a
reporter
for the student paper
asked me
what career i would take
if
i wasn’t a writer.
i
looked at him
and said:
at this point in my life
i guess porn star is...
u
i
a nvrjcdfk
xmybqtg
lsczhwrp
e
o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NMtWcxW6Tw
My college buddy from years ago, the brilliant keyboardist Curtis Kendrick, met me in a NYC practice room and we bashed out basic chords,...
So when he left
I longed for the old
house I had. So often,
late summer in that
house, marigolds
on the steps for a
lost weekend.
One year I raked
maple...
Oil on canvas, 3'x4'
We will speak, all wind and hail
icy tambourine of tin roof or nights
I sat on your bed folding warm
towels, pairing socks, still
inside out with...
I’m not hungry. I appraise
the contents of the office fridge
anyway: a carton of soy coffee creamer,
three sack lunches, a four-pack
of flavored coconut water, someone’s
bottle of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsPi3hE640o
Guitar and video - Jenn Zed
Cello composed and played by Yuki Louvière, Berlin
This piece of music is a pre-release from my forthcoming album -...
jaded by the complexity of it all
sometimes it's best to focus on a single thing:
the tops of your shoes
we just keep walking, though
traffic whistles...
After the Violin
Gypsies from Spain cause their own heartbreak
Anthony Bourdain said
I don’t know what that means maybe
we all cause our own
disasters in search of something...
As a tango dancer as well as a photographer I wanted to find a way to combine my two passions, so I experimented with composing...
She tells me I am panicking, to try to take steady, slow breaths.
I wasn't panicking when this started, I was asleep.
Asleep sitting up, of...
Water in toilet is frozen.
Shit piling up on top
(took a good one this
morning,
though I don't know
from what).
Mop bucket of water
harvested ten days ago
to flush...
The Albany Public Library Foundation celebrates poet and teacher Lyn Lifshin this year as a 2019 Literary Legend, together with author Peter Golden and...
After a long period of introspection, I have come to believe two things: 1) that human intelligence is vastly over-estimated and 2) that human...
This year, Submittable raised its prices by over 100% to publications that previously received literary journal pricing. In our case, this price hike went...
https://soundcloud.com/rc-james-user841120068/z0001186
Jhonny Flaymz wuz tha mos’ baddass rocah
in da sevun sounze districk dountoun dadda.
Cum bak to da flatt wun nycht hardon
mynd trubbled extreeme ubout Jadah...
One night,
as they stood outside their cave,
the stink of smoked leaves and
urine still choking their breath,
they had visions of mushroom clouds.
Terrified, they ran back...
.john threatens mary.
.attempted murder.
.there were traces of blood.
.hiding the body.
.the confession & doing time.
.john reflecting on his behaviour.
On the last day
a homeless man
offered a woman with a briefcase
a lecture on living
& she listened
& the man with a daisy applique on his...
The IRS said: By law we are prohibited from releasing
hatchling barracudas
hiphop
trains into the tunnel
Screw’s censored 2013 wall calendar
footage from the show
a profile of the...
Oil on hardboard - 100cm x 51cm
Sometimes a discussion helps.
Sometimes it doesn't.
It won't hurt to give it a try.
I could lose those 10 stubborn pounds.
You could harden a muscle or...
Acrylic, pencil, chalk, ink on Kraft 280gm corrugated cardboard paper – 30cm x 37cm.
After an image by Kent Williams.
Standing on a stump,
he talked of Peru
and the mountains
that pierce violet clouds.
I am the hawk. Watch me soar.
He spread his arms and spun,
his poncho...
The first thing I noticed about the golden eagle
perched in our dead acacia tree was its shadow
falling over mine like a pall. The second...
I worked hard
to callous my hands
so I could touch her.
I worked hard
to strengthen my arms
so I could hold her.
She should have known
she was raking...
A wallow started by the hippos
is the haunt of warthogs now.
The sounder’s trine of little pigs
raise holy heaven, godly grunts
as though flung mud will...
The reason for writing will come.
Birds will peck at the lime outside your door.
The solid gray density of fall along the coast
will someday make...
From T.S. Eliot’s “Macavity.”
Master criminals of the world, beware
of blood on the seat, and prints on the stair.
There’s no malefaction you can circumvent:
Lockproof is on...
I feel a pull at my trouser leg while I wait for the light to turn green. I glance down to my right and...
She started
taking small steps
that grew longer
until she reached the end
and bounced
her sleek body rising
as she arced
her arms outstretched
before slipping into the water.
Later she did...
He worked as a framer,
sawing and nailing
rough-hewn boards
for rooms made of drywall,
climbing ladders
until he blew out his knees.
We have nothing in common, she said,
but...
Girls called her Skinny Legs
taunting her in gym
and pulling off her towel
to see the galaxy of sores
erupting on her back.
I can’t eat, she said.
But...
One day in the torridness, they were riding the railing
in the white shadow of the arches,
and laughing forever.
Click an image to open full-screen viewer.
He was hot
and so was I.
Reset
The Humans loved to burn things up—witness what they did with Mars eons ago. After they torched Earth’s exquisite atmosphere, the cold blew in...
john ordered mary
to make his hot drink.
later mary killed him.
the first failed attempt
by mary to kill john
under the guise of sport.
The images presented here represent a portion of my series "ConTEXTnaTURE," developed in 2017 and finessed in 2018. The impetus behind this project is...
There she goes, through the sultry,
the murky waters,
her name in dainty handwriting
on a dark stern of Swahili mangrove—
Allah’s signature in blue on the bow—
as...
The Dark
I am not afraid of the dark.
Sometimes
it purrs at my feet,
in a puddle,
round and still.
It oozes along the floor
and climbs the wall
and hovers...
throughout my life
i held them responsible
for the haphazard way they
went down their roads dragging
us along, but now that they are gone
and I wander down...
“How Deep Is the Ocean,”
his solo like Buddha
preaching, telling us
what we didn’t know
we knew. When my son
was born, I stopped
judging my own parents,
my mother practicing
cello...
Visited Fitzgerald's grave recently...it's in Rockville, Maryland, next to a busy highway, in a small, nondescript graveyard next to a bunch of others who, by the...
There is a sense of humor to this project, but I hope to also stir thoughts around the rituals many develop around food. What foods...
“There are years we lose to people
we didn’t realize we never loved.”
—Philip Schaefer
There are years we lose people.
We didn’t realize how much we loved
the...
Shadow Existence
On the way to work
a large bird flew overhead.
I wouldn't have known
it was there
had it not wedged itself
between me
and the late morning sun.
Bird...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-iQVu66BQ
Me and my zine
Submissions are open for The Swaying Drunkard's Moose, and I'm so excited to start reading your poems! Unless they're about your cat. Your...
Guitar and voice by RC James
https://soundcloud.com/rc-james-user841120068/z0001070
Ain’ nuthin’ left here ‘cep
six uv us an’ dry stahks ‘a corn.
We’re up ta movin west
soon as I sort...
I left you without saying goodbye
though you wouldn't care
I was Pluto and you the Sun
an indifferent smog grew
shrouding a giant
with thousands of heads
you cried...
for Muddy Waters
On the Mississippi bottoms
West African griot rhythms
filter through Spanish moss
swaying over the river bank.
Lovers find their own cadence,
song settling into their hands
moving...
is the diagnosis that dings even your casual
observation that things may have finally gone
to shit. Your joke that mouse droppings in the garage
will carry...
I’ve laid by her for ten years now
beneath these creaking boards
an axe between my long-gone eyes
a spectacle of gore.
She rests beside me so composed
in...
had a baby.
I go online,
buy a present,
click ‘gift wrapped’
(I don’t need to
see tiny, sleepsuit
feet).
I visit them,
hold him,
even carry him
to his nursery,
sit in a rocking...
There’s a squabble of greying women knitting at our local coffee stop.
They are talking about dumpster diving—how survival is another’s refuse.
I swipe hairs from...
.the bear.
.lucky elephant.
.monkey.
.mouse.
.yellow bird.
.the hawfinch.
.words.
The first time this goat fainted
I wanted to pack him in a crate
& ship him back home for his safety.
It’s hard as hell to...
https://soundcloud.com/rc-james-user841120068/z0001070
Ain’ nuthin’ left here ‘cep
six uv us an’ dry stahks ‘a corn.
We’re up ta movin west
soon as I sort out the T-Ford.
Jenny, ma wife,...
In November 2017, when the cottonwood trees were golden leaved, I toured Georgia O'Keeffe's home in Abiquiu, NM.
—Kelly DuMar
...
Can't recall when the conceit of breaking through barriers into a different & more colorful world occurred to me, but it did. In the...
I play
with friction, skin
and air,
a ripe blueberry
between my lips.
The Autobiographical Note
I walk through the gym doors. Steve is doing chest-flies. He yells
Hey, Flash! (Steve doesn’t know my name.)
Third Person, Past Tense
The sky...
A child chews on his toy
Lucid imbecility
A baby’s lallation
All his l’s are r’s—
My dumb joy
When I talk like him.
You are obsessed with the furniture.
I don't really care about the furniture.
I am lucky if I get to sit on the couch and watch...
https://soundcloud.com/avery-fogarty/roses-original1
I used to be sorry all the time
I used to love you
I swim in and out of your mind
I used to be sorry all...
https://soundcloud.com/user-417500652/muddy-water-woman
Muddy Water Woman
Down in Missisisippi where the catfish grow long
I found her and I promised her someday I’d write a song
About a rebel woman...
It’s hot
the breeze just lifts and settles.
A man sways to dangerous angles.
The kids look quick but play anyway.
A possum half crushed is
half alive so...
. small item .
what you see is magnified.
they leave here larger than life
petrified in their own forests.
scan beds and lens.
light the cracks, the boxes.
tie...
How’s she goin’?
Just passing through, eh?
Course you are. They all are.
Don’t get much traffic up around these parts anymore. Odd tourist who maybe got...
The straightest way
to get from this life to the next
is by climbing through
the sliced-open belly of sky
left behind by
the stoop of a falcon,
she explained.
Then...
never tell a zombie the truth
never lie to a zombie
never say things to a zombie you wouldn’t say to your own mother
never stare directly...
Boneyard leaking bones
till shifting rivers,
tilting hummocks
tilling plows of oxen
turned to tractor, turned to combine,
pull the last remaining
shrined remains,
and leave the now unhallowed soil
to rest...
I painted this in my grandma's old shed, so things got a bit dirty. I kind of liked how dirt looked, so I just...
Streets seem tired,
city, at rest.
We move through balloons,
confetti, Moët,
leftover eggrolls,
last night's jest.
A bare-bottomed girl
runs to a window. Last night
her grandfather muttered
of a world full of violence,
the dread of never-
ending rain, fountains
overflowing their pools,
the earth a...
Most of my abstract work is meant to capture an emotional state. Painting is often a cathartic exercise for me. I am naturally introverted,...
positive side effect
i woke up a few mornings ago
with what seems to be a sprained ankle
although i can't remember having done
anything to sprain it.
so...
Poe wrote "To Helen,"
considered by many
one of the great love poems.
"Nicean barks" & "the glory
that was Greece," admirable
phrases, I admit, but to
paraphrase Tina Turner,
what's...
Today is not just one cup of black coffee after another.
Today, I have enough melancholy stacked on top
of more melancholy to climb up a...
Angels enforce Holy Writ, while others veer
toward the particular
Here, children somersault on grass while the
noonday sun, outstretched as thine hand O Lord
pours through a suburban...
My first beer of the Christmas season
I knew in the candlelight against the stained oak countertops that I should be out smoking a cigarette...
Christmas and New Year’s move
toward us
again
the old sickening
duet
the masses coming out
of their tv
caves
the family
gatherings
the gross
dull
nothingness,
the fake
drunks,
the fake
smiles,
the fake
people
may we live
through this
somehow,
one more
time
* This “found...
After I blunt Ming's grapnels
with files and buffers, she wolfs
down the meat off the pull cup.
In the open yard where I grow
blush Parfait, beside...
Nights
are hardest to bear.
Alone, that smell
of us,
still heavy and
with ghosts,
our sweat, our
heated exhales.
I taste you.
I pull you.
I sink into a
a tangle of tongues.
I taste...
He was there at the mic with a glow behind his head like a literary god, so I fucked him.
Me, two other women, and...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgRU9GzElaw
publishers
is retired
and living in France.
he’s on his second wife and
lives on
a farm in the country.
every now and then
he sends me
these long, long
e-mails talking about...
mixed media on paper, 2018
Everyone believes the crippled kid. A blind and mute paraplegic from birth, the crippled kid lets his older brother, Junior, pad his red wagon...
hotel room in little rock
there were three of them
forceful
drunk
too angry to care
whether she lived or died
she swung
the cardboard pizza box
like a machete
it was all...
The shearer’s oilstone rides the blade’s silver edge.
There is a swish as one blade closes over the other.
It is a fine tool honed.
He wears...
Which came first,
the chicken
or
the chicken,
the egg
or
the egg?
“Pass the Tabasco,”
Buddha said.
“By the way, where’s your bowl?”
“In the cupboard, Noble One.
Giving it a rest today.
I’ve got...
They hug and whisper kind words
in the other's ears. They share
their home-cooked fares, and
delight in the quaintness of
the other's ways and customs.
They express with...
Dougherty: Lyn, what would you say to a young writer who had her sights set on poetry?
Lifshin: I’d probably suggest she go for a...
Always live in regret.
The past is ever present.
There are no new days.
Today is no better than yesterday.
Look down
and backwards with despair.
The Almighty has planned...
Yah! There’s something to be said
for modern Hep B, HPV and AIDS,
but gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia—
the all-time greatest hits of STDs—
keep raising their infection rates!
Stick...
This project grew out of my interest with the tension between the documentary nature of landscapes and the fiction of the story they tell....
Twin
Journeys
Bright Lights
When I hear someone claiming
they had an imaginary friend
when they were a kid
I almost say, “bullshit,” but I don’t.
I’m not saying they are liars.
The...
each freckle is a planet
in this contained universe, a body
that orbits the sun—
drenched experience I’m in. I say I worship
God, but my skin tells...
So when can you free up some time to see me?
Free up some time? "Time is one thing that's
always free" -- remember that, my...
acrylic on canvas with pastel and marker
I don’t want it to rack up the likes
even the nicer obituaries with pictures of charity work
and all the good things are cringe
I don’t...
things get whittled down
to winners and
losers
the prizes
for naught
'cepting participation
'cause we all find ourselves lost
with nothing to kick
yeah
i misplaced the only-est love i had
then the...
You have abandoned the day
to hide your secrets.
I keep your hand, hang the moon
in these dark trees as an offering.
It’s late, but then on...
Postlapsarian, we
carry in pockets, the
lumps of perceived iniquities
which,
distract us from
our actual guilt.
The impure loin or
purloined pear or
Pearl conceived by Hester
can
weight us down, or further...
I take that song and immerse it
in a bucket full of cold water,
hoping that the song chills me
down while I fume for missing
my last...
chalk and charcoal on paper
Soon there will
be more tattoos
on the planet
than people,
more ink on skin
than on paper.
We are already
reading each other
more than books
or newspapers.
I am thinking
of having
X
you are...
".. Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night."-- Subhadeep De
Mixed-media on paper
Oh, you’re one of those, she said. Yes, I said, sadly, I am.
And then I said, You’re not, I take it. She had...
My gay friend told me
he masturbates
three times a day.
Ewww, I couldn't help
thinking. One of my
bad habits, judging others.
But three times a day?
I thought, bro, way
too much...
but if I don't then wheel me to a window
in my own house and don't assume
I don't understand an acoustic guitar,
the hum of smalltalk,...
White pencil and chalk on black paper
At Lewes
we sidestepped insignias
like hallowed things
but didn’t buy tickets,
opting to watch the bay
as the ferry shrunk into the cape;
seventeen miles was trivial.
We didn’t consider
the...
Facing the ocean
(because you never turn your back to the water,
because the waves curl over themselves and rush up with rage
like thundering white hooves
and...
Jesus turned water into wine.
I smuggled pot.
Jesus got nailed by the cops.
So did I.
Jesus had long hair.
Me, too.
Jesus walked on water
& raised a man...
Wrap up every rock against the weight
constraints of the contract. Leave one ghost
in the granite garden under the broken palo verde
and the other on...
Acrylic, pastel and marker on canvas. An exploration of color, shape, and composition.
Letter provided to Open Arts Forum by Douglas Goodwin.
Understand this
A moth can be as beautiful
As a butterfly.
And even the plainest
Still has wings.
Today, I will not be praised.
Tomorrow, not remembered.
Still, I am dancing...
It's my best thing. I offer coffee
and strands of broken light
untangled from the mare's nest
of whatever the hell is wrong
with you and why am...
316
Chalk and charcoal on bifold
Soft pastels on bifold
Purple makes you sweaty
while you shiver with a chill,
and morphs you into Betty
when your given name is Bill.
Aqua gets you placid,
but it has an...
Gouache Colors | 21×29 Cm | On Paper |2018
Blink and you will miss her mutinous
retreat. Dill in the kitchen window has wilted
but not quite gone to seed, books are tossed
aside like faulty...
while I watch a huge ant
light-foot up the drainpipe
like it was a piece of cake
to trot your whole weight
perpendicular to earth
I wonder if my...
Holding it right is half the challenge.
The other is not to shake before the click.
They say that the aim may change due to
the pressure...
I’m befuddled by the wind,
how it blows;
it has this bodiless direction.
I can feel it kissing my face.
Hey wind, you strange warthog—
how can you touch...
An interpretation of Claude Monet's Woman with a Parasol.
— Subhadeep De
Water colour on paper
https://soundcloud.com/ian-badcoe/sets/crowd-cloud-found-sound
There is never betrayal
in the space between boxcars
where his face still tilts towards
the old life he left. The new life
has already scrawled itself in...
They glamourise war with their literature,
support Mexico w/ the import of narcs,
fry pretty much all their food,
& negotiate hard.
They let their children play w/...
Since 7 months Rita and I were living in the same apartment but merely as occupants sharing the same roof. Our 4-year marriage was...
GIF versions of "Fine On The Outside," and "Another Look at Delta" below:
—RIP Koko, The Gorilla Who Used
Sign Language, 1972–20 June 2018*
Sheep in wolf’s clothing, Melon Man’s
what the Town and Country grocery with
biggest best batches of...
acrylic/ 28×22 cm /on paper
https://soundcloud.com/rc-james-user841120068/track-4
And then the sky opened.
The world filled with blood.
Cameras caught it all,
buildings wrenched
from their foundations,
anger and sirens and stench.
We were tired of marching,
of whispering,
sick...
What began as a way to pass the time
soon became the time I got lost
inside the city’s blanket of haze.
What was supposed to be...
Guest
Hiding
Mistakes
Sweet (2)
Home
Up
The Light
Reach
35 mm film photography with digital manipulation
I keep saying I'm not going to another
holocaust movie. But then I do.
The latest one set in Augsburg,
1958, when twenty-something Germans
thought Auschwitz was nothing more
than...
I don't like mango but
I’m compelled to consume
space,
to savor the liquid,
label all the rays
upon my tongue,
such sweet perspicacity.
A citrusy mist
collides with taste
at the speed...
low over june’s dusk grass
the fireflies’ sparse steeps
all float away in one direction
in the gentlest of arcs
then as my ramble loops back
so the grazing...
I thought you said alphabetic, and picture plastic letters filled
with magnets, colorful refrigerator doors.
“Apologetic,” you argue. “I was trying to apologize.”.I wonder if anger is the...
She called it a perfect afternoon —
we had just left a poetry reading
and were enjoying our coffees
on a café couch beneath a red umbrella
slightly...
before
the hour sounds,
we
are already
sitting
with the dead.
we dangle from a single thread
pendulous from the bars
on the upswing to the hot plates
on the down
to the soft shrapnel of coal
if...
I had nothing but tears
warm as blood
a hemorrhage of grief
all that day and through the night.
They took my nail file and pocket knife
and set...
don’t frown
don’t kick the door
don’t slap the chance
it’s a sensitive bad-ass
don’t zip up the wound
if it begs to expose
don’t turn on the light
if you...
You are the mirror into which we plunge. - Terry Wolverton
Here at the border, the river
runs clear. We can see our faces
as they ripple in...
Part I
Part II
A self-representation of the door and its meaning.—Faizan Adil
Though night eats its way out of the sack
That cat is in, yet still the caterwaul
Of promises defeats the constant scrawl
Of secrets tattooed stiffly...
I swore I would not get sentimental about
leaving the porch swing behind.
We painted it red to match the floor—the front door.
I swore I would...
a familiar place
our dreams quarreling
over petty things
you've never been here
but seem at home
familiar
what isn’t is vertigo
i adapt to...
nor smash it with heavy stone pestle
let it be spoiled with caress of cubic sugar
gently, as your wrist dances like a Sufi in Sema
and...
back in the 70’s
back in LA
I knew of him
as the uncouth Christ
of the drunk-again alcoholics
the naked emperor
of young trendy-cafe chefs and
of the intellectual
and the...
Old Glory
at half mast
atop the White House
so some well-off white
must have
been shot
not by a cop
who took
his cell phone for a gat
but a civilian
armed
à la...
First, turn on the lights.
Ghosts drift toward shadows.
Use the sin of omission as if
it was a life raft, and you can’t
swim. I can swim,...
Only a sheep goes
up any time
to find help or comfort
...
EXPLORE
Thick as thieves
I wake up one morning
and look out the window
and there’s no car in the
driveway but I’m not going to
call this theft; it’s retribution,
paying me...
