December dis•articulations poem — Terry Wolverton

LISTEN

I rise from the bed of words
where we fuck in perverse ink,
tattoo the sheets gold and blue.
Words are little boats
on an ocean of sheets.
We spread our nets, dip in,
but words run wild;
we can never control their play.

By day, we are only women,
beasts with holes covered up,
our creations policed,
crushed by the dickheads’ sharp words,
flinching into the red sun.
Hush, they can overhear
our venereal warmth,
detect our ambrosial breath.

Around the fire at night,
we are children
writing on the sky,
tattooing horses in the dark.
I know the ancient stories
but you invented the stars.
Wherever we are,
it will never be quiet.

Listen. I will make a true hut
of words and never leave it.
You traffic in story,
tap it out on every sidewalk.
If it’s a predictable disease,
it’s not our fault.
It is the wind’s sure breath
that bothers the golden hours.

 

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December dis•articulations poem — Yvonne M. Estrada

Human Recipe Story

Overdue laughter
triggered a high-tech
monsoon.

Everything was reborn
lucky, flowers yellow
and sky blue.

Fortunately,
angels’ wings
sweep everything.

Centuries of memory
become paths
to heaven.

Miles and miles
of illusion
gone.

 

November dis•articulations poem — Terry Wolverton

At the beginning of the month, Terry gave collaborating poet Douglas Kearney four prompts. Douglas conducted fevered writing on each of the prompts and gave that back to Terry. From those words, Terry constructed this dis•articulations poem.

JANKY MOJO

I came in with janky mojo,
head peppered with hard thoughts,
face painted with Kaiju’s blood,
skeleton in a spooky suit.

Who was that vampire in a red cape,
its song tracing through my pulse,
heckling my impatient choices,
talking shit about God?

When did I become a cold machine
that breathes frost and coughs dust?
My bone cage jumps
in the attic of my disappointment.

Lorca too was disappointed
in the magpie’s quick-like song.
My appendages cannot climb
to any honey pulse to fix it.

But egomaniacs love religion,
think it’s all about them.
Gods dance like insects in my head,
and cup my red-eyed soul.

End-times only a strobe-lit
boogeyman, just enough horror
that sometimes I look side-eye
through the flapping trees.

In the end, my fluid roots
the only curative to not bottom out.
I came in abuzz with janky mojo
and no hoodoo gonna take it back.

November dis•articulations poem —Douglas Kearney

For our dis•articulations collaboration, Douglas gave Terry four writing prompts. Terry engaged in fevered writing with each of them and gave the results back to Douglas, who then used the words from that fevered writing to create this dis•articulations poem.

THE LIVESTOCK

we’ve places in our properties for them,
lots for growing them into lots more for us.
in the places, there, we can watch them,
our faces like hands having want. we, beaten

by a cooler outside, said they got a coat kind-of-
a-skin sewn up on their body until—beaten
by the cooler outside—we slip them out it
to wear it on us and so we

are we, for we wear their skin for us.

by our stove-like imagination,
in it, they are a wad of living Crisco,
Crisco shut up in them until we cook it
out them, them out it, into a pan, a cut of them
fried in it out a can and into our mouths,
ground inside our mouths turning us into we-
who-wear-wads-of-body-in-our-bodies
and the wad’s bodies on our bodies and so we

are we, for we cook to enjoy this insiding.

times, we’ve agreements with us
to think for them impassive bodies what they think
our love is like, so we spin answers out slashed mouths,
snipped tongues, the splatterings beaten out their they
in our lots for growing us out of them:

we say they may say we are universes gashing Earth

or baboons long ago hardened into clothes

or that by their brown livings we guarantee us
they want in our mouths, to be our coats,
to tiptoe their they through our imaginations,
graceful as, doting as mothers sewn to cries.

no no no no no—our love is nothing but goodbye.
and how we only want to love it all and so

all of them.

September dis•articulations poem — Donna Frazier

For our dis•articulations collaboration, Donna gave Terry four writing prompts. Terry engaged in fevered writing with each of them and gave the results back to Donna, who then used the words from that fevered writing to create this dis•articulations poem.

What the trees know

Once you were bird float and tree song,
cloud mouth pressed to sky, no desire

but light. You were spirit teased from
time and its beautiful hooks, matter

loosed and crooning in the mirrored
night. It’s said we were kicked out,

bleeding into cities, jailed and judged
without wonder. But beloved,

I have glimpsed you gazing into
narcissus and manzanita,

changed by the thought of escape.
You home to the big old trees,

giving yourself over to God and his
armies of leaves, to birds spreading

down layettes on the concrete banks
of rivers. Our nature is to want,

to try, to balloon into yearning,
but beloved, be still, be faithful

only to now. You are moon and air
and lover. Freed, you are only expanse.

August dis•articulations poem—Terry Wolverton

At the beginning of the month, Terry gave collaborating poet Sesshu Foster four writing prompts. Sesshu engaged in fevered writing with each of them and gave the results back to Terry, who then used the words from that fevered writing to create this dis•articulations poem.

HELL’S ZIP CODE

A letter carrier in Koreatown
dreams of women, bodies dark as tobacco
dreams of resistance, of granite and flood.

The hour is apocalyptic.
Money and fire are killing us.

Union Station decaying, no train of thoughts
will leave this afternoon, no great distance will
be covered, now the terminal is burning.

We sought a damp, vacuous sleep.
We awakened to slavery.

In Mexico City, NY, LA— we’re
rolling through markets of the colonizers
surrounded by dead, Eurocentric thinkers.

Where do we exit this head space?
Where is the clock forgotten?

Across this continent females and males no
longer couple, busy themselves annexing
the lonely minutes, but there’s no where to park.

We no longer see the other
across canyons of sentiment.

Spanish broom rises over the mountains, but
we can’t drive there anymore, no vehicle,
no gas. No place not covered in black asphalt.

What is your vision worth to you,
already dispelling in clouds?

It’s the cumulus that leaves me furious.
Is this a prelude to light, or are we like
the thin dogs that wander the pitted highway?

We flit within parameters;
got a ticket but can’t take flight.

The letter carrier will not open this
hand-made letter to herself, delivered in
blue notes from her faded memory, her dreams.

August dis•articulations poem — Sesshu Foster

At the beginning of the month, Sesshu gave Terry four writing prompts. Terry engaged in fevered writing with each of them and gave the results back to Sesshu, who then used the words from that fevered writing to create this dis•articulations poem.

For Terry Wolverton

burn down the world, because the beer in front of you sweats in its glass
because of a hot pastrami sandwich, pastrami with mustard
because of the glasses, the cars, everyone rushing somewhere
because of a TV and the announcer’s voice
because of the cat locked in the bedroom, because of anything, because of the trees
because of so many in cars rushing in fading twilight, enamored of darkness
burn down the world,
burn down the world

outside the world, everyone is okay, doing things they imagine
outside of the world, you dragged your intellect to mass graves and prison
outside of the world, anything is prayer, nobody practices at childhood
outside the world, those who entered the glinting pain and came out
outside the trees, those who entered the green, you and nobody else
outside the world, those who entered the trees and disappeared
outside the world, you and nobody else
in front of you, you and nobody else

I cover the floor in salt,
there you will find yourself
next to anyone, next to many men who die themselves
I cover the floor in fading twilight,
there you will find yourself
like a crack in your hand, because you are convinced,
because you are certain, next to poets and many who answer the press of time
I cover the floor in similes,
like similes of wire and reason, there you will find yourself
next to the TV of childhood and the announcer’s voice
let these reasons remind you of a handful of names,
a handful of days

July dis•articulations poem—Terry Wolverton

In July, Terry gave collaborating poet Olga Garcia Echevarria four prompts. Olga engaged in fevered writing with each prompt and gave the results back to Terry. This poem is composed by Terry of words from Olga’s fevered writing.

MY MILKY BLUES

An atheist, a dolphin and a homo
walk into Heaven. God looks up but cannot
decipher their cratered faces. Rose water
spills onto the altar silk, marking it pink.

Long-stemmed and small-boned, I scatter whenever
rain spills against the church boat, unanchored in
a chalky sea. Amethyst breath of the moon
touches my face, baffles the infinite word.

You are native to the fierce depths, I am wrapped
in guns and dirty laundry. When we fuck we
go to Paradise, minus the amber ghosts.
All that upward leaping is just like marriage.

I keep imagining your sad, translucent
mouth, a haiku in space with no gravity.
Those plush goodbyes made me gasp with poetry,
La Luna pillowed on the surface of time.

Sharks are now people. Women are pagan. Earth
is littered with injury. Heaven spotted
with scientists, armed with examples. God knows
who are the dead, red jelly in the charred heart.

July dis•articulations Poem — Olga Garcia Echeverria

At the beginning of the month, Olga gave Terry four prompts. Terry engaged in fevered writing with each of them and gave the results back to Olga, who then used the words from that fevered writing to create this dis•articulations poem.

Wildfires

I.
Bam! Just like that.
Another woman of color
eradicated by the system.

Why not start a wildfire
with all the newspaper articles?

It makes as much sense
as anything.

II.
She needed
more hummingbirds
more salvia
more seconds on the Universal clock

She needed
more nectar to sip
more time
to let it all hang out
to sit serenely, thinking
to small talk at dinner
to gossip with friends

She needed more time
to write
to birth
to live

to sleep
inside the safest place, her own navel,
spinning wheels of energy, yellow
Chakra vibrating, the mystery
of the undulating Universe
dripping from her fingertips

She needed more softness,
this purple-colored woman
bellowing through time,
wildfires in her eyes…

Winner, dis•articulations Reader Poem for June — Donna Prinzmetal

Donna Prinzmetal is a poet, psychotherapist and teacher. She has taught poetry and creative writing for over twenty-five years to adults and children. Donna often uses writing to facilitate restoration and healing in her psychotherapy practice. Her poems have appeared in many magazines including: Prairie Schooner, The Oregonian, The Comstock Review, and The Journal. Snow White, When No One Was Lookingwas published in May of 2014 by CW Books, an imprint of WordTech Communications.  This is a book of persona poems in which Snow White speaks, often in a contemporary voice, and includes multiple versions of the fairy tale.  It is Donna’s first book.

Her poem,  “Treasure Hunt,” appeared on this blog on June 21, 2015.

https://disarticulations2015.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/reader-poem-by-donna-prinzmetal-3/

Donna will receive a $25 honorarium for the prize. We encourage readers to be inspired by the process and play along. Each month, we’ll award one $25 prize for the best reader poem we receive.