of quote unquote God on the Meadow Walkand he didn’t know I was fully head over banana peels I mean in Kiehl’sI mean in straight up crappy love with him yet and maybe I didn’teither? Sand crabs poking their bodies & legs post wave Hindsightis Good & Plenty I mean 20/20clearlythe worst Americancandy And what is candy, but a crush?Leo said it’s tangled upin waves in dreams in therapy That writer’s block(or is it god?)comes from being blocked upin other parts of the daysof our livesof our livesof our livesThis is a polysaccharide Effective deflectionRejection heavy,that he’d forgotten what the feelingof a goodidea isBut I’m standing right in front of you?I thought bubbled but never troubledthe airwith my utteranceInstead I said, “this is the part where you ask me for my number”

Feature Date

• August 28, 2020

Share This Poem

Share on facebook

 

Share on twitter

 

Share on email

Print This Poem

Share on print

Sherwin Bitsui

 

ANWR

When we are out of gas,

a headache haloes the roof,

darkening the skin of everyone who has a full tank.

I was told that the nectar of shoelaces,

if squeezed hard enough,

turns to water and trickles from the caribou’s snout.

A glacier nibbled from its center

spiders a story of the Southern Cross,

twin brothers

dancing in the back room lit with cigarettes

break through the drum’s soft skin—

      There bone faces atlas

            a grieving century.