Allison Power

Be Frank, Franco Do you smell the morning breath And farts on the MTA as we all Flutter to work? Watch baseball on weeknights? Write poems about kind Looking homely strangers? About Boners? Bombs? Do you think You’re a quarter homo like me? Do thoughts of Asian’s speaking French and Italian occupy Your thoughts? Do the incredible backs of Swimmers and legs of runners Make you want to touch strangers? Do the feet of babies look like Chicken nuggets to you? Do you live off a local train stop? Did you hear what they did To the “criminals”? Did you Loose your appetite for war too? Do you ever sleep enough? Do you love mothers as I do? Do you take back lies you tell With the truth? Do you count your push-ups and Sit-ups? And do you feel your Body sculpting from the inside Out? Do you think everyone’s [...]

Terracotta Lawyers Insofar as the apple never flees the shadow of its tree, I need a new image to sanctify multiplicity. To make a start, not of particulars but rather, the incidentals— outlining the propriety of uncertainty in syllogistic scree. I like counting dust bunnies while still keening from a dream, reflecting when suggestion barely holds a charge; or, embracing the holding patterns high over American cities— to not accept but love one’s fate, that is the genius of the Greek. We know this from our teacher, the Pisan from Green Lawn, who was fond of the Yiddish adage: in some way we’re all fucked. Know it now as the imagination, what separates my house from highway debris— a flash of incongruity that laminates evening. But tonight the sky is low not limitless, projecting a simple myth, like the show on obedient cats emanating from the other room. _______________________________________________________________ Aaron [...]

As Far as Height’s Concerned There really should be more sugar maples in the valley below. I don’t know how we know, but we know they’d be perfect as far as height’s concerned. Show me more photographs of eccentric strangers on your camera phone—more earrings, more baggage, more footwear, more than I can carry with these arms too short to be viewed from the street’s perspective. In the gaudiest museum stairwell, each plate of glass reveals a doorway to a unit of music & diction—a personal funhouse. Patrons snap shots of Manets to capture the shades, from brown syrup to white ash. _______________________________________________________________ Kevin Shea is originally from Quincy, MA. He now lives in Brooklyn, NY and currently works at The New School for Social Research. He is also a recent graduate of the MFA program at The New School. His writing has previously appeared in The Alembic, Asinine Poetry, [...]

A CORSAGE Feeling like “a very village of sorrow,” Just like Franz Schubert, with each sad bourgeois Dolorously doleful, I only said When you asked me for my life-story, “Well, the world is a funny place, un Pleasant things can happen.” I chewed The silence, cryptic and stupidly. I felt diminished by myself, much like The passport photographs that make you look Like an escaped convict or The victim of circumstances. I Am the oyster shell, after the Succulent seaworm’s been devoured, With only the pretense of sea in your cupped Ear. The next day you wore a Corsage of pansies. Exultantly alive, serious scholars Of melancholy, brave and lionhearted With thoughtful thoughts. Now In this well of eyes before me, icy eyes, Now in the Broadway 7th Avenue Van Cortlandt Subway, feeling quite walled in, Henry David Thoreau breaks the ice, says “Time is the stream I go a [...]

In 1977, Bill Berkson and Bernadette Mayer began a kind of interview correspondence where with they exchanged questions and answers on a variety of topics. This mutual interview continued well into the mid-80s (and still continues intermittently between Berkson and Mayer today). A book on their letters, questions, and answers titled: What’s Your Idea of a Good Time? was published a few years ago (you can find it on amazon and Alibris). I recommend it for Bill and Bernadette’s incendiary answers, of course, but also for the questions posed (great material for cocktail parties, I might add). Often the questions one asks can be more revealing than their answers. Here are some questions posed in the collection. I invite people to respond and pose questions of their own. What’s your idea of a good time? What does distance mean, in poetry? Are poets “normal”? What is luck or blessedness? Is [...]

CHAPTER 10 (from Tracking the Marvelous by John Bernard Myers) “Did Grace Hartigan really look like the photograph Cecil Beaton took of her?” I was asked recently. Yes, she did. I was cross the day I first climbed the stairs to her studio on Essex Street. Oh God, I was saying to myself, another female painter whose talent will belie her appearance. There Grace was at the top of the stairs, waiting for me: tall, as “fresh as the month of May,” with what people used to call clean-cut American good looks. She smiled and put out her hand to pull me up the last step. The studio occupied the top floor of a three-storied building. On the ground floor was a shop that sold pickles and other delicatessen foods; there were barrels of pickles both outside and inside the store and the smell of vinegar, dill and spices permeated [...]

I thought I’d share some Mayer sonnets, as Valentine’s day is almost upon us. Love nor the sonnet is standard in Mayer’s world, and she highlights the possibilities/ multiplicities of poetics and of love. After all, desire doesn’t always follow a neat and tidy pattern. SONNET So long honey, don’t ever come around again, I’m sick of you & of your friends, you take up all my time & I don’t write Poems cause I spend all my time wanting to fuck you & then You put the apple onto the grilled cheese, I tie you up Save me from your respective beauties, keep them home Thanks for all the rock & roll music, if such a Thing can be said. Who are those guys? The B-52’s? That’s what Ethie told me. Can I believe her? You wanna get married? You tie me up with Garter belts & less than [...]