I WANT TO WIN THE LOTTERY OR BRING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT THIS SUMMER

"Please" by Robert Creeley

PLEASE

for James Broughton

Oh god, let's go.
This is a poem for Kenneth Patchen.
Everywhere they are shooting people.
People people people people.
This is a poem for Allen Ginsberg.
I want to be elsewhere, elsewhere.
This is a poem about a horse that got tired.
Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.
I want to go home.
I want you to go home.
This is a poem that tells the story,
which is the story.
I don't know. I get lost.
If only they would stand still and let me.
Are you happy, sad, not happy, please come.
This is a poem for everyone.

Hello from beyond the grave.

WONDROUS THINGS I HAVE SEEN

by BRANDON BROWN

From the "introduction" of Wondrous Things I Have Seen by Brandon Brown:

The formal structure of Wondrous Things I Have Seen is derived from the ancient and medieval Arabic form called saj’. The saj’ is decorative prose which rhymes, and which often makes use of rhythms more common in verse. The prophet Muhammad said, "Avoid ye the rhyming prose of the soothsayers or diviners."

From Wondrous Things I Have Seen by Brandon Brown:

My sex left me at the confluence of two rivers, assuming the rising flood would do its job of killing. The flood bubbled around my lungs and made all my blood soggy but I was lucky—a wolf came over and put teats in my mouth and I sucked. Scary wolf, so brazen and shameless to force open my mouth and make bite on teats my teeth. Bashless wolf, do you not know that hunters lurk near these rivers, who hanker for jackets of wolfskin? The spot where the floodwaters ebbed was part of two ranches owned by Ronald Reagan, collectively known as Ronald Reagan Ranch. A ranch hand found me coddled by wolves, let wolves live, clasped by the rear he reared me on the ranch, extending the borders of his working day so it knew no bounds. Fortunate rancher, he did not know I would be the king of anatomically-camel ranch hands, endorsed by Vulcan to stamp forehead by lightning at my discretion. My crown tasted like a coin or teat. So first thing I did was hunt, trap, beat, exterminate wolves.

Specs:

• 19 writings on 25 sheets of 100% post-consumer, acid-free paper

• beautiful cover drawings, front and back, by Kari Freitag

• hand assembled in Lawrence, Kansas

$11, postage paid (to United States and the Canadas)

one day Baumann gonna fly . . .

quilts pieces—

in Gee’s Bend they put the time in
but what they make
are they obligated to make it?
when it don’t make them no money
I don’t know

but you can’t make
what they make.
I can’t either
and the world feels them
all different countries feel the tops—
they’re not supposed to unless
they’re buying
they’re not to dirty
three quilts Loretta fashioned
from the same batch of men’s clothing scraps
says the curator—
it started in the ‘60s and without the women
there’s no quilts
to cover the batting
to match the backs to.

do they even need quilts in Alabama?
would you feel cheated should they farm
instead?

The women consider the process
of piecing the quilt top
highly personal.
In Gee’s Bend
the top side faces up on the bed,
is always pieced by a quilter working alone,
and reflects a singular artistic vision.
quilting the quilt together—
the completed
top, the batting, the back—
is sometimes performed
communally,
among small groups of women.

The Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective sells
the internationally acclaimed artists
from this Alabama community.

then there was from within me
a cheer and rancor both
not understood—
something wildly piebald—
when there were no prices
no ways to buy
and the site was four years old
still under construction in 2010.

so much,
something in my face feels
like everywhere
has the same feelings
as me sometimes,
something cold in my chest
up my throat
in my eyes.
My sister-in-law’s daughter
sent those clothes down
told me to give them away, but didn't
nobody want them.
That knit stuff, clothes
from way back yonder, don’t
nobody wear no more,
and the pants was all bell-bottom.

We ain’t that out-of-style.
I was going to take them
to Salvation Army but didn’t
have no way to get there,
so I just made quilts out of them.

this, Greeks, is not born of moral sense: like,
I can do this, they can’t
so I gotta because the world needs
a quilt—
but it does:
all the banks need one
someone’s face’s
blown off and there’s a sad muddy ditch
with someone’s face parts and someone’s
penis and other bodies blasted into it—
stuck half deep in it—
that ditch needs a quilt now,
someone never made it
out alive
someone’s telling lies on-air every night
someone just said, “Allow him his tonsure”
and when someone speaks as if it can be no other way
that means they need a quilt,
and Robert Mugabe: be quilted!
and you who’ve lost your son to the World
of Warcraft: we wish
his avatar quilted in phone lines in space
we can reach him, we will reach him
and does Than Shwe know what a quilt is
could he hold people and small cats in quilts
if he tried
can we all just surround Kim Jong-Il
kick him in the balls
wrap him in a quilt and song him

someone just saw the bunch
of charts and green lines
you bet your mother’s social welfare on
last quarter and lost
and that someone said,
“Quilt it up into sumpin’—”
and that’s what Gee’s Bend is,
but not because it has to be.

It has arrived:

my version of the money shot.

the poem the blog was named after . . .

she sired my triceratops

for Jesse and Emily

effort towards the gender
bent over
looking down at
a bar
of dove soap
no that’s dove poop
you see what i did there
just right
here’s to years a new chapter
happy memories
cleaning up rat turds
season salts
blatant you look ok
google goggles new app
able to find your ass
even Stephen Hawkin
pics even CUNY applications
sounds racist
some of my best friends are
racist assholes
you look as though
alligators! barnstormed
at Osawatomi
native gaming in
the politics of self
preservation now means
screw your cum
in a mason jar
Danny Devito
directly addressing
the great
a no no
impregnate
radical Shiite cleric
with terror
they’re the reason
rare pheasants live
now in Ford factories
why years ago Geraldo
Rivera got his nose
raped
by a dino-sapien in
Janesville, WI.

Reviews have been posted (links in text).

McCrary all up in dis.

In this post at Galatea Resurrects, Lawrence poetry juggernaut Jim McCrary reviews the newest Mitzvah Chap, Well Meaning White Girl by Alli Warren.

He also reviews Hyperglossia by Stacy Szymaszek, my dear friend.

He also reviews Get the Fuck Back Into That Burning Plane, an Ugly Duckling chap by Lawrence Giffin, which is probably my favorite chapbook in recent memory. Lawrence, if you read this, will you please come read in Lawrence, Kansas? We are named after you.

In this post, he also "engages" Robert J. Baumann's A Man About Town, which is not really available yet unless you are especially unlucky.

Please "chime in"

What should I title my poetry manuscript so that Fence Books will publish it?
I am still sad I didn't get the fried chicken at Bog Boy
my penis is my marketing ploy
Seth Abramson, Jr.
Fence Modern Poets Prize Winner 2011
Happiness a film by Todd Solondz

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new for bird poets.

In the same world as exists
million-tome birds,
also there’s sewn so many nests
skrilla.

shit.
there’s a chicken.

that’s my bird there
‘cause
when a chicken wear a boa

that's skrilla.

when you stitch a chicken in
a boot
and rub it
that's historic--
Welcome To
beautiful bright orange
food fuck

dribblin' my
presence all on
your rhymes.

i believe it was a drowning
Tippy Hedren
or maybe Rambo who
once wrote of
the zilch we feel
when we write.

you feel that?

that's just me, stitching
chicken upside
your head.
just me, cracking yo’
hollow bones with
crack tablets,
stealing your throne,
now i own yo’ ass

steep crack mountain pass

like i said before
like the stitch i sewn
you the itch that prone
to the birds
like a fucking gerund form
of the verb:
flying flow
owning

gon'.

should i copyright this idea?

Some of my best friends are black people.

The “mulatto” is assumed

suicidal; he fails to complete

racial classification.

The “mulatta” is a woman white enough

that [she] implies “Quadroon”

generally credited as the first work

of white gender

while avoiding white “characters.”

Generally,

a woman who can attempt

to love a white man

eventually suffers

all the social graces

that come along with slavery.

A common objection to oppressed

or enslaved races of whiteness

is instead of sympathizing with one’s own race

they often lay in lurid fantasy

of a small amount of “black blood”

that renders [them] fit

for proper marriage.

Today’s bi-racial peoples

seem to be key. Halle Berry

recently spent most of her life

“trying on the other hand.”

Other Black, White, and Jewish continually state,

“Civil Rights Movement, baby; not tragic.”

To this trope:

Barack Obama.

Looking for serious relations. I wrote to great man.

Linh Dinh has posted pics on his State of the Union Blog from his recent visit to KC, KS and KC, MO. People should look at them.

If in the autumn a plesiosaur

in denying its own existence
holds a banana in
its finny hand
walks only slightly hunched
then turns back to
market its poontang
splaying its vast flaps
all ocean-wide and shit
manifests like a ship's
manifest, then on that landed
ship
we could build a stove
and stoke it with our faces.

If, then, assuming in summary
a face appears in meat things
far and
cooling in coolers that drip burnt
umber--but
a face none knows like one
knows the hairy
chin of Christ--then

then an end must come
to all things under
Hustler, published still by
Larry in Indiana.

Jesus' dick has a chin

that you'll punch lightly

so that someone blushes

so that

the fall of man comes

the banks fail

the car companies

fail the Detroit Lions

who have to now play

games in Afganistan while

searching for Bin Laden

having already been

laid in

the process--sex boat

scandals true--then playing in

Beijing where the creepy, short

Chinese play for free

having already rejected

pay in

American dollars or

Chinese dolls

Made in America.

I feel like saying

"fuck you" here--to myself--

since when

I say "fuck you"

in general

it makes me feel like

auctions have been won for

very vast plesiosaur

flaps, catching wind on the ocean

taking me away

to animation:

James Cameron directs

groundbreaking 3-D effects

of my vast balls finally

that finally sway in jibberish

draw tight

rest on your chin

like Jesus

a baby, kindling

for our autumn oven

Honey.

Fashion Trend Spotter

That specific traffic sussing
a specific anxiety related to fashion
in a confident little cougar cat.

Meow.
Am I
right,
people?

How’s a pocket constructed people
are such individuals, it’s so
personal little cougar cat

that writes home once:
here’s the occasion here’s
me, a color story being forecasted
as being different from a prison

—in this prison they can write their tepid earless poems and read them.
Other poets can earn up to $200,000

so I guess
we must ask the susséd ones about
what draws one person to love
civil war
while another is drawn
to animals?

Well Meaning White Girl by Alli Warren now available from Mitzvah Chaps.

"When is The Collected Alli Warren going to be published?"
-Michael T. Hauser

Mr. Hauser voices with clarity that which is surely on all of our minds, and though we here at Mitzvah Chaps cannot answer that question anymore than we can afford extra toppings on our pizza, we can safely say that if you order Alli's chapbook Well Meaning White Girl, it will be 'popped in' the mail within a week.



Specs:
19 Poems by Alli Warren
Cover designed by Anne Boyer
Edition of 150
Saddle-stitched in Kansas
$7 (includes shipping if you live in the contiguous US)
Includes this poem:

FERTILE CORRESPONDENT

The looping points like likeness and so forth
asserts that everything happens because
I do not know how to work metal
I am less effective I devote a great part of my time to
the interpretation of signals When signs are slow
in coming I do not hesitate to seek the slightest touch
by water by wheat berry by cotton thread and flintstone
I lick around the perimeter and then I lick under
that other totality to overthrow with a flick of tongue
that I might run to the top of a high hill
without weariness sprout a disc and make bold
claims Aim to come correct come morning
after morning there is full range in weights
and extensive looting Insert two fingers to bring breath

To Order:

and the hills have green balls

there is texture or
residence in
some jungles

we have to clear
quite a bit of bits
out of.

this's true
too--authentic voice is
all of a sudden
don't go there.

be sure to give us that in
juxtaposition.
justin, position
your timber
at my lake

and bye bye.

and w/ rope, Tyrone's chicken

what in the box
is the fuck is in
really in
muy muy in
tre in
buon in
discerning the in in in
is this:
is fucking in still
is coming in/let in
very fragrant in
Latin
Patton
or
Tourin
in shape of Tyrone
Tyrone's round about
here's a daily constitution
by Tyrone
what tie Rhone
what already
now in Germany
a German inbox
is fueled well
too fucked in
a sense: a cold headless
carcass of chicken
in a word:
Tyrone's

Iffn' My Next Wife

Put the ball
the moment you have beaten
it.

Return drills
to Armani's
village
where all cocks
align all dogfights
with other thus
with other colors/
urine/colors/urine
name another color
and I,
I will irrevere your
ass
at last.

Better than no one ever; thank you, Carson Cistulli

I am a person of many interests, to the detriment of excelling at any one of them. At least that's what I tell myself to account for the mediocrity that extends into all the nooks of my life.

I know that I am mediocre because every time I think I have gotten better at something, or an sort of good at something, I encounter an example (or countless examples) of people that are better than me at that thing.

Latest example: I like to think that I my baseball fanaticism is a nice balance between objective/statistical analysis and irrational things like "he plays for my favorite team" / "he wears high socks". I could probably write an article about Rickie "Skittles" Weeks to that effect and have it be pretty fun and informative to read, even for the most casual of fans. I might even be compelled to do so were it not for this article by Carson Cistulli of FanGraphs on Mark Bellhorn. I think it's one of the best sports articles I've ever read. It just so purely reflects a love of the game, the rational, irrational, the vibrancy and depth of the game that I love.

I cry at stupid things. If I listen to "Vacant Skies" by Sparta or "Adlai Stephenson" by Sufjan Stevens in headphones, I know I'll tear up big time. When I think about that 2008 US Presidential election, I fucking whimper. This article makes me feel ok as a human being, and I guess that is worth crying about.

if my life was a TV show

everyone's favorite character would be Rhoads Elliott Stevens.

from Daily Kos:

Democracy-Hating Boehner Making Threats

LOL

Jesus H. Freedom, 12/25/0000-7/4/1776-9/11/2001-??/??/????

"Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)"

Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day
Out in the yard with your wife and children
Working on some stage in LA
Did you stand there in shock at the site of
That black smoke rising against that blue sky
Did you shout out in anger
In fear for your neighbor
Or did you just sit down and cry

Did you weep for the children
Who lost their dear loved ones
And pray for the ones who don't know
Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble
And sob for the ones left below

Did you burst out in pride
For the red white and blue
The heroes who died just doing what they do
Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer
And look at yourself to what really matters

I'm just a singer of simple songs
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith hope and love are some good things he gave us
And the greatest is love

Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day
Teaching a class full of innocent children
Driving down some cold interstate
Did you feel guilty cause you're a survivor
In a crowded room did you feel alone
Did you call up your mother and tell her you love her
Did you dust off that bible at home
Did you open your eyes and hope it never happened
Close your eyes and not go to sleep
Did you notice the sunset the first time in ages
Speak with some stranger on the street
Did you lay down at night and think of tomorrow
Go out and buy you a gun
Did you turn off that violent old movie you're watching
And turn on "I Love Lucy" reruns
Did you go to a church and hold hands with some stranger
Stand in line and give your own blood
Did you just stay home and cling tight to your family
Thank God you had somebody to love

I'm just a singer of simple songs
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith hope and love are some good things he gave us
And the greatest is love

I'm just a singer of simple songs
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith hope and love are some good things he gave us
And the greatest is love

The greatest is love
The greatest is love

Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day

'save the date'

i read your poems and you are my favorite poet and i don’t know what to do with these feelings that feel magical and stupid

thank you,
thank you.
i thought you might like how my body puffed up like a bird
i had to readjust my feathers
i have a melty look on my face i think
it can be made without a lot of money.

today i traded a plane voucher for a bag
of gold donuts
gold hubcaps
gold crystals
gold l.e.d. screens
good old golden sadness of the ancients
spreading the sad sad seed of the
male unicorn’s single prong
of sadness.

thank you thank you i give you
the predictable
the fertile correspondent.
it is a song i wrote
in bed beaming in early evening.

this expensive weeping
sweeps you like a machine up
your warm walls thank you
now. thank you,
i didn't know there would be
the hubris of mummies.
maybe we can harvest the hubris of bird mummies.
i know where some of those are.

(I) Love (Science) Poem

w/ a tire you add
to a motor
some tension
makes a spire where
things--

tender parabola
inverses and
I tend a parabola too
your bottom
lip.

there's such trickle
some sun--
not ours--
as dark as yellow
can go
animal almost.

you said something of tax
to the center of cities
to your brother
for incentive to
privately produce iron
beams
true tested
(sweat) across
my forehead you
don't
seem to notice
or mind.

imagine this world
class structure where
everything's of carbon
date me.

Young writers.

I am now no longer in my mid-twenties. That means, to me, that I am old. People/writers I look up to are younger than me. Lamenting my transition into the "late twenties," I'd like to celebrate a few younger writers, who have accomplished far more.

Cote Smith is 25. His friendship means more to me than he knows, I bet. He recently had a crushingly good story published by One Story called "Hurt People." Here is an excerpt from the story and a chance to support Cote and One Story by subscribing. Here is one of the editors' blog entry about Cote's story, his "concerns," and his talents. It is probably more interesting than anything I would say.

Alli Warren is probably somewhere around 25 (maybe I am way off), but I know she is younger than me. She is way more successful than me, that is for sure. Ron Silliman called her "one of those poets." It seems like she has been writing good poems forever; for example, here are some poems from 2005-ish in EOAGH. Here is a more recent e-chapbook from Duration Press called No Can Do (warning: PDF download in link). I will have the privilege of publishing a chapbook by her via Mitzvah Chaps very soon. Other info on Alli-chaps can be found here, here, here, and here.

Sam Pink is 25 or maybe 26 depending when his birthday his--his book I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It was published in 2008 and it says that he is 25, which is a weird thing to put in his bio since it will only be true for less than one year, unless the book was published on his birthday, then it would be true for one full year. Sam is published damn near everywhere on the internet. His stories aren't really "stories" sometimes, sort of in the way that Lydia Davis's stories aren't really stories sometimes. That's not to say that the "content" or "style" of Sam's work is anything like that of Davis, but it's pretty good.

Types of Rarity

1. Rare pleasures
2. Freak natural occurrences
3. Prodigal human abilities
4. Pangs (as in of brevity, missed chances, passing greatness, or awe)