[As with all Mike Sammons voicemail poems, incomprehensibilities are bracketed
and all line and stanza breaks are mine]
THE BRICKS
The bricks here build and contain me.
I fly through the apartment like a bird with clipped wings.
Like an ant with an airplane; like a moth with a bulb.
The candles keep burning and flickering
the way Mexican girls will dance in the night
and say sweet things in my ear
and smell just like lilacs and roses.
We’ll die six more times before we will die,
and somewhere our bones will dissolve like a fog.
One forgets about rivers and oceans and trees
and dreams of fast days of liquor and wine
and “I love you” under trees and under suns.
When I die I’ll take everything with me,
and my bones will be the glass in your morning window
[?] and glowing with the early dead sun.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
Friday, March 23, 2007
New Limerick by John & I about how sick I was in Atlanta (thanks again for the towels, Carrie!)
The city tonight is on fire
The Marriot's walls could prespire
The towel on my head
Is soaking the bed
If I tell you I'm well I'm a liar
The Marriot's walls could prespire
The towel on my head
Is soaking the bed
If I tell you I'm well I'm a liar
Two (Clickable!) Poems by Jamison Driskill
Wishing Well
Thankful no one’s hurt,
Dirty Charley gives us a private,
Sitting on a keg shell
In some kid’s back yard
By the fire pit.
Playing the devil’s country
For the three of us,
And all the other kids
Who make their way
To the beer in the backyard,
Charley fails to notice
The girlfriends
Peeking
Out the backdoor,
Into the cold.
*
American Idol
My little cousin,
All of nine,
Answers the door
In fishnets
And a miniskirt
And waaaay too much makeup.
This, my date,
Rides with me
To the theater
To see Fat Albert,
The movie.
Heads turn,
The movie sucks.
On the way home,
I try to tell her
How big the world is,
And how to play make believe,
Forever,
Like me.
I hope
She remembers me,
But I doubt it.
Thankful no one’s hurt,
Dirty Charley gives us a private,
Sitting on a keg shell
In some kid’s back yard
By the fire pit.
Playing the devil’s country
For the three of us,
And all the other kids
Who make their way
To the beer in the backyard,
Charley fails to notice
The girlfriends
Peeking
Out the backdoor,
Into the cold.
*
American Idol
My little cousin,
All of nine,
Answers the door
In fishnets
And a miniskirt
And waaaay too much makeup.
This, my date,
Rides with me
To the theater
To see Fat Albert,
The movie.
Heads turn,
The movie sucks.
On the way home,
I try to tell her
How big the world is,
And how to play make believe,
Forever,
Like me.
I hope
She remembers me,
But I doubt it.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Rise, Frequency, RISE!!!
Hey Fishes,
Join us for a rare Frequency Reading on Sunday, March 25th at 2 PM (sharp!) when we will be joined by Jill Alexander Essbaum, Jessica Piazza, and Meghan Punschke. These are three very talented and accomplished ladies, bios below. That'll be at the applauded Four-Faced Liar, 165 W. 4th St., New York, NY. Take the blue or orange trains to W. 4th or the red trains to Christopher.
Yours,
Shafer Hall
Jessica Piazza's poems have been published or are forthcoming in Agni, Indiana Review, Spork Magazine, The Formalist, and 150 Contemporary Sonnets (Evansville Press). She won the 2005 Keene Prize for Literature at the University of Texas, where she did her graduate work in poetry and founded/edited Bat City Review. She is co-founder of the Speakeasy Poetry Series in New York City, and is newly involved in the Student Publishing Program, which brings creative writing curricula to public schools across the country. Jessica was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.
Meghan Punschke has MFA in Poetry from The New School (2007) and is the current managing editor of an online literary journal, MiPOesias. She is the curator and host of Word of Mouth, a reading series on the Lower East Side dedicated to poets and fiction writers. Her first collection of poetry, "Stratification" is forthcoming. Her works can be found in MiPO and Free Focus. Visit www.megpunschke.com for more details.
Jill Alexander Essbaum is the author of the 1999 Bakeless Prize winner in poetry, Heaven, and the 2005 gathering of sonnets, Oh Forbidden. Her newest collection, Harlot, is forthcoming from No Tell Books. Her poetry has appeared in journals both religious and secular, both domestic and foreign, both well-known and rabidly obscure. Her literary influences and obsessions include the following: Simon Armitage, Nick Cave, St. Augustine, John Bunyan, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simone Weil, and Dorothy Parker. Seriously.
Join us for a rare Frequency Reading on Sunday, March 25th at 2 PM (sharp!) when we will be joined by Jill Alexander Essbaum, Jessica Piazza, and Meghan Punschke. These are three very talented and accomplished ladies, bios below. That'll be at the applauded Four-Faced Liar, 165 W. 4th St., New York, NY. Take the blue or orange trains to W. 4th or the red trains to Christopher.
Yours,
Shafer Hall
Jessica Piazza's poems have been published or are forthcoming in Agni, Indiana Review, Spork Magazine, The Formalist, and 150 Contemporary Sonnets (Evansville Press). She won the 2005 Keene Prize for Literature at the University of Texas, where she did her graduate work in poetry and founded/edited Bat City Review. She is co-founder of the Speakeasy Poetry Series in New York City, and is newly involved in the Student Publishing Program, which brings creative writing curricula to public schools across the country. Jessica was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.
Meghan Punschke has MFA in Poetry from The New School (2007) and is the current managing editor of an online literary journal, MiPOesias. She is the curator and host of Word of Mouth, a reading series on the Lower East Side dedicated to poets and fiction writers. Her first collection of poetry, "Stratification" is forthcoming. Her works can be found in MiPO and Free Focus. Visit www.megpunschke.com for more details.
Jill Alexander Essbaum is the author of the 1999 Bakeless Prize winner in poetry, Heaven, and the 2005 gathering of sonnets, Oh Forbidden. Her newest collection, Harlot, is forthcoming from No Tell Books. Her poetry has appeared in journals both religious and secular, both domestic and foreign, both well-known and rabidly obscure. Her literary influences and obsessions include the following: Simon Armitage, Nick Cave, St. Augustine, John Bunyan, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simone Weil, and Dorothy Parker. Seriously.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Matt Henriksen has this to say about last weekend's AWP Convention:
Dear Shafer,
I woke up dead today,
on the wrong side of hell
in a jar of formaldehyde
and the intestines of Egyptian
whores. We knew the asylum
had fancier light than
the middle school cafeteria,
terrarium of luminous insects,
a katydid on a caryatid
of an Egyptian whore with
nice titties and no insides
downstairs, where her and
our sorrows dwelled.
I woke up dead today,
on the wrong side of hell
in a jar of formaldehyde
and the intestines of Egyptian
whores. We knew the asylum
had fancier light than
the middle school cafeteria,
terrarium of luminous insects,
a katydid on a caryatid
of an Egyptian whore with
nice titties and no insides
downstairs, where her and
our sorrows dwelled.
Flesh Eating Poems!
To get the new issue of Cannibal, which features a poem by Shafer Hall, CLICK HERE!
and scroll down to where it says
Cannibal Issue Two
$12
Buy Now
and CLICK AGAIN!
click click click
and scroll down to where it says
Cannibal Issue Two
$12
Buy Now
and CLICK AGAIN!
click click click
Friday, March 02, 2007
From the Teddy Roosevelt Archives by way of Jeffrey Eaton
"I had to abandon boxing as well as wrestling, for in one bout a young captain of artillery cross-countered me on the eye, and the blow smashed the little blood vessels. Fortunately it was my left eye, but the sight has been dim ever since, and if it had been the right eye I should have been entirely unable to shoot.
"Accordingly I thought it better to acknowledge that I had become an elderly man and would have to stop boxing. I then took up jiujitsu for a few years."
*
Major hoss.
"Accordingly I thought it better to acknowledge that I had become an elderly man and would have to stop boxing. I then took up jiujitsu for a few years."
*
Major hoss.
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