Secret Mint

the fairly cwen

2011-12-09T21:27:00.000-08:00

Hi this is the text I read for Delirious Hem today....these poems will all fit together as Virginia or the mud-flap girl, to be published by Dusie next year. Some of them are already out in a new chapbook from Least Weasel. Others from the project are here and there. Xo, Eliz.

the fairly cwen

the olden seas sweet edges
far from the stormy lullabies
that set the stagy notion
in the park inside the park
tracing loves earthy footpath
the tender animalia
the cozy repeating bits
in hearth and glen
where mother wasn’t
lonely stylized forests
did the first cwens
in such water castle
our songs of comfort & praise

*

Kirstie Alley

the aging sugar scratch
tucked as bad as if
such brittle donations
in the clearinghouse as if
tubby the wicked
on other days while thinking thin
while carrying the wish-bones
and the fretted land-haul
tucked as bad as if
offerings
a painful
cutting down
in some time else
such uncozy tolerance
the other guy’s polite surprise
at the irregular hands of the pharm
the rubber-cheeked debate
all the mary parts
so drab & eerie
in that distant shag
carpet basin of angles
all the mall-bearing marigolds and
all the tiny hollows of ourselves
untouched by disney
raised in sorrow gently
raised in joy
those other days
behind us

*

Reese Witherspoon

the damp fixings of the internet
the stars and the stripes of
my own private mumblecock
the fake relevance of the avant-garde
the crap manliness of the same
its keen imperialism, Reese Witherspoon,
the false attachments of the scene

*

Michelle Williams

all the handsome signifiers
in the village heap

so much falls to the mother
they are not gods

the heavy busy lace
prevention of empires

*

toward the doggy wood

in the ritual pit
toward the doggy wood
shell keep.

*

the platinum herd already texting
these new world

*

Mispretend this fatal document,
my senator, my namesake, my urn

She draws charms, glitter, the
tooth-strewn scar

roots from the world
a shabby cult
in browny nightcap

in the costume-hell
shrew melody
grand name-bearing
quality
apt repose

*

my own private gurlesque

2010-04-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

"You can do anything you want to with the constellations, you know."
--Leslie Marmon Silko, AWP reading 4/8/10

****

Some of my girls this year include Liz Waldner's indelible Persephone from her new book Trust:

Persephone Tells About Some Goings Down

I took the subway downtown today.
My first time. I went down
not sure where to look, how to do.
(I look, he's looking.)
Mother with daughter, talking.
Change of station.
Mother with daughter laughing, walking.

I went to hear poets: kissing of cheeks.
Waving of books and fingers.
I didn't know a soul.
Paunchy bald men said
"I should apologize for this next poem, I'm
old-fashioned in my view of women," said
"Slut, oops, I should apologize, I

should say differently sexually abled, I
should say evil is done by the ethically challenged, I"
Ha-ha.
Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to be included.
I want.
I look hopefully at faces
but everyone ha-ha's on cue.

My mother used to squeeze my sister's pimples
at the dinner table. Nobody screamed
out loud: we were supposed to enjoy
sausage, fried potatoes and each other.
Shame menu.
How doll parts on the sidewalk make me feel
sick, ha-ha.

When Alan Becker rang the doorbell and deposited me
on the New Year's Eve doorstep when I was sixteen
missing a shoe and a contact lens
sour puke and brittle leaves my raiment of glory
I couldn't stand up for my father to hit me.
My mother stood me up.
It wasn't anybody's first time, uh.

I don't know anybody in this city.
I don't know if I know how to know.
I just moved here. A room is home.
When they have nowhere else to go
roots--as in this narrow vase--go up.
(I wish my hair (ha-ha) were grass)
I hope they reach some stone.

****

Someone in the audience at the Gurlesque reading at the AWP last week asked about our male influences, since they'd heard so much (not a word from a one of us) about our female ones. I couldn't believe the question was being asked (a bit "punishing" as one of my "fellow" panelists put it later) and I was simply flummoxed as we started to answer it, all in a row. I don't stand by anything I might've said in that context, beyond my follow-up comment, which was "There are so many men, I got tired of reading them." That I'll stand nice and close by--and to you, dear blogosphere, I might add that I'd considered mentioning both Aphra Behn and Charles Bukowski, in the context of my own private gurlesque, before I'd left for Denver.

****

Anyway, I'm enjoying my Possibility tote, haggled for at the Poets House booth.

****

Ancient Celebrity Tune-rot

2009-07-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

"Brange say it's about the work."
– G. Stein

Subject: the city’s most public and sacred area

the self's heavy architecture
acing the wonder quiz
linger in the orchard now
make your head small in
unreachable furniture
draw the unknowable
lines of little artists
your hairy nar nar
your mouths & skins

*

2008-09-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

down at the truth-mall
crown ruin queening

for future

2008-09-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

reference

[May Dollyweather]

2008-09-04T11:50:00.000-07:00

such as these theme doctors
in their angry repose

gone swimming

2008-07-26T10:39:00.001-07:00

"I love matter. I swim in atoms when I am in the sea." -- Etel Adnan

omg coy?

2008-07-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Might it occur to no one that the originary valley girl language might
have been just another of myriad instances in which ordinary people
invent a language for themselves that provides the semi-shelter of a
resistant alternative to the reality in which they find themselves -- in
this case, as is usually the case, one set in a certain time & place --
and in this case, as is far too often the case, one which for the verymost
part is created and policed by the verysame men who wish to and do
"desire", exploit, oppress, and attempt to destroy them?

Wardolly

2008-06-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

Wardolly
Tucson, Ariz.: Chax Press, June 2008
92 pp., $16, isbn 0-978-0925904-80-5

The cover painting is Paddywagon (1990) by my sister Carol Treadwell. Some excerpts are at Shampoo & La Petite Zine.

Cheers.

Paula Gunn Allen

2008-06-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

*

and the persistent stubborn
grass
of the earth

--Paula Gunn Allen, from “Some Like Indians Endure”

thx for listening (dorky)

2008-05-31T13:16:00.000-07:00

I do regret deleting my entire blog back in spring 2007, although probably not as much as I had occasion to regret having started it back in fall 2006. The post I most miss is my critique of the portrayal of Minou Drouet in the New Yorker around Xmas 06.... I don't think it's anywhere in this here ether, but if anyone does find it I will certainly bless them.

in such homesteady lingoland

2008-03-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

"Being in the company of children and understanding the way they think and feel is a major influence and passion in my life. I’m also influenced by many other art discourses." --Margaret Christakos

[bodyfrock’d in the howling viz]

2007-11-10T12:41:00.000-08:00

bodyfrock'd in the howling viz 
landed suppositions in the claptrap have 
buried in futuristic hubbub 
plans and sub-plots, solace,
into  the pavlovian sunrise

in fluster'd kiosk

2007-07-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

in fluster'd kiosk, staged memoir, illum'd critique--
in eerie dream --

[my lil site's back up]

& am still hiatusing
round here