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

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August Fevered Writing — Sesshu Foster

This month’s collaborating poet, Sesshu Foster, produced this fevered writing  based on four prompts given by Terry Wolverton. Terry will be writing a new poem incorporating her choice of these words.

Hell’s Zip Code

Guadalupe to Union Station 7 pm great
white cumulus roiling cumulus upon cumulus
my little money tree
the student gave me, thanks! the idea that hell
hath a furious zip code: Kafkaesque letter carriers
scurrying to deliver dead letters
to some long dead forgotten LOS ANGELES
(Terminal Annex, of course) (of course)
open 24 hours like the gas station where the
woman set herself on fire, “I can’t take this shit anymore”
image that light—seen from a great distance—a burning
human (Ana Mendieta) like L.A. on fire 1992,
prelude to Katrina

Dreams Worth More Than Money

San Gabriels sleeping, yucca, creosote, Spanish broom, tobacco
sleeping, decayed granite asleep and clouds of dreams in the arroyos,
over the canyons, pitted, rugged, desiccated ravines of
consciousness that resists (therefore coupled to) Eurocentric
“thinkers” (Beaudrillard, Benjamin, Semiotexte, whatever)
resistance within parameters of colonization, the
resistance of colonizers against mestizaje, dark bodies,
the dreams of the Other, the Othering of dreams,
“to suggestion the European variant is lonely thinking
of sole thoughts

Slavery to Vegetables

Upstate NY’s blue mountains, they served us very (very)
nice home-made breads, scrumptious soups with barley in it,
like I said to somebody, “white people’s food,” but good!
Butter on fresh-baked breads, where do you get that?
I got a ticket driving south from the place on the wooded
highway— speeding, pulled over by female HP, “expired
registration,” it wasn’t my car! (I was to leave the vehicle
parked in the parking lot of the train station or airport,
whatever it was— its like a dream, faded ticket of a dream.)
Damp asphalt covered in leaves. Night flight across the
continent.

I’m No Longer Afraid

Mostly, they won’t try to kill you, mostly, the dead dog will not
lift its head to speak, you will not long wander through vacuous
spaces of warehouse-like Mexico City market places seeking the
exit and your people, Koreatown on a busy afternoon, the Metro
line station at Western, Jose Lozano people surrounding you,
“in a flood of humanity,” (black and white orchestral tones rising,
Charlie Chaplin’s clock flits by like a barracuda in the strait) any
minute now I gotta go, I’ll awaken, dispel the thin visions of poofy
memory, attendant sentiment and electric fan— Kerouac’s notion,
“we’re already dead,” the male apocalyptic self-indulgence of
themselves as apotheosis, not the woman attending to business,
doing the chores. No longer afraid.

Readers who are contemplating writing your own poems may work with just the prompts or choose to use one or more passages of fevered writing to inspire your poems. Best Reader poem we receive in August will win a $25 prize.

August Poetry Prompts

Prompts are drawn from the media—print, broadcast or social.

Terry Wolverton offered these prompts to collaborating poet Sesshu Foster:

• Hell’s Zip Code (capitalandmain.com)

• Dreams Worth More than Money (album title, Meek Mill)

• Slavery to Vegetables (rawstory.com)

• “I’m No Longer Afraid” (nymag.com/the cut)

Collaborating poet Sesshu Foster offered these prompts to Terry Wolverton:

• CA Conrad (Soma)tic Poetry prompt: Pick any (soma)tic poetry prompt by CA, this was one I could find at http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/confetti-allegiance-love-letter-jim-brodey:

Confetti Allegiance
Is there a deceased poet who was alive in your lifetime but you never met, and you wish you had met? A poet you would LOVE to correspond with, but it’s too late? Take notes about this missed opportunity. What is your favorite poem by this poet? Write it on unlined paper by hand (no typing). If we were gods we wouldn’t need to invent beautiful poems, and that’s why our lives are more interesting, and that’s why the gods are always meddling in our affairs out of boredom. It’s like the fascination the rich have with the poor, as Alice Notley says, “the poor are more interesting than others, almost uniformly.” This poem was written by a human poet, and we humans love our poets, if we have any sense. Does something strike flint in you from the process of engaging your body to write this poem you know and love? Notes, notes, take notes.
The poet for me in doing this exercise is Jim Brodey and his poem “Little Light,” which he wrote in the bathtub while listening to the music of Eric Dolphy, masturbating in the middle of the poem, “while the soot-tinted noise of too-full streets echoes / and I pick up the quietly diminishing soap & do / myself again.” Take your handwritten version of the poem and cut it into tiny confetti. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and toss the confetti poem in. Add garlic, onion, parsnip, whatever you want, pepper it, salt it, serve it over noodles or rice. Eat the delicious poem with a nice glass of red wine, pausing to read it out loud and toast the poet, “MANY APOLOGIES FOR NOT TOASTING YOU WHEN YOU WERE ALIVE!” Take notes while slowly chewing the poem. Chew slowly so your saliva breaks the poem down before it slides into your belly to feed your blood and cells of your body. Gather your notes, write your poem.
Love Letter to Jim Brodey

•                                                                         Dear Jim

  for

  those whose

  acid trips were a success

  only twice

  I’ve met men who

  are high exactly

  as they are sober

  both became my lovers

  both died one like

  you died Jim he

  played music too

  loud at parties to

  gather us into a

  single frequency feel

  healed for the length

  of a song

  nothing works forever

  there was something in

  the air that year Jim

  and you put it there

  a rapt center in

  pivot looking

  to face

  love again

  learning to

  accept what’s offered

  without guilt

  to be reminded

  of nothing

  my favorite day not dragging

  the dead around

  they’re looking

  for Lorca in the Valley

  of the Fallen

  Franco’s thugs would understand

  “developing countries” means

  getting them ready for

  mining diamonds drilling oil

  teaching them to make a

  decent cup of coffee for

  visiting executives

  if I’m not going

  to live like this

  anymore I must will

  every cell to

  stand away

  the History of Madness

  725 pages is too much to

  not be normal

  scorn is very

  motivating

  I’m vegetarian unless

  angels are on the

  menu mouth watering

  deep fried wings

  shove greasy bones in

  their trumpets

  the cost of

  scorn is

  often unexpected

  I see my fascist

  neighbor from downstairs

  “Did my boyfriend and

  I make too much

  noise last night?”

  his glare the

  YES that keeps

  me smiling

  • here’s another one: http://www.notnostrums.com/Conrad.html
  • and another: http://www.loadedbicycle.com/conrad.html#
  • and: http://somaticpoetrymeditations.blogspot.com/

  2. a prompt from Bernadette Mayer’s famous list:

  * Write what cannot be written; for example, compose an index.

  http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html

  3. a scientific one:

  Funding Medical Research

  • Role: medical scientist
  • Audience: prospective donors
  • Format: fundraising letter
  • Topic: contribute money for research
  • Strong Verb: persuade

  You are a medical scientist who is working to discover cures for different diseases. Your research requires special equipment and materials that are quite expensive. Write a fundraising letter to possible donors, persuading them to contribute money to your work.

  or

  Greatest Scientist of All Time

  • Role: you
  • Audience: scientist from a past era
  • Format: written interview
  • Topic: the greatest contribution to science
  • Strong Verb: write and document

  You have the opportunity to travel in a time machine into any past era of history. Choose a date and place to meet the person who, in your opinion, has made the greatest contibution to science. Write out the interview questions you will ask this scientist and document his or her answers. You will publish your interiew when you return to the present.

  http://www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com/science-writing-prompts.html

  4. any prompt from jerome rothenberg’s Technician’s of the Sacred:

  (here’s one)

  Looking for a way to spark your writing with imagery? Here’s a great suggestion from Sheila Bender. Though the exercise is taken from her book Writing Personal Poetry, any writer can put it to use. Bender writes:

  Recently I was standing on a hillside I had looked at years ago from a window at a writers conference. At that conference, I learned a useful exercise from my teacher Robert Hass, who went on to become the United States poet laureate. At the time, he was studying various culture’s poetry using a book called Technicians of the Sacred. In Africa, he taught us, a tribe called the Bantu has an oral poetic tradition they exercise while working. One person says a line and, in the rhythm of the work, another answers with an assocaition that shows the likeness between two objects or perceptions. “An elephant’s tusk cracking” could get the response, “The voice of an angry man.” That day, I looked at the hillside, saw wind in the grass and wrote, “Wind through the grass,” and answered with the line, “I have the feeling you have written.” Here are two-line bantus that students of mine have written in response to this exercise:

  Wire hangers on a bar in the closet

  Wild geese walking by a lake

  Children in a circle on the floor

  The beaded necklace

  Lizard rustles the jasmine leaves

  Father turning pages of “The Sunday NY Times”

  The full moon at midnight

  China dinner plate in a dark kitchen

  Write your own bantus, as many as you can. Try to evoke experiences of sound, taste and smell as well as touch and sight. This exercise is very much like metaphor and simile, but you are free of the need to make images grammatically correct and the results can be haunting.

  http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-genre/horror-by-writing-genre/how_to_create_haunting_imagery

  We invite readers to write poems in response to one or more prompts (or the fevered writing that results from these prompts) and submit  in the Comments section. The best Reader Poem we receive by August 31 will be awarded a $25 prize.

August Collaborating Poet — Sesshu Foster

In August, Sesshu Foster will collaborate with Terry Wolverton on new dis•articulations poems.

Sesshu Foster has taught in East L.A. for 30 years. He’s also taught writing at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work has been published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, and State of the Union: 50 Political Poems. Winner of two American Book Awards, his most recent books are the novel Atomik Aztex and the hybrid World Ball Notebook.