The Chasing Iamb

*Why does Frank O'Hara slay me so?*

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don't you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

Frank O'Hara

i'm lighting votive candles
for the straight girls of america
lying on mattresses in their boyfriends'
loft apartments, posing naked for
their brilliant artist boyfriends, or otherwise
inspiring them to new levels of straight boy
genius, smoking cigarettes with each other
as they bitch about their sadly
tortured boyfriends, so proud
they've got a boy to bitch about.
i'm lighting votive candles
for the straight girls of america
because they'll never get the oscars
they deserve. and every now and then
i catch my ghost astride a cock that wasn't
even paying, hearing him ask
do you ever think of being with a woman?
and i'd seen enough pornography to
know the proper answer to send him
sifting through his brain like a little
black book, landing on the one
who used to watch her roommate
masturbate in boarding school.
she said i reminded her of
the mother she never met,
and i fell in love with her on
railroad tracks wishing he'd go away,
fell in love with her in his bedroom
wishing i was any place else
and she apologized for her body
when she saw my cunt as bare
as a brand, apologized like she hadn't
been paying attention and let some
important lesson pass her by.
and give me insults, give me
economic discrimination, give me
the darkened parking lot of a
windowless queer bar, give me
fleets of bigots and books banned
in libraries across america, feed the world
with lies about my life and plop a second
helping of oppression on my plate
and thank you for not making me straight.
straight girls of america, i am lighting
votive candles for your ignored and
misused clitorises, burning my draft card
for the war between the sexes,
but will be your soldier still.
i will escort you to abortionists
till the end of time, my bible-bruised
body braced against the door, i will
be joan of arc for you, madonna
and janet jackson, the voices in my head
pushing me ever into battle.
straight girls of america, i am
lighting votive candles in the church
of self-righteous condescension.
but sisters,
i've been there.

MIchelle Tea

I have trouble with friends who want to know what happened.
And no, I'm not missing the forest for the trees -
the genus, size and shape,
even when the author cares enough,
will escape me later, become a forgotten shadow
at the edge of the moors.

I am the worst witness of another witness,
read pages and pages without memory
of a character's features.
My rhythmic eyes remember little,
move away from that tape by the door
where I should measure the criminal's height.
What difference does that make?
He robbed me, I might tell the officer.
Isn't that enough?

What's a character? It's every fear of every name
ever introduced to at parties,
crammed into The Tenant of Windfell Hall.
Thank god for Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre.
The title and name the same.

Let me tell you about Jane Eyre:

there's lightning that cleaves a tree directly in two
on the night she decides to marry. That man. The dark one
who talks roughly and has dark eyes so dark his first born
reflects back out of them. That's Jane Eyre.
That's all.

Don't ask me for more. I don't know
once the book is down. But open it again:
I know that point in the forest -
breadcrumbs lead home in all directions. There is no place
lost quite like it. I read pages and pages, enthralled,
then forget my way as the moon sets.

And isn't it glorious to know every word will rush at me,
like that mad woman from the attic,
when I read again tomorrow night.

Norm Sacuta

Ruth Padel becomes Professor of Poetry in Oxford still having to deny that she had anything to do with the smear campaign against Derek Walcott. Meanwhile enjoy There Are No Male Groupies.

The truth is, goddesses are lousy in bed.
They will do anything it's true.
And the skin is beautifully cared for.
But they have no sense of it. They are
all manner and amazing technique.
I lie with them thinking of your
foolish excess, of you panting
and sweating, and your eyes after.
Jack Gilbert

Some men break your heart in two...
--Dorothy Parker, "Experience"
Some men carry you to bed with your boots on.
Some men say your name like a verbal tic.
Some men slap on an emotional surcharge for every erotic encounter.
Some men are slightly mentally ill, and thinking of joining a gym.
Some men have moved on and can't be seduced, even in the dream bars you meet them in.
Some men who were younger are now the age you were then.
Some men aren't content with mere breakage, they've got to burn you to the ground.
Some men you've reduced to ashes are finally dusting themselves off.
Some men are made of fiberglass.
Some men have deep holes drilled in by a war, you can't fill them.
Some men are delicate and torn.
Some men will steal your bracelet if you let them spend the night.
Some men will want to fuck your poems, and instead they will find you.
Some men will say, "I'd like to see how you look when you come," and then hail a cab.
Some men are a list of ingredients with no recipe.
Some men never see you.
Some men will blindfold you during sex, then secretly put on high heels.
Some men will try on your black fishnet stockings in a hotel in Rome, or Saran Wrap you 
     to a bedpost in New Orleans.
Some of these men will be worth trying to keep.
Some men will write smugly condescending reviews of your work, making you remember 
     these lines by Frank O'Hara:
I cannot possibly think of you/other than you are: the assassin/ of my orchards.
Some men, let's face it, really are too small.
Some men are too large, but it's not usually a deal breaker.
Some men don't have one at all.
Some men will slap you in a way you'll like.
Some men will want to crawl inside you to die.
Some men never clean up the matter.
Some men hand you their hearts like leaflets,
and some men's hearts seem to circle forever: you catch sight of them on clear nights,
bright dots among the stars, and wait for their orbits to decay, for them to fall to earth.

Kim Addonizio

From the best session in Jaipur, the best reflection of my life as it is now, gripped in adolescent self-pity

Too Much

I’m sick
Too many joints in my music box
Too much black beer in my golden tap
Too many pennies in my pockets
Too many pockets in my broke-down-pants
My fire is on fire and I’m sick

I’m sick
Too much sunshine in my weird wood
Too many gods in my chalice
Too much peace in my begging cup
Too many flies on my piece

Too many daisies in my dreadlocks
Too many fiddlers in my cupboard
Too many people’s come-on-in my kitchen
Too much ice in my dour dram
My fire is on fire and I’m sick

I’m sick
Too much Powers in my coffee cup
Too much water in my holy well
Too much hay in my high meadow
Too much rain in my winter

Too many whores on my street
Too many dark nights in the middle of my month
Too much ink in my pen
Too many blues in my black skies

Too much worry in my bare bed
Too many mice at my cheese
Too many pills under my pillow
Too much of a muchness is too much for me
My fire is on fire and I’m sick

I’m sick
Too many colours in my black rainbow
Too many hippies at my party
Too many bullets in my trunks
Too many poems in my toilet bowl
Too much learning and too much heartache
Too many lies in my love letters

Too many Buddhas under my fig tree
Too much Krishna at my table
Too much of a muchness is too much for me
My fire is on fire and I’m sick.

I’m sick people, say sick.

Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, translated into English by Mac Lochlainn and into Bengali by Sampurna Chattarji.