Mei-Mei & Prageeta Reading Tonight

Release Me from the Paying Passenger

There is nothing to really note in this world


you might say. But since crescent moons

frame brittle grass all over the world,
I won’t stop with this philosophy. I won
the argument yesterday when we were nearby
the park and the day before when you ran me over.

I have run away from you–with accidental
fortune in hands–not all of your bank statements.

But I am not a Calvinist in the true sense–I only
lowered it to ahistorical terms. I believe in principles–

prophetic principles. You say marred and I say martyr.
I drink two liters; you don’t drink anything.

There are pests roaming the floorboards.
There are animals all around us now.

Save the foolhardy measure for your male companions.
They desire this more readily–

more enigma, shall we say, to entertain them–
barren matadors or empathetics.

I need neither kind of grand marnier nor vodka

to wash my throat or collapse my senses to tiny

careless obliterations. The way this ended shut you out,
so drop the lensatic compass and lavish gift, and please, run.

Prageeta Sharma from the Boston Review
http://bostonreview.net/BR24.5/sharma.html


Ideal
by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge


1

I did not know beforehand what would count for me as a new color. Its beauty is an analysis
of things I believe in or experience, but seems to alter events very little. The significance of a bird
flying out of grapes in a store relates to the beauty of the color of the translucency of grapes.
There is a space among some objects on a table that reminded her of a person, the way the bird reminded her,
a sense of the ideal of the space she would be able to see. Beauty can look like this around objects.
A plastic bag on a bush, moving slightly, makes an alcove, a glove or mist, holding the hill.
Time can look like this. The plane of yourself separates from the plane of spaces between objects,
an ordered succession a person apprehends, in order to be reminded.


Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

Courtesy of University of California Press.

Asbery poem exerpt

But how does this work? And yet you see yourself growing up around the other, posited life, afraid for its inertness and afraid for yourself, intimidated and defensive. And you lacerate yourself so as to say, These wounds are me. I cannot let you live our life this way, and at the same time I am slurped into it, falling on top of you and falling with you. At this point it is again time for forgetting, not casuall so as to repeal it delightedly later on, but with a true generous instinct for ending it all.

John Ashbery exerpt from The New Spirit in 3 poems

Finito

This weekend seemed a marathon of parties and readings since graduation is upon us. I went to Amy McDaniel's on Wednesday and met some new people, i.e. non-poets and probably had too much fun. I had to read from my thesis on Thursday- it wasn't perfect and of course, now i wish i had read different poems, but overall it went well enough. Laura Cronk had some nice things to say about one of my poems and i was pleased with her kindness. Then I rushed back to T&W to catch the tale end of Tuten/Napoli Brooks reading and clean up.

I managed to see most of my peers read over the 3 days and felt overall it was a pretty solid showing, which is funny 'cause as a first year I was very very critical- shows what i don't know.

Went to Cafe Loup last night and it was a bit odd for me, since I've only been once before and once to Spain- both NS haunts. Everyone seemed to fall into usual patterns and famillarites and it made me think how absent i am to it all, but i managed to get in a few hellos, hahas, etc before calling it an early evening.

Today I went to my friend, Jared's for a bbq then left that to go to Haley's for her bbq. Both were dandy, but in truth i'm exhausted, tired of drinking, and making the smallest of chatter- yet here i am now- Sunday evening, a bit lonely after watching a sad movie and talking wiht my ex... makes me think of that song "oh what a world we live in."

Jack Gilbert

http://www.amherstbulletin.com/story/id/40357/

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2005/03/passive-verb-of-being-is-very-close-in.html

Out Of These Wounds, The Moon Will Rise

Out Of These Wounds, The Moon Will Rise


Now that the sun has set and the rain has abated,

And every porch light
in the neighborhood is lit,

Maybe we can invent something; I'd like a new

Way of experiencing te world, a way of taking

Into myself the single light shining at the center

Of all things without losing the dense, eccentric

Planets orbiting around it.

What you'd like is a more

Attentive lover, I suppose-. Too bad that slow,

Wet scorch of orange blossoms floating towards

The storm drain is not a vein of stars... we could

Make a wish on one of them; not that we would

Wish for anything but the impossible.


Jay Hopler- Green Squall

Drunken Winter

Drunken Winter

By Joseph Ceravolo



Oak! oak! like like
it then
cold some wild paddle
so sky then;
flea you asy
“geese geese” the boy
June of winter
of again
Oak sky

Sunny days and MFA's

It's a new month and lots of happenings in May. I've been under-caffienated and listless as of late- to say nothing of my constant state of sleepy/sleeplessness...

Well, my good 'ol thesis is due tomorrow and yours truly will be a bit late in turning that in- i'm thinking June... is that reckless?

I have a 2nd interview today so soon i'll have to put on the button-up, the slacks, and v-neck sweater and head down to downtown bk...

Frederic Tuten is reading at T&W on Thursday and Paul Violi on Friday, but alas, I believe I'll be at The New School reading my thesis... so here's to sunny days and MFA's, pre and post graduation hangover and general life letdowns that lie ahead