Outer Tactics Spinning Sibylle Baier's Colour Green, or really it's on Spotify to be more honest about modes of transport of information, the sound going in a cache instead of circling below a needle, vestigial record like a water wheel turning and turning over the stream one side of its white oak faded by the sun but none of this can tell you anything about her voice, Sibylle's, how it took nearly 30 years for Colour Green's songs to make it out to people, ghost voice carried into the new century by a son— now I'm getting ahead of myself the songs are just beautiful, were recorded between 1970 and 1973 with minimal accompaniment, mostly, stored thereafter until Sibylle's son Robby made a CD of them and gave one to

J Mascis, rest is history etc. I have never written about how my mom is a singer, was in all manner of bands over the years and recorded on three occasions: "Don't Be Shy" in 1988, "Center Stage" in I forget what year, and "Sands of Time" in I also forget, something funny searching "sands of time" in your email, hoping for what exactly the video we made for it, mom's song, Bob had big ideas that shaped it but the song is hers, intellectual property law notwithstanding (my mom is also a lawyer)— a forest gave itself a name and now we're here. Today I couldn't remember my father's hands, Kristi asked me what rings he wore band of late gold on the horizon near sunset, evening an inkling waiting for

its quill forgetting is nothing like baseball on the radio in which they tell you repeatedly who's where because you cannot see Stevie Nicks rehearsing "Wild Heart" in the makeup chair singing her heart Out “I kind of hate the word ‘heart’” Ben Mirov says somewhere silent seas Richter’s Rachmaninoff’s (Op. 32 No. 10) sustain pedal with poets it’s always the line break and never the brake line foolish heart pumping fluid for ever god's water wheels intercepting just enough blood to keep us lit illumine the marian brain "immaculate etymology" I googled trying to continue my dad always loved that one Staind song

The cover of Reclaimed Water by Tom Snarsky (Ornithopter Press, 2023)

happy #twopageplustuesday all! today’s for longer poems you’ve written or loved, that would run to 2+ printed pages—share ’em if you’ve got ’em :)

today’s also my mom’s birthday, so here’s one from my book Reclaimed Water that owes a great debt to her music, which I’ll 🔗 below—

The God of Love The musk-ox is accustomed to near-Arctic conditions. When danger threatens, these beasts cluster together to form a defensive wall, or a "porcupine", with the calves in the middle. – Dr Wolfgang Engelhart I found them between far hills, by a frozen lake. On a patch of bare ground. They were grouped In a solid ring, like an ark of horn. And around Them circled, slowly closing in, Their tongues lolling, their ears flattened against the wind,

A whirlpool of wolves. As I breathed, one fragment of bone and Muscle detached itself from the mass and Plunged. The pad of the pack slackened, as if A brooch had been loosened. But when the bull Returned to the herd, the revolving collar was tighter. And only The windward owl, uplifted on white wings In the glass of air, alert for her young, Soared high enough to look into the cleared centre And grasp the cause. To the slow brain Of each beast by the frozen lake what lay in the cradle of their crowned Heads of horn was a sort of god-head. Its brows Nudged when the arc was formed. Its need Was a delicate womb away from the iron collar

Of death, a cave in the ring of horn Their encircling flesh had backed with fur. That the collar of death Was the bone of their own skulls: that a softer womb Would open between far hills in a plunge Of bunched muscles: and that their immortal calf lay Dead on the snow with its horns dug into The ice for grass: they neither saw nor felt. And yet if That hill of fur could split and run – like a river Of ice in thaw, like a broken grave – It would crack across the icy crust of withdrawn Sustenance and the rigid circle Of death be shivered: the fed herd would entail its under-fur

On the swell of a soft hill and the future be sown On grass, I thought. But the herd fell By the bank of the lake on the plain, and the pack closed, And the ice remained. And I saw that the god In their ark of horn was a god of love, who made them die.

we started this #soapboxpoem series on #smallpoemsunday and I’m glad we’re going out on #twopageplustuesday — here is one of my very favorite poems, “The God of Love” by George MacBeth. thank you so much for reading this little series and I hope you enjoy MOUNTEBANK :) 🎭

a finger points to the moon Put the expression a finger points to the moon, in brackets (a finger points to the moon) The statement: "A finger points to the moon is in brackets' is an attempt to say that all that is in the bracket ) is, as to that which is not in the bracket, what a finger is to the moon Put all possible expressions in brackets Put all possible forms in brackets and put the brackets in brackets Every expression, and every form, is to what is expressionless and formless what a finger is to the moon all expressions and all forms point to the expressionless and formless the proposition 'All forms point to the formless' is itself a formal proposition

Not, as finger to moon so form to formless but, as finger is to moon SO [all possible expressions, forms, propositions, 7 including this one, made or yet to be made, together with the brackets are to

late entry to #twopageplustuesday today, by R. D. Laing

Dawn at St. Patrick's There is an old statue in the courtyard that weeps, like Niobe, its sorrow in stone. The griefs of the ages she has made her own. Her eyes are rain-washed but not hard, her body is covered in mould, the garden overgrown. One by one the first lights come on, those that haven't been on all night. Christmas, the harshly festive, has come and gone. No snow, but the rain pours down in the first hour before dawn, before daylight. Swift's home for fools and mad' has become the administrative block. Much there has remained unchanged for many a long year — stairs, chairs, Georgian windows shafting light and dust, radiantly white the marble bust of the satirist; but the real hospital is a cheerful modern extension at the back hung with restful reproductions of Dufy, Klee and Braque. Television, Russian fiction, snooker with the staff, a snifter of Lucozade, a paragraph of Newsweek or the Daily Mail

are my daily routine during the festive season. They don't lock the razors here as in Bowditch Hall. We have remained upright — though, to be frank, the Christmas dinner scene, with grown men in their festive gear, was a sobering sight. I watch the last planes of the year go past, silently climbing a cloud-lit sky. Earth-bound, soon I'll be taking a train to Cork and trying to get back to work at my sea-lit, fort-view desk in the turf-smoky dusk. Meanwhile, next-door, a visiting priest intones to a faithful dormitory. I sit on my Protestant bed, a make-believe existentialist, and stare at the clouds of unknowing. We style, as best we may, our private destiny; or so it seems to me as I chew my thumb and try to figure out what brought me to my present state - an educated man' , a man of consequence, no bum but one who has hardly grasped what life is about, if anything. My children, far away, don't know where I am today,

in a Dublin asylum with a paper whistle and a mince pie, my bits and pieces making a home from home. I pray to the rain-clouds that they never come where their lost father lies; that their mother thrives; and that I may measure up to them before I die. Soon a new year will be here demanding, as before, modest proposals, resolute resolutions, a new leaf, new leaves. This is the story of my life, the story of all lives everywhere, mad fools wherever they are, in here or out there. Light and sane I shall walk down to the train, into that world whose sanity we know, like Swift, to be a fiction and a show. The clouds part, the rain ceases, the sun casts now upon everyone its ancient shadow.

A copy of Derek Mahon’s Selected Poems

happy #twopageplustuesday, where you’re warmly invited to share poems you love that run to 2+ printed pages. Today’s poem for the occasion is by the incomparable Derek Mahon: “This is the story of my life, / the story of all lives everywhere, / mad fools wherever they are, / in here or out there.”

The cover of Sampson Starkweather’s chapbook Slip on the Ski Mask of Night

List of Demands all we want is life a boss-less world a cosmic commons all the animals and people set free our souls (bought and sold) given back the land given back the planet resuscitated respected nourished loved to be able to breathe

all we ask is for everything and more

happy #twopageplustuesday! feel free to share a poem you love (or wrote) that runs a little longer than usual :)

here’s one by @sampsonstarkweathr.bsky.social from his new chapbook Slip on the Ski Mask of Night (Blush Lit/Illicit Zines)~

PRECISION Walking, remembering, In the grass, I see what I think is a small coprinus, but I look more closely and decide: broken soda cracker. Of course, this Southern California lawn probably wouldn't be growing mushrooms. I have already catalogued Icelandic poppies —flamingo, salmon, vermillion, party dresses —on the lawn, and purple flags on another, a whole bed of tiny white irises and nasturtiums spilling over the cement-banked edge of another yard. It is March, and camellias are crowding the bushes at every house, pink, white, deep rose frills, china-like, perfect. Behind me, the mockingbird is singing one of his best songs, piccolo oboe harp and squeeking door all combined. The drama is only a memory; I arrived yesterday at the Los Angeles airport and could not help some part of me wishing/expecting to see you, M.,

waiting for me to return. I suppose that is what it means to be haunted. In my real life I neither expect nor want you. Yet, some rehearsal of the past is always with me. Even this morning, walking before breakfast in Santa Barbara when I saw an ugly ranch house with the porch light still on, presumably from the night before, I thought, "He hasn't come home. She is asleep on the couch with her clothes on, exhausted from waiting most of the night." And when I walked past another house with the shades still drawn but rock music pouring out of the closed windows, so incongruously at 8 a.m. thought of a young couple who have just awakened to make love and don't want to do it without the right music. And I felt safe outside in the sunshine, just observing the flowers. There is no way I can imagine love, sex or romance without pain, the cutting, cutting sharp knife of denials; what I want now is an orderly world

where morning is each beautful object in place, the sun pouring in the window like champagne, the china-white egg cup with its neat boiled egg, a burst of tulips, or poppies or camellias on the table in crystal or cut glass, the hot teapot, scalded and then filled with a fine dark tea, and the day stretching plain, unadorned before me, Mozart as companion, a book, a book, about death or life but not about love. We must go beyond beauty to find it. Invisible, I want to wait for it wearing the cap of darkness.

A copy of Cap of Darkness by Diane Wakoski

happy #twopageplustuesday! feel free to share any poems you love that run a bit long — I’d be delighted to read them :)

here’s one by Diane Wakoski~

Approach to the Desert Space
Mostafa Nissabouri
Tr. Guy Bennett

#twopageplustuesday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Tarnished emblems of my dreams
Paul Éluard
tr. Gilbert Bowen

#twopageplustuesday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

STANZAS FOR AN EVENING OUT CURTIS FAVILLE Poems 1968-1977 L. Publications Kensington, California 1977

Aubade Light tousle of damp hair on the forehead blur of leaf & yellow sprinkling of sun across the window-sill—real butter; crisp sweet & toasted at the edge warming up around the wrists they creak slightly and the eyes rust; solid functional wooden cupboard from which a dishtowel, red stripe at each end, tumbles into the light, the rub of it over wheezy nose; sloshing mouth & bowl spinning noises, the toilet; the tulips beside the garbage cans, even a black one, coffee-grounds & grapefruit rinds mixed nicely with cinnamon & aluminum pop-top cans, a dozen; oatmeal flesh numb but horny, errands that keep us apart; salty shoulder, the grovel of steamrollers rolling sunlight over the asphalt or a yellow streetcleaner with giant brushes that rinse; the nightlight forgotten until noon, swapping curtains for bathrobes or a "blush"-towel, blue yellow or seagreen; delicate crush of cellophane or packed lunchbags; cold gold ring, the first thing, reaching over the bed, the clock full of water

or dripping with darkness; the grass knifing up through leaves face-down, birds looking worried but proud, a little frenetic, bobbing: first swish of vehicles over the breathing roads, coughing motors, scattering at crossroads; wall of white tiles or pills dissolving on the tongue; wobble of dripping milk cartons, soft torn webs behind the eyes and brassiness like a bit behind the tongue: shuddering whistle blowing the top off a factory or grammar school; fatigue like planned obsolescence in the marrow—built-in bone-dry or allergic to the clouds in the sky; iris wide-eyed but coy in its bed; sap returning like air to a butterfly's wings, slowly opening and closing like first breath; tropical vine drooping like an eyelid under the eaves, one side of the house still asleep in the shade, bricks slanting out of the ground wet from brittle snails; the doorknob befuddling in its simplicity. the door a blank; moths flapping like bats from mouths held open with toothpicks;

un-foldable newspaper with totalitarian BOLDFACE: chainsaws bawling over the bark; yawns steep as mines or wells with shaggy moss; the stranded frog splashed in the street, cats sniffing it; unplugged a cork in the car floats away, a fly stuck to the wall, drugged; soap streams and squeaks, a dull razor in the trash; white foam cool and stiff, hushed-up: combing the sparks from my hair, that bright blue arc beside the switch in the hallway; and then a record, something spiny like Scarlatti or heavy and driving like the Stones; that lush static off the diamond scratching plastic; paint chipped, blistered peeling or powdered, white siding shutterless, roomfuls of night, eating it up: putting out flames right from the fore-head, a cock, crowing from God knows where, dirty and well-laid scratching up fire from hard earth; probably not possible, I didn't go to sleep, sat up all night and just to say it a little differently, washed-out and touchy a whole day ahead of me.

happy #twopageplustuesday! feel free to share a poem you love (or wrote) that runs a little longer than usual :)

I’ve been on a Curtis Faville kick so here’s his poem “Aubade” from Stanzas For An Evening Out (L Publications, 1977)

THE RAIN OF SMALL OCCURRENCES So many things happen; many smaller than a sparrow's fall. It is a long rain in rain country where the flow falls steadily all day and all night long and the next day keeps on falling in an air half air, half water, and a world half gone to dissolution, fluid and almost formless in the rain of small occurrences. So many things happen at a single time, it seems an idleness to note them all, or try to note them all, for who could note them, smaller than a sparrow's fall. A bird flew down the yard and reached a tree. A cricket creaked and creaked again. The star Arcturus moved a million silent miles. It is a rich world, full of minor deeds. Who saw the bird, or heard the cricket creak? Or hearing, seeing, cared to hear or see? The big star moves beyond our sight. All over, the given moment always gives a little movement every way as if to steal a thousand bases at a time. The world is not quite formless; we lean down and feel the massive earth beneath our feet. And passion finds out shapes for its own ends. At certain times, the view for miles is sharply clear and every object has a space

around it as in old pictures in the parlor toy. What happens, happens quietly. There is little change. We learn that even then the ceaseless rain of small occurrences was falling when the scene disintegrates like paper in the rain. Each happening happens in an already moving world. The scene could be a train, with another train on either side, and all three running at changing speeds. We ask, "What happened here?" But movement adds to movement and subtracts. The fact is farther off than all three trains could run on a summer's day on three clear tracks. We ask, and give such answers as we can. We move, and moving, feel the need to act. The happening is all our happiness. We watch to see our lives come true. Not as a dream might come, for who could dream it? More maybe as we say this house is true, true square and plumb. We, angled as no square was ever made, so slight the subtlest plummet cannot line us as it lines the air, on whom the small occurrences rain in until the template of our lives seems made of time, watch for the shape not wholly shaped by time, that one, that shape, almost that solid man.

happy #twopageplustuesday, where you’re invited to share any poems you love that run to 2+ printed pages. I’m excited to continue the William Bronk birthday festschrift with this poem that has one of the most beautiful titles I know:

THE ILLUMINATED EGG The word moon assembled its intestines inside the king's saliva. The letters cried. The birth of each letter contained one hundred films. The merged nerves dropped to the ground. The arrows were injured by what the speech spread. The microphone was looking for an echo to explain. The picture of the burst tongue offended the crowd. The birth cloud reddened between rains. The city's moan drowned underneath the first growls. The voice atomized the line between the children's clinging hands.

THE MOLTING MOUTH The word glass. The word hand. The word milk. The word mirror.

THE AMBUSHED BOOK The encyclopedia of unwilling arrows. The encyclopedia of injured silhouettes. The encyclopedia of appropriated nerves.

THE DEMOLISHED FLOCK The word moth followed the burning fleet home.

happy #twopageplustuesday! another day where I ask you to consider sharing 2+ pages of poetry you wrote or love, or both :)

today, instead of a longer poem, here’re a few from Eric Baus’s incredible book The Tranquilized Tongue—proving small poems can do amazing things in series

Macedonia Road for Jess I like music because I like sound that makes me feel, said the Peloton instructor, a former make-up artist, attentive to detail, who knows not of me but pushed me hard and never let me fall. After, as I crossed the grass, demented from keeping time with my butt I wondered, is it ok to just say to Jess how much I love her energy? What you drink / gets into your mouth / becomes saliva You're alive and all living drama takes place within a few vertical miles, totally scannable by the naked eye except for tree frogs, which one rarely sees.

I took a long walk out country roads: down Reed where I’ve walked with Jess before, turned onto Beale where the woods are thicker, had a little scare when a truck rolled by, unhurried. It's a little confusing, isn't it, Jess (we can now acknowledge)? To be a woman in her mid-thirties with a pretty cute ass walking on the road alone at sundown out of earshot — panic, shame at the panic. Some driveways have a security system decal screwed to a tree, one called CIA (the display is by subscription — you can just pay for the sign). So happy birthday. Anyway I turned around, walked back, turned onto Macedonia Road. Suddenly bits of chat flew out of the quiet (first cocktails after months of isolation). Don't go, said everyone ever.

It was like arriving at a party. I made out a small man in hot pink shirt and shorts yelling Shut up with real ire at a pair of geese. Birds were singing on every tree. Tanagers, mostly, lined up on the boughs as the sunset yellowed them the MORE. All nature seemed inclined for the dimming wall before a rest, and I thought of the 1972 bestseller, The Secret Life of Plants, a work of dubious science beloved by poets, where the flowers and tomatoes took lie detector tests, admitted they were really sylphs hoping to move out West.

Callie Garnett #twopageplustuesday

Fayre Gabbro & The Reclamation Of Time
— a sonnic

in which the matriarchal freedom fighter brings an end to an antagonist positioned against her...

#twopageplustuesday

CONVERSATION for Robert Lowell We smile at each other and I lean back against the wicker couch. How does it feel to be dead? I say. You touch my knees with your blue fingers. And when you open your mouth, a ball of yellow light falls to the floor and burns a hole through it. Don’t tell me, I say. I don't want to hear. Did you ever, you start, wear a certain kind of silk dress and just by accident, so inconsequential you barely notice it, your fingers graze that dress and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper, you see it too and you realize how that image is simply the extension of another image, that your own life is a chain of words that one day will snap. Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands, and beginning to rise heavenward in their confirmation dresses, like white helium balloons, the wreaths of flowers on their heads spinning,

and above all that, that’s where I’m floating, and that’s what it’s like only ten times clearer, ten times more horrible. Could anyone alive survive it?

MORE for James Wright Last night, I dreamed of America. It was prom night. She lay down under the spinning globes at the makeshift bandstand in her worn-out dress and too-high heels, the gardenia pinned at her waist was brown and crumbling into itself. What’s it worth, she cried, this land of Pilgrims’ pride? As much as love, I answered. More. The globes spun. I never won anything, I said, I lost time and lovers, years, but you, purple mountains, you amber waves of grain, belong to me as much as I do to you. She sighed, the band played, the skin fell away from her bones. Then the room went black and I woke. I want my life back, the days of too much clarity, the nights smelling of rage, but it’s gone.

If I could shift my body that is too weak now, I’d lie face down on this hospital bed, this icy water called Ohio River. I’d float past all the sad towns, past all the dreamers onshore with their hands out. I’d hold on, I’d hold, till the weight, till the awful heaviness tore from me, sank to bottom and stayed. Then l’d stand up like Lazarus and walk home across the water.

it’s #twopageplustuesday! consider this an open invitation to share a poem you love, by you or someone else, that runs a bit long—I’d love to read it :)

here are two by the poet Ai, from her 1986 book Sin (& re-collected in a favorite book of mine I’ve been rereading, Vice: New and Selected Poems)~

I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies Dedicated to the Poet Agostinbo Neto, President of The People's Republic of Angola: 1970 I will no longer lightly walk behind a one of you who fear me Be afraid. I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits and facial tics I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore and this is dedicated in particular to those who hear my footsteps or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery cart then turn around see me and hurry on away from this impressive terror I must be: I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon surrounded by my comrades singing terrible revenge in merciless accelerating rhythms But I have watched a blind man studying his face. I have set the table in the evening and sat down to eat the news. Regularly I have gone to sleep. There is no one to forgive me. The dead do not give a damn.

I live like a lover who drops her dime into the phone just as the subway shakes into the station wasting her message canceling the question of her call fulminating or forgetful but late and always after the fact that could save or condemn me I must become the action of my fate 2 How many of my brothers and my sisters they kill before I teach myself retaliation? Shall we pick a number: South Africa for instance: do we agree that more than ten thousand in less than a year but that less than five thousand slaughtered in more than six months will WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME: I must become a menace to my enemies 3 And if I if I ever let you slide who should be extirpated from my universe who should be cauterized from earth completely

(lawandorder jerkoffs of the first the terrorist degree) then let my body fail my soul in its bedeviled lecheries And if I if I ever let love go because the hatred and the whisperings become a phantom dictate I o- bey in lieu of impulse and realities the blossoming famingos of my wild mimosa trees then let love freeze me I must become I must become a menace to my enemies.

if I ever let you slide / who should be extirpated from my universe / who should be cauterized from earth /completely / (lawandorder jerkoffs of the first the / terrorist degree) / then let my body fail my soul / in its bedeviled lecheries

June Jordan

@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
#twopageplustuesday

H I decided to write this poem when I realized that an artist whose name I didn't know had created a work which really touched me, really connected with and brought to light a nuance of emotion deep in my spirit. The relative triviality of this work of art I speak of in my poem—it is, after all, a minor work even in the limited genre of early rock music—gave a special poignancy to the anonymity of the singer. G You take the privilege of Homer, and practice it in a world he could not imagine, to rescue the unknown singer, not yourself, not as an "artist" which is only a piece of a person, but as a soul worthy of love, as a star. Little Star "Stop here, or gently pass!" - Wordsworth I "Little Star" by the Elegants (1958) is one of those perfect early rock/pop songs that radiate confidence in a few orderly truths. Above all, if you have the right girl as your girlfriend-you know, the one who walks that way and tosses her hair, the one who dances just a little between cheers at the football game— if you've got her, you're golden, there's nothing else you could wish for. Oh, God, do you remember the golden liquidity of the lead singer's voice as he expresses this shapely truth— he could get it across without needing to rely on the mere meanings of words— he could do everything with golden syllables!

Who was he? Can anybody tell me the name of the lead singer for the Elegants? In view of that grand confidence it would seem a name worth preserving. Really—if you can give me his name I'll give you six dollars. (I thought of offering ten, but that seems more than I can afford, especially since his name may be fairly easy to discover; five dollars nowadays seems paltry, so I'm offering six.) II This is not the first time I've tried to get a rock-&-roll song into a poem and it won't be the last; it is my need to call out This counts too! I don't deny Homer, or Virgil, or Dante TIl take your word for it about Bach and Beethoven I don't question the importance of the Bible though it never lived in my life, I love Shakespeare and admire Milton as much as you do, but our lives go on in these years, 1958, 1959, 1960, "the Sixties," and still on in these years like 1977 and still on now, as I write this in September 198o with the sun bright almost as if new-and we are small, we are postmodern and small, but not therefore worthless; so it is for our sake that I try to insist upon the wafer-thin golden value of a certain addition to the long, long, overtalented symphony of culture. Of course it's no match for some hundreds or even thousands

of novels, poems, operas etc. we could name, nor for fifty rock songs I could name; but I want to say "This, also, was not nothing." III Where is he now? The Elegants would be in their forties now. Is he a vice-president of Arista Records? Is he a wise quiet junkie on the Lower East Side? Is he dead—killed by something that golden syllables can't fix? Or maybe at this moment he sits with another Elegant in a Pizza Hut in L.A., planning the impossible comeback! If you can let me know where he is I'll send him a fan letter— the unforeseeability of this gesture would make me feel, at least for a day, that a million debts were paid. However, the six dollars will be yours for no information more than his name-his name. The point is just to make it true that someone twenty-two years after a small fact of art can unexpectedly pause and say, This man sang lead on "Little Star."

from The Sighted Singer by Allen Grossman with Mark Halliday

happy #twopageplustuesday everyone! I’ve been trying to make more time for longer poems in the new year, so if you have a poem you love (&/or wrote!) that runs a bit long, feel free to share it :)

here’s one by Mark Halliday that really grabbed me, quoted fully in this brilliant collaborative book~

heres's my long poem "Commute" in @pangyrus.bsky.social anthology Left Unsaid (2025) for #twopageplustuesday

Conor Kelly: Époisses The quarterly light verse webzine

Many thanks to Tom Snarsky for initiating #twopageplustuesday

This light-hearted poem about a famous/notorious French cheese which is banned on French trains was first published in Lighten Up Online (Issue 63; December 2023).

www.lightenup-online.co.uk/index.php/20...

Ok one of my NY resolutions was to share more poetry.

Here's one of mine for #twopageplustuesday - tentatively titled 'invasion'

Noelle Kocot’s book Phantom Pains of Madness in front of a stylized crewel embroidery of a sun

CRUELTY Is Different Nowadays It Talks In Soothing Voices And Never Even Alludes To The Rack And The Screw It Will Hush The

Drum Of A Train Rewinding Read A Manual For Sock Puppets Not Too Bad You Say But Then Again Living In The

Empire Is Its Own Sorrow

happy #twopageplustuesday! if you’d like to share a poem you love (or wrote!) that runs long (2+ printed pages), I’d love to read it :)

I have a short memory so here’s another one by one of my very favorite living writers, Noelle Kocot, from their book Phantom Pains of Madness~

For #twopageplustuesday, I want to share an extract from Dissolve by Sherwin Bitsui, a stunning book-length poem. Bitsui is a master of both short and long poetry, and I am always surprised over and over again by his work.

Crossing from Guangdong Sarah Howe Something sets us looking for a place. For many minutes every day we lose ourselves to somewhere else. Even without knowing, we are between the enveloping sheets of a childhood bed, or crossing that bright, willow-bounded weir at dusk. Tell me, why have I come? I caught the first coach of the morning outside the grand hotel in town. Wheeled my case through the silent, still-dark streets of the English quarter, the funereal stonework facades with the air of Whitehall, or the Cenotaph, but planted on earth’s other side. Here no sign of life, save for street hawkers, solicitous, arranging their slatted crates, stacks of bamboo steamers, battered woks, to some familiar inward plan. I watch the sun come up through tinted plexiglas. I try to sleep but my eyes snag on every flitting, tubular tree, their sword-like leaves. Blue metal placards at the roadside, their intricate brooch-like signs in white, which no one disobeys.

I'm appreciating Crossing from Guangdong all over again today. Only sharing the beginning because the poem doesn't fit well into four images here!

#twopageplustuesday

writersmakeworlds.com/poem-crossin...

we are this place we are this place the clay and salt of it the river and sand of it fingers rise from desert dunes faces emerge from cresting waves bodies unfold like tropical blossoms flush with the odors of honey and decay we are the forests we fell the mountains we devour the lands we poison our bodies are the seed and ash of this place we are not the caretakers of this place we are this place, this place of good and silt and what will we do with this gift and debt where in prayer is the space for truth when amidst these interminable wars is the table of compassion set even in our worn selves as we turn and spit fertilizing the future with our waste we are so much more than we imagine

we are spirit resilient rock unforgiving wind eternal let us move now from the storms of hate and fear and cleanse this place that is us sacrifice nothing but our arrogance and the need to destroy and subvert the glories of the universe that are us we are more than we have imagined more than we have invented and discovered inside our pulsing dreams sing with me of a better day when we learn this planet is ourselves we are this place shaping its tomorrows we need to dream it well

devorah major from her most recent collection, WORD TIME (@citylightsbooks.bsky.social 2025) for this #twopageplustuesday

Vetiver | John Ashbery Ages passed slowly, like a load of hay, As the flowers recited their lines And pike stirred at the bottom of the pond. The pen was cool to the touch. The staircase swept upward Through fragmented garlands, keeping the melancholy Already distilled in letters of the alphabet. It would be time for winter now, its spun-sugar Palaces and also lines of care At the mouth, pink smudges on the forehead and cheeks, The color once known as "ashes of roses." How many snakes and lizards shed their skins For time to be passing on like this, Sinking deeper in the sand as it wound toward The conclusion. It had all been working so well and now, Well, it just kind of came apart in the hand As a change is voiced, sharp As a fishhook in the throat, and decorative tears flowed Past us into a basin called infinity.

There was no charge for anything, the gates Had been left open intentionally. Don't follow, you can have whatever it is. And in some room someone examines his youth, Finds it dry and hollow, porous to the touch. O keep me with you, unless the outdoors Embraces both of us, unites us, unless The birdcatchers put away their twigs, The fishermen haul in their sleek empty nets And others become part of the immense crowd Around this bonfire, a situation That has come to mean us to us, and the crying In the leaves is saved, the last silver drops.

I often like Ashbery's somewhat longer, more meditative pieces.

"a situation / That has come to mean us to us"

#twopageplustuesday

OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS by Madeline Zuzevich, published by The Economy Press

STATE OF THE ART Practitioners of a more ancestral, oceanic form gather in the gymnasium. The goal is to discuss new ways of walking. This facility was established after one thousand patients contracted the “faultless” disease, an ideal attack on the Central Nervous System. Everyone carried their perfect gun in the lobby to ward off unexpected visitors. It is a place meant for sincere forms of study. We sincerely wished for the patients to recover. So I was naturally very sorry when the treatment continued to fail. When someone is

dying, they are often moved to a centralized location like the living room. Here, the subject is examined in a space that receives the most foot traffic. From multiple angles, you can study one’s response to obscure concepts like tragedy. This is, above all, conducted through the television. A passive technique akin to the view of a landscape painting. The future removed all necessity for coffins and opted toward a complete erasure of any medical history, an economical decision for corporeal/computerized storage. Instead, one is memorialized through a painting in a style of their choice. And if mute or incapacitated, the hospital artist is encouraged to

make this decision based on a brief oral history from the patient’s nearest relative. This is timed to occur on the death bed. It is designed this way based on the absolute stillness one experiences in the final stage of illness, which begets a composition of the finest craftsmanship.

happy #twopageplustuesday! you’re invited to share a poem you love (or wrote!) that runs a bit long :)

here is “State of the Art” from OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS by Madeline Zuzevich. I love this collection and this poem, and how it reminds me of Kate Kilalea’s House for the Study of Water in the best way~

A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island
-Frank O'Hara

#twopageplustuesday
Frank O'Hara.org - Poems share.google/2hOXiu7PuK7A...

The cover of Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge, by Delmore Schwartz.

Baudelaire When I fall asleep, and even during sleep, I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial, Having no relation to my affairs. Dear Mother, is any time left to us In which to be happy? My debts are immense. My bank account is subject to the court’s judgment. I know nothing. I cannot know anything. I have lost the ability to make an effort. But now as before my love for you increases. You are always armed to stone me, always: It is true. It dates from childhood. For the first time in my long life I am almost happy. The book, almost finished, Almost seems good. It will endure, a monument To my obsessions, my hatred, my disgust. Debts and inquietude persist and weaken me. Satan glides before me, saying sweetly: “Rest for a day! You can rest and play today. Tonight you will work.” When night comes, My mind, terrified by the arrears, Bored by sadness, paralyzed by impotence, Promises: “Tomorrow: I will tomorrow.”

Tomorrow the same comedy enacts itself With the same resolution, the same weakness. I am sick of this life of furnished rooms. I am sick of having colds and headaches: You know my strange life. Every day brings Its quota of wrath. You little know A poet’s life, dear Mother: I must write poems, The most fatiguing of occupations. I am sad this morning. Do not reproach me. I write from a café near the post office, Amid the click of billiard balls, the clatter of dishes, The pounding of my heart. I have been asked to write “A History of Caricature.” I have been asked to write “A History of Sculpture.” Shall I write a history Of the caricatures of the sculptures of you in my heart? Although it costs you countless agony, Although you cannot believe it necessary, And doubt that the sum is accurate, Please send me money enough for at least three weeks.

The cover of Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet, by James Atlas.

happy #twopageplustuesday! if you’d like to share a poem you love (or wrote!) that runs a bit long (i.e. to 2+ printed pages), I’d love to read it :)

here’s one that took my breath away, a poem by Delmore Schwartz called “Baudelaire.” I’ve been reading the Atlas bio & loving it~

Shelter I had bread rising in a warm oven. I dusted what was left of the flour off of and into my jeans and went downstairs and opened the door for mail. I found a woodpecker dead on the threshold. A hawthorn berry beside it. I brought a box of white plastic packing chips down and petted it on the feathers then picked it up in my hand, the feathers warm, the body light and cold. It fit exactly into the hollow I made for it. The hawthorn berry beside it. Tleft it on the kitchen table. I thought of it looking for shelter, coming only into the porch to a nest at the corner the door made where it met the jamb, the whole of it carved with leaves and varnished in the summer when the landlord repainted. Or flying into the shapes of blowing trees in the door window. And I thought of three tame trees where I walk that had brushed my head and filled it with dreams that fell in the summer to be cut for firewood.

I found a broken shovel that sits at the side of the house and buried it bare in a break in the clouds. Beside the house, under the hawthorn. The hawthorn berry beside it. As I walked back to the stairs the box fell open, and chips shaped like esses and ees flurried out on the wind like flakes of snow. And I took the bread out of the oven, baked now. An oatmeal loaf.

The cover of Shelter by Laura Jensen; cover art by Linda Okazaki

IN PRAISE OF LAURA JENSEN Laura Jensen is a natural. She has that clean eye that has been called a unique imagination. Yet her originality overlaps us all. We recognize a world in her poems, and we see that it is distinctly hers. Then we see that it is ours as well. -Marvin Bell In Laura Jensen's poetry there is that blinking that precedes great lyric recognitions. Her work combines a rebellious vision, large curiosity & poise. But it is her humility in the face of the irrefutable or enigmatic moment that places her, I believe, among the true heirs to the work of Dickinson, Frost & Bishop. -Norman Dubie & IN PRAISE OF SHELTER: Jensen renews the wonder of how it feels to speak our language. Stunning, insidious, precise, her verse takes nothing—no pleasure and no pain—for granted. From the eerie clarity of "Golf" and the technical brilliance of "I'll Make You a Cat" to the ecstatic humor of "Horse Sense," Shelter shows a range and power even beyond her earlier books. -Charles O. Hartman

happy last #twopageplustuesday of 2025! if you’d like to share a poem you love (or wrote!) that runs a bit long, I’d love to read it :)

here’s “Shelter” by Laura Jensen—one of my very favorites. later today I’m excited to share a poem of my own that owes this one a great debt :)

A POEM BY DEAN YOUNG Don't think for one fucking instant that I don't have a broken heart. The man in briefs in an infinite sea believes there is no subconscious nor is he aware tempora exists. Don't think I have not eaten in the most beautiful Chinese restaurant in the world. Don't think I have not written on the walls of my bathtub. Don't think I have not poisoned a snail. Don't think I haven't ignited the sulfur of the fortune teller. Of course I have written a poem by Dean Young! More than once I have written a poem by Dean Young. More than once I have left them by your gate. More than once I have stuffed the eucalyptus leaves in your mouth. More than once I have lived, more than once I have died because of it. I love you. This remarkable statement has appeared on earth to substantiate the clams. Perhaps now we can reach an agreement in the Himalayas, returning shortly thereafter as gods, the kind kind largely ignored by larger and more sensitive organisms. Don't think I wasn't shocked when you were a traffic signal and I a woodpecker. --Mary Ruefle

Mary Ruefle #twopageplustuesday

I’m anti #twopageplustuesday!
Brevity is the soul of wit!