Desert City Poetry Series

[Ken Rumble <rumblek AT bellsouth.net>]

Please spread far and wide....

Who:  Brent Cunningham, author of _Bird & Forest_, founder of the Poets' Theatre 
Jamboree, Small Press Distribution shaker & mover, knows how to say "eclipse" in 
17 languages including English.

Who:  Tessa Joseph, editor of the _Carolina Quarterly_, doctoral student at 
UNC-Chapel Hill, former student of A. R. Ammons, can wield ostrich feathers with 
wild abandon.

What:  Desert City Poetry Series, first of two October readings because Oh my 
gosh they're all so good.

When:  This Saturday, October 8th, 8pm, 2005.

Where:  Internationalist Books, 405 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 
everything else is somewhere else.

How much:  $2 donation requested to support the series & the readers.

Why:  "Language doesn't become strange by torturing it" "She will love you until 
you are sticky. / She will drink all your schnapps. // She will drop you. She 
will / kiss your eyes. She will make you a poet."

See you there...

Upcoming readings:

October 22nd, 8pm:  John Taggart & Randall Williams

November 12th, 8pm:  Sarah Manguso & Julian Semilian

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

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

*Brent Cunningham:
http://fascicle.com/issue01/Poets/cunningham1.htm

*Tessa Joseph:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/cqonline/aboutcq.html

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

The Desert City is supported by grants from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the 
North Carolina Arts Council, and the Orange County Arts Commission.


"Evening at the Hotel de Sade"
by Brent Cunningham

The fear of death pervades us, I declared, plunging my knife into the table 
grain.

Don’t make me laugh, Robert replied.  Make you?  Shall we say lead me in that 
direction. You jest.  Strangely not.  Then you underestimate me.

My dear Robert, said Robert (for we were both named Robert), you must admit that 
within this narrow blink of existence it is common to mark our singularity with 
such drama as you just exhibited; in short, for all that, we’re animals.

The very idea turns my stomach, I replied.  Does it?  It does indeed.  Please go 
on, for your position fascinates me.

I did not hesitate to go on, but spoke at such extraordinary length I lost my 
faith of concluding.  My friend, I concluded, you may wonder how life is for me.

Less and less, said Robert.  In general?  Au contraire.  But I’m an exceedingly 
curious case.  My dear Robert!

Does it not interest you, I remarked, that I go from city to city, chased by 
dogs, denying the most apparent truths imaginable?

I have specific information, said Robert, that you have never been chased by 
dogs...

Swelling with confidence and vigour, I rose to respond, only to discover that 
twenty Roberts now swam in front of my eyes.  My legs gave out; the roast 
overturned.  Dimly I heard Lucy rushing down the stairs, impossibly free of her 
ropes...


"Walking around the ruin"
by Tessa Joseph

i.
There are no more movers   No more
filing in and out   Packing in layers of wax

                        Start with the housefire

that jerked its leg in your throat   Start with that

saltstained river which was both enough
and not enough to move you   That door

open on a kitchen, burning oil you could smell

Start with the houses you’ve wanted   that you haven’t had

Their smokeshriveled doors   Heatbucking floorboards
Ghosts of windows where windows are gone


ii.
A crowd on a green and dripping barge   We were in procession

Through the buoyed stones   Slate walkway   Blue front door

There was a stone mantel.   We always kept things on the stairs.

Two feet   Slap the water   One instant   Perfect


iii.
There were twenty five windows
We paid for them
Paid for them   Put them there

Not like eyes   Not like anything
but windows
Like quarries, spiked deep   No

There were twenty-five windows
A shelf of little boxes
We filled them   Or not   I saw

it happen   I saw each box hinge
on flame


iv.
Small archaeology, this cellar:   tins of morphine   tool-hung wall
ancient chessgame

And the details, tiny pictures, curving voices map the last of the passages
Tell me how it is there   What it is like

I visit the river every day   and it too is small, too small

A house is the space the size of the word   it is lamp and street and bread and 
rooster
and also wider, having

wider arms