Desert City Poetry Series

[Ken Rumble <rumblek AT bellsouth.net>]

Please spread far and wide.......

Who:  Aaron McCollough, author of _Welkin_ and _Double Venus_, winner of 
the 2002 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, manager of the Ann Arbor Martyrs, world 
champion waffle spinner.

Who:  Tony Tost, author of _Invisible Bride_, winner of the 2003 Walt 
Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, Man-About-Carrboro, 
statistician to secret set of super smart groundhogs.

What:  Desert City Poetry Series October reading, the Bold vs. the Beautiful.

When:  this Saturday, October 23rd, 8pm, 2004.

Where:  Internationalist Books, 405 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 
919-942-1740.

Why:  "As I flew through the windshield I knew being nice did not always 
work like magic."  "dear, if you want to get to heaven on time / lord knows 
you've got to [               ]"

See you there........

*Internationalist Books:  http://www.internationalistbooks.org

*Desert City Poetry Series: http://desertcity.blogspot.com

*Aaron McCollough:  http://aaronmccollough.blogspot.com/, 
http://www.shearsman.com/pages/magazine/back_issues/shearsman60/mccollough.html, 

http://www.typomag.com/issue03/mccollough.html

*Tony Tost:  http://unquietgrave.blogspot.com/, 
http://www.webdelsol.com/NO/two/tost.htm,
http://www.mipoesias.com/2005/tost.html

Contact the DCPS:  Ken Rumble: rumblek at bellsouth dot net

Next Month:  November 13th, Saturday:  C. S. Giscombe & Jon Thompson.

Aaron McCollough
"Eklog South"

    ". . .golden address"


physician check my circulation
golden address I mutter more and louder
in this telephone    the anchorite
taps barcodes out   longshort
the end was coming 'til we missed
the end / is coming


   ". . .gasstop"


red clay i am on
in    red clay    i am
coming to account
though track in track out
my place (this was valdosta)
of minor rivers
if i'm too old for this (have been)
then i'm being too old
why in the inlet fiddlers
but the sea
carnivorous trunks



    ". . .ephphatha"


that is be opened
the second is this
keep awake
drowsy
keep awake
in all this biblical heat
the way likened to a two-lane road
compressor touch and go
. . .I can see people but they look like trees. . .
. . .I believe; help my unbelief!



    ". . .let man's soul be a sphere"


column of dust
like a thread like orange lips      foreshortened
/god laid out
draft me
winding lines
*flapping crowns of skin torn out of the feet
   resolve me molecular
   converse me electric
let us talk about whatever
   tangere tangere
   lapping the milk on the floor
even as it's water
passing thirsty, friend
as water thinning milk
as said all miracles have stopped
and living is skimmed
take down all curtains
we've nothing to hide



    ". . .in the house of mary & martha"


in the palmetto state
at the running tap
sands and clays and the source
in the rock that'll follow me
we are    in our place
in the ear of mary
the hand of martha
in a glance as it's gone
like an audience in the soul
which contains them
   so loved
   flesh
   to be made
   a guest
come in    let us in
come in
the sea inside the house
we go across all day
in remembrance of the sink
the hinged face of the holy body

thus we look into the face of god
floating cupboard of each face
let us in    come in
let us in, we'll rest
come in, we'll travel together




Tony Tost
"Men return from the dead"

Men return from the dead / the mortgage is due / suddenly & it's hard

Harder to sleep with the dripping of ether

Men return from the dead
Not more dead / more silent

What I fear is that I too young have already found
The four or five verbs that I will keep
When I am dead. Men return from the dead
Not more dead but more strange
Spitting (strangely) birds visible to humans / only

We are isolationists tonight & I am unsure why I am afraid
To call you woman. Why I put you under the bed to translate for me

Men return from the dead not more but
Spitting birds & not to the dead who read us / to us

We who say just enough to keep from rising

We whose dead children our women are praising

The impulse is for threading, weaving, making the blanket

The good thing. We whose tubs are full of pissing

Still glad we got out of Phoenix, the cul-de-sac
"the coldest little circle in Hell"

We whose tubs are full of we. Firecrackers
In the tub & now the tub is full of artless glories

Our glories now. I live for __(noun)__

I would die for _(noun)_ if its existence were ever threatened

Our water rising in the tub & drowning in the noise

The firecrackers. We spit / at our women
Who spit onto the children who are also in the tub

Our arms are just sitting there like the sun
For we are also all action / we who do not have to move our arms

About a mile down, as they say / it is wonderful

I live for Mexican food, etc.

Women are heavy, etc.

Nights cold enough for a thicker lover (thank you Paul)

Our women are heavy in our arms, their bellies engorged
Knots of children / wrapped like kites / around a fist or an eye

The _(noun)_ full of the once-dead. Their bellies en-gorged

Knots of children (already dead) unseen therefore human
Angry. These strings that lead an ordinary _(noun)_
Into ordinary light. Children wrapped & baptized, in string

A verb finds form not in their ether but here / in our real- / m, the once-was

A man of action (he who all day traveled
To find his father's grave filled with string) follows a thread all morning

Leads him back home to his daughter's mouth

If ever a string was also a fuse . . . Rolls her into the river

Wraps the string around his finger

When the girl returns from the dead the children
Throw blankets & bones. She paddles backwards / broken wing

The mother weaves a blanket from the children's hair

The father all action. Rubs his thumbs, his eyes
Props the girl (all animal) onto the balcony wall / broken wing

Sets off a firecracker beneath her & then he jumps, with her
Off the balcony into his contemporary bag of skin

My current job : I stand near a long table
With a magnifying glass in my right hand, a latex glove on my left
& I look though you

Years & years for the sun to go down

The children are years & years

We compare their indifference to a machine
A machine is a poem / made of metal. A car races around the hospital

A dog is a poem / made of bones. The children
Each placed on a leash. Lovely, suffering years. Compare the rain
To a machine / made of scissors. To dig is to think

Years: "A machine which does not consider this leash
Will not continue to work"