Archive
Flying
Poems by 5 Brass Tacks: D’Arcy Randall, W. Joe Hoppe, Judy Jensen, David Meischen, and Katherine Durham Oldmixon; video, “The Process of Flying,” edited by Katherine Durham Oldmixon with the assistance of Arturo Lomas Garza
Unleashed
She pushes off without the aid of wings, strokes
air to rise above the humming wires, above
the patchwork sharp-peaked roofs that block
their view below, skies breaking off the coast,
horizon lapping fenced backyards and hard-
pack, rainless grasses, bloomed-out morning
glories, the earthbound shouts that raise
their net of fear below. She does not thud
among the earthbound stares. Nothing
brings her down but a blue eye opening.
by David Meischen, with Brass Tacks
***
Dreaming
She pushes off years, stroking air
without wings, a humming body
rising above grasses and blown out morning glories,
rising over sharp peaked roofs below skies
broken off the coast of the everyday,
rising through the fluttering galaxy
because it’s evolutionary
to abandon land,
featherless among touchable stars,
tumbling hard those nights,
a blue eye opening,
a hard held expectation, wild.
by Judy Jensen, with Brass Tacks
***
Flying
It’s been years since I stroked air to fly
pushing off without the aid of wings
to rise above the humming wires
through gossamer and troubled flutterings
skies break from the coast of the everyday
red roofs green pastures capture living below
while I transcend, featherless,
rainless grasses, shriveled kale, bloomed out morning
glories and reach towards touchable stars
the soundest advice pipes weakly from the ground
but not once do I tumble to the sidewalk
thud hard against their reasonable concerns
even now sometimes I rise
pressing foot to pavement to catch the air again
by W. Joe Hoppe, with Brass Tacks
***
Flying
I once stroked air to fly—my wingless body
pushed off dirt to rise above young gnats
bloomed-out fantasies and morning glories,
to rise above the high wires humming,
the peaked roofs holding down the living.
Rising to skies that break from the coast,
past rainless grass and galaxies,
I followed evolution, leaving land,
featherless among the stars close
enough to touch. Shouts raised a net of fear,
although I never fell and even now
I still press hard to heel in expectation.
by D’Arcy Randall, with Brass Tacks
***
Flying
It’s been years since I stroked air to fly—
my wingless body pushed off dirt
to rise above gossamer humming wires,
blown-out morning glories, rainless grasses,
and troubling young gnats before my face,
to rise above the garden kale and cabbage,
over patchwork patches of sharp roofs
holding down the living below—
because it’s evolutionary to abandon
land, to glide among the cool, touchable
stars, above the earthbound shouts
that raise their net of fear below:
“Come down, come down before you fall to earth
where you belong!” but not once did I tumble
to the sidewalk, thud hard among their screams;
their upturned stares never reached me
those nights, nothing brought me to ground
but a hard-held expectation, a blue eye opening,
and some days still I raise my heels
from pavement and feel the familiar pull.
by Katherine Durham Oldmixon, with Brass Tacks
Reading by the authors, except for W. Joe Hoppe’s “Flying,” which is read by Dave Bonta — Download the MP3
Process notes
Brass Tacks is a circle of Austin poets who meet periodically to discuss and critique one another’s work. W. Joe suggested that if one of us were to volunteer a poem, we might take the workshop model to the extreme. Katherine offered an early draft of her poem, “Flying,” and the other poets went to work, while Katherine began putting together a video of the process. The 5 Brass Tacks agreed that she would coordinate the workshop and serve as the final editor.
Each poet then submitted a draft based on the original, along with an image of the marked-up poem. All agreed not look at one another’s poems until each had written his or her own version — but some “cheated,” and D’Arcy remarked that cheating really mutated the signature. In the next round, we tried to write a final, collaborative version. Although everyone worked with all five poems, each poet produced a “final” poem that varied little from his or her individual poem in voice, style and interpretation. David and Judy’s title hint at some of those differences. Katherine’s first version of the final poem attempted to stitch together the others, but couldn’t accommodate the strategies of compression or individual stylistic or thematic choices.
We learned that if we had chosen a collaborative project in which each of us produced a line (as in an exquisite corpse), a stanza (as in a renga) or a poem (as in a crown) we would each have something to point to as our own. We also realized that if we had begun with a poem to which none of us had an interior or original relationship, it would have been easier to write. (It seemed that either Katherine had to be the final editor or couldn’t be.) Finally, we realized that we had mutated the poem to create five poems, each borrowing substantially from one another, each our own.
Note on the video
The video, “The Process of Flying,” combines photographs by Katherine Durham Oldmixon of the Austin Kite Festival with images of marked-up poems in the process of collaboration by D’Arcy Randall, David Meischen, W. Joe Hoppe and Judy Jensen. The piano music tracks are from the GarageBand library. The video was composed and edited by Katherine Durham Oldmixon with the assistance of Arturo Lomas Garza.
arriving at form : : 3:15 am
slingshots hold no
thunder and lightning
inside a shoe that doesn’t fit
imagine cramming all that eternity back
in the middle of summer
pulled around the building
i sat in the living room
opened the window
here: it’s hot
my dream angel solid and
burning mind no time for feathers
HOT we wished for
slashes of lightning
physical form is no small feat
let’s not fool ourselves
drowned for safe
thunder and lightning
arriving back from the dead
thawing a bottle of wine
with a drum roll please
my dream angel solid and
when the light flashes
fiercely beautiful down the hallway
let’s not fool ourselves
inside a shoe that doesn’t fit
shed some clothes
roam the house
of my youth more human than
closing windows and
slowly warming coal
my dream angel solid and
thunder and lightning
inside a shoe that doesn’t fit
us now and the light
in the middle of summer
whether the baby was
arriving back from the dead
physical form is no small feat
and the thunder rolls — i
sneak up on us the
slingshots hold no
burning mind no time for feathers
such as these doors
i pull the blankets over him
his hand a squeeze
by Tod McCoy, Gwendolyn Alley, and Danika Dinsmore
Process notes
This collaboration was born from a larger ongoing collaboration that has been around since 1993. The 3:15 Experiment is an annual creative experiment in collective consciousness. Every year a shifting menagerie of poets wakes up each morning at 3:15 AM during the entire month of August to write. If participants choose to share their work, they can present it unedited on the project’s website. The importance of the unedited poems is so the purity of 3:15 AM mind stays intact.
When Danika, Tod, and Gwendolyn decided to write a collaborative poem for qarrtsiluni, Danika’s suggestion was to use their poems from a specific day from the 2008 3:15 Experiment. They randomly selected Aug 15, since it was the middle of the month.
Continuing on the “15” theme, Gwendolyn suggested they each pick 15 lines, work on them independently, and each form a stanza. They selected 5 lines from each of their three poems (equalling 15 lines) written at 3:15 AM on August 15, 2008. They selected the lines independently, so as not to influence each other, and did not know which lines the other two poets had selected until the stanzas were revealed (hence the repeated lines). Danika and Gwen selected lines from the poems purposefully, while Tod cut up the lines and selected them randomly.
Danika arranged hers first, then Gwendolyn, and then Tod pulled together the final stanza. They then broke the stanzas up into an agreed upon final poem and rearranged the lines until they were satisfied. There were only minor edits (for continuity and verb tense conformity) other than arranging the lines. Their intention was to keep the language as close to their original “3:15 AM mind” writings.
They collaborated solely via e-mail, and much of the time they were multi-tasking as they arranged lines. Gwen was taking notes at a cultural tourism conference. Tod was evaluating a bootstrap program, rewriting the messaging on another bootstrap module, and cruising craigslist. Danika was juggling two jobs: posting an episode of a TV show and working a night shoot on the set of a horror film.
If you would like to read the original poems from which the lines were taken, go to www.315experiment.com/2008 and click on Tod, Gwendolyn, or Danika and then on Aug 15.
Fire
The last of ten selections from the unpublished manuscript, Flying Home. (Click on image to see at larger size.)
by steve d. dalachinsky and Sig Bang Schmidt
Wodn
(Click on image to view at a larger size.)
by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen and John M. Bennett
For process notes, see “Fude.”
Museum’s Aftermath
The silk shuddered, coughed
& collapsed upon the vinyl.
Amidst the costumed dragons,
I look for bones and party
favors— The origami map
is crestfallen. Lounging
terribly amidst signature
tattoos, the faded hearts
and hula girl
bleed into their alluring
landscape—a synecdoche—
formed and torn and built
over, shinier than skyscrapers,
pliant as candy. Trails
of fingerprints meander
over discarded spikes,
twisting into cursive
along the nape, tres-
passing’s elaborate script.
by Jenna Cardinale and Bruce Covey
For process notes, see “Cling.”
Sweet Sad Parade
“Sweet Sad Parade,” from Last Callers and Losers, by The King Canutes
And the snow late in the year it made me go so far from here
Now I’m back to see you dear
The hammocks and the half-drawn shades are beckoning in familiar ways
No one else compares to you but they’re just the way we were
And I miss you every day but I love this brand new blur
And even there the summer fades I kiss you here as if to say
Though they’re different names, these friends I’ve made we’re all the same sweet sad parade of
Last callers and losers, the cheap dates and the aim confusers,
The gin and tonic abusers, the leisure addicts and the kiss refusers
The King Canutes are Richard Alwyn Fisher and Keir Woods (vocals and acoustic guitars) with a shifting cast of other musicians. On this track: Scott Johnson (lap steel) and Jim Bentley (recording and mixing).
Process notes
Richard writes:
This is one of the tracks that I had written much earlier and Keir and I really altered it from its earlier incarnations. The lyrics got trimmed down and Keir added the doubled vocal and created the second guitar part. The original version of the Last Callers and Losers record was going to be more of a representation of our live show, just Keir and I playing and singing; the culmination of our collaboration together. When we began re-recording, we decided that we would make it bigger, fuller, a more collaborative process. Our original intention was still to leave “Sweet Sad Parade” as just the two of us. However, in the interim I had been collaborating with Scott Johnson on another project called The Winter Drinks, in which we played this song and he played the beautiful lap steel part. I was so set in my mind that we’d eventually go with the stripped down arrangement that I almost didn’t want him to play on the track at all, I’m forever grateful that he insisted. (See also “Let’s Mess It Up Again,” earlier in this issue. –Eds.)
Jennie, or How Things Go Down in The Yankee Doodle
Already Jennie hated the other woman’s handbag. It was shiny-faced, like its owner, and oystery from too many rhinestones.
She still couldn’t believe her regular, her Milt, had come with a date at The Yankee Doodle that night. For one, he usually had dinner at 5:48. It was already 7:30.
Jennie defiantly chewed on Juicy Fruit gum. Mr. Sekulski didn’t allow gum on the clock, but Jennie considered it an integral part of her server face, so quite often chomped away behind his back. She thought her jaw action a nice cross between demure and dominant. What did Mr. Sekulski know of bad habits, anyway? He chewed his nails every time he tried to figure out which numbers to beat on the cash register. Jennie had honed her server face, first at Il Muto’s, one of those greasy “Italian” chains, and now here at The Yankee Doodle, re-established in 1964 by Mr. Sekulski’s grandaunt, long since imprisoned for tax evasion. Although she disliked the similarity between the words “server” and “servant,” she disliked even more how people spoke the word “waitress,” like it was a pit with a bull attached somewhere on the edge.
Even though she and Milt had never been lovers, she was the one who faithfully microwaved his meals three times a day. Their daily conversation consisted of:
“What would you like today, sir?”
“The usual.”
The usual just meant pea soup. But it was like Beethoven to Jennie’s ears. She loved how she knew what Milt was thinking, even before he’d say it. It made her feel she finally knew the reason she’d returned all her library books on time, all these years.
Milt never exchanged her smiles. Sometimes she thought his reticence was his best feature, a sign of integrity. She had been married for three years to a man named Grant who didn’t excel in the honesty department. How he smiled at her every time he did something wrong, like when she caught him wearing her maternity underwear or that time he ran over the last garden dwarf. And now that she thought of it, she had read Moll Flanders at the age of twelve and had ever since dyed her blond hair blonder, almost white really.
All of a sudden, she worried that she still hadn’t gotten over Grant and Moll Flanders. She blamed it on the other woman’s gaudy handbag.
There must be some mistake. Or some deep-sleepwalking going on. For a moment, she flattered herself into thinking that it might be a ploy to insert more dialogue in their relationship, hers and Milt’s. However, Milt’s lopsided necktie told a different story.
In her heart Jennie knew that most communication occurred without words. Her own parents were spookily similar, like twins, and seldom spoke. When they did it was about milk. Her father drove a milk truck until he died. He liked milk.
Jennie tried her best to hang on to the old ways. She glided toward Milt’s table, minus the pre-warmed bowl of green pea soup, hopefully sparkling, even without the usual sparkling mineral water.
“What would you like today, sir?”
“I’ll have the menu-of-the-day. The lady will have some green salad.”
She stayed tableside a moment too long. She had been seriously hoping for a future with Milt, had been hoping to introduce her nine-year old Sonia to him. She hadn’t yet been able to come up with a plausible excuse, couldn’t decide whether “I’d like you to meet Sonia” should go before “Enjoy your meal” or after it. Until the perfect occasion arrived, Sonia continued to wait for her out in the car, doing her homework, at times falling asleep without even brushing her teeth.
“We’d also like some red wine. And heap on the MSG,” he winked.
Jennie was startled. Again, she was reminded of her ex, and of The Hut. That’s what she had called the family cabin in Vermont where they’d gone to live, to get away from cable tv. Grant wanted to go back to nature. Married with a small child, Jennie had naively moved with him into those mountains, believing his stories about how he could fish and live off the land. Grant’s wealthy parents had pretty much disowned him and he didn’t tell them that they were moving up there. As long as he thought it was financially sound, he’d stayed in touch with them. But when he discovered that his father had given away his money to his guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Grant got all huffy and hurt. For her part Jennie sent a cheery, vague postcard to her cousin in Boston.
Could Milt be setting a trap? But what was that to her.
“You okay?” asked Bill Sekulski, looking up from a gigantic can of tuna.
Jennie ignored him and continued into the kitchen with her usual efficient pace.
When she came out with their tray, she didn’t notice the slippery-when-wet sign. As she tripped, she noticed an errant crack on the ceiling. It joined up with another crack and formed the shape of Ohio. This in turn reminded her of last night’s dream. Grant was there with Jennie’s nonexistent sister. The Hut was full of antiques. A squirrel detail highlighted how Jennie wasn’t in touch with her food feelings. Everything was in sepia tones, almost colonial.
As long as she could remember she’d wanted to be an artist but now she was a waitress and she was having trouble with her equilibrium. She watched the pot roast, the pasta, the buttered jacket potato fly. All she could think of was: Is this the only way to go down on a man?
It was then that Jennie remembered a lot. It was a moment like a painting. The painting answered ten (invisible) questions. Is this the only way to get along in this under-civilized world? Did Mao carry around a little book of sayings by actual word birds? What’s number 17 — Haddock or Meatloaf? What would it be like to live in a room full of silver clothes? The man said start on the seventh floor but Jennie started on the first. How does it feel to be a distance? Which soup goes best with death? Do these crop patterns really belong here, in this family game? What is the distance between two speeding trains one carrying Jennie with Sonia and one carrying Milt? Why all of a sudden this foray into a shared past?
And in this painting, she knew there was no getting over her past. Grant had been right, though she’d denied it. She wanted to escape her past, including the fairly recent past, every step of the way. These last months, the leering cops and stingy hippies, were making her antsy. She and Sonia spent many hours in the local library looking at maps of the world.
During the whole slow-mo, potato-sailing nanosecond, Jennie remembered more things about Grant.
Before The Hut they lived in numerous shabby apartments. Grant had assiduously avoided employment. Not that he wasn’t qualified for any manner of job, but he managed to miss interview after interview. Once he made it to a job interview, on time, he was likely offered the job, but he invariably missed the first two days of work. His supervisors didn’t have to try too hard to find ways of letting him go. So their second apartment was crummy as their first, only located near a drug corner and ten feet from the elevated. Convenient, the ad had boasted. It seemed to be haunted by red-eyed mice.
During these lean years Jennie supported them by her minimum wage clerical job at a foundation for humanitarian concerns. Quitting that job to go back to nature with Grant had seemed easy at the time. She had forgotten all of this, except parts about Sonia.
Up in the mountains Grant quit shaving and bathing. Jennie got tired of cold baths. The first couple of weeks passed calmly. She and Sonia made sculptures out of sticks and stones. Witches, some might suspect, if they saw them. But it became clear fast that they didn’t have enough supplies and that Grant had no idea how to live off the land, farm, sew, fish, build, cook. He was good at scheming, but all of his schemes required capital and infrastructure, not to mention customers. For example, he considered butler school. He’d read that there was money in that, and that when the boss was away, he’d have the run of a stately home. His only plausible idea was to start an eco-T-shirt company, with Jennie designing the mottos and illustrations. But that scheme only lasted one long, dark November evening. He’d forgotten all about it the next day. Soon after he really started to scare Jennie and Sonia with his vacant eyes and soundless dances, Jennie knew they had to bolt.
Jennie was falling down again, this time in the Yankee Doodle. Everything went black for a nanosecond.
There was baked potato mashed into many crannies, including the other woman’s handbag, her cleavage, the bald spot on Milt’s head. What was Mr Sekulski shouting now? Something about the end of the world again?
As Jennie fell, the floor became part of her face for a moment. It felt like a bad marriage that had suddenly righted itself.
When she propped herself on her elbows, there was Milt, fawning over his date. She experienced a sense of release, of happiness almost, for the first time in what seemed like a hundred years. All this excitement was making her hungry. And she was never hungry. Now that she had remembered so much she knew that she could proceed safely on and on with her forgetting.
by Arlene Ang and Valerie Fox
Reading by Nathan Moore — Download the MP3
Process notes
Valerie writes:
“Jennie, or How Things Go Down in The Yankee Doodle” was the first story that Arlene Ang and I wrote together. We wrote and edited it “inside out,” the way we both tend to write poetry. We both like taking one word or phrase written by the other and just running with it — so we’re always delighting and surprising each other with new directions. After the first few drafts, we get into this mode, also, where we edit quite freely any aspect or part of the story. In “Jennie,” we wanted to tell a big story in a short space. Jennie’s own story is revealed to her during the traumatic episode at the center of the story. Sometimes when reading or writing that kind of thing can actually happen.
At the Paper Mill: Chance Meeting or…?
At last — let’s count
how many boreal stumps could fit
on the head of a linchpin, your hungry
pocketa pockets buzzing with
bewildering sooty pulp.
I’m shaking your hand,
an isolated touch
that works miracles in a crowded
room. Sometimes it’s luck,
at other times, hope. Your mind,
as I read it in your eyes,
remains the same defensive gun, quick
with printworthy asides, another
loggerhead view, dusted like gold,
eager to roll
and howl in the hunt.
by Greta Aart and Sally Molini
For process notes, see “Vanishing Biography.”
goal box
(Click on image to view at larger size.)
by Andrew Topel and Spencer Selby
Silver
Squeak of fishing reels
the simplest cast they knew
backwards into fall alas keep moving as best they can
in a recreational way they are able to cast
off the backs of working boats
and gather in pastime although memory’s tackle box
is scant
so scant they feel they can wade in to face the finned vandals
never lock oars or be flung raw as bait on an untested line
which if pushed cannot complete
the thought early or close
oblong silver box dented and ridged with long use
three layers fold out: sinkers
on the bottom along with a few flies
and odd lures
then rows of leaders extra spinners
extra hooks of all sizes
a whetstone for sharpening blunt hooks
rounded points that no longer hold
what I have in my possession
scant box that I keep
and keep as I can
with long use the box empties its lining snagged
in rounded time its layers lose their leverage only the odd joint holds
leader to sinker a few flies whet the granite
leaning the way families tend some thirty sinkers along
the bottom that no longer holds
by K. Alma Peterson and Kathleen Jesme
Download the MP3 (reading by K.)
For process notes, see “Giver of Givens.”
qarrtsiluni 