lyrical
Lodging by Stephanie Kaylor
lodging
by
Stephanie Kaylor
the other world rewards me
with memories
blank eternally
as a photograph,
shapes and colors
the remnants of their explosion
out of context
at land
there was a flock of starlings,
I could not tell you anymore,
not even if the creatures,
breathing,
surrounded me again, here,
now
I would only see a monochrome
grouping, I would only see
the whole
what more could you see
when one of us breaks
or cloaks herself in new silks?
the great changeover armed itself
in nothing but the delusion
that you were always master
and these are all your tools
far-sighted
I see myself at your side, eye
-to-eye, inside which is still a tincture
of the time before you and I
in my eye too
was the house, the glorious
overthrow of the ledger
the markings of our losses
I never saw
the inside but as spectator
I knew, with all the windows
leading to all the rooms
that I could house them together
there were no padlocks
here nor a single car
not a telephone wire, a time
or a name or a face misplaced.
Poetic Statement: Let me mourn. Let me dream. Let me see you not as how you present yourself to be but how I envisage. Let me write my story, let me turn the pages, let me bridge subject and object with my own brand of ink. It isn’t white ink, ink of life, the glorified rape of the canon, sowing its seed in anyone’s lap. It’s the red ink, the ink that transcends the permanence of the whole thing and rewrites, retells, the nagging voice in the background your history sought to cut out. It’s the ink that seeks not to hide glitches but to bring them to the center light.
Bio: Stephanie Kaylor is based in upstate New York where she is completing a MA in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is also a current MA student at European Graduate school, concentrating in narrative structure and desire. Though her musings are not political in content, she is an ardent supporter of activist causes, including sex workers’ rights and prison abolition.
Two Poems by Glen Armstrong
Two Poems
By
Glen Armstrong
World’s Fair 9
This jumper is close to that number
This laugh is close to that throat
Select visitors are invited to go
Behind the bridge
The yacht’s naked body
Elegant no longer hidden
Others discuss terrorism
Their clothes almost screaming
With short-term power
o
These students see the jumper
Not unlike the elegant yacht
They attract a wide range
Of nature and elevation
They freeze in yoga
Pants / positions / swing-the-statue
Postures
o
This is an amazing thing
A husky laugh
A magazine
o
The jumper sees the students
Any other person would have
Been frozen in the speculative voltage
And thus have overemphasized
Their interest in the supernatural.
Midsummer 5
Nature has its vein of gold
Cheese its bleu network
This feeling will never survive
Without a secret hiding place
The bee has its hive
Mind its subconscious
Face its subcutaneous tissue
On has its off
The cough drop box
Its odd bearded brothers
Cod its liver oil
Hat its tin foil
Lonely alchemists hide
In the alley
The only place
Their ongoing research on hiding
Makes sense
South of here
There is work being done in the canebrake
On the afternoon shadows
Cast by silos
Expose any aperture
And that other world
Starts whispering.
Also click here to read A Brief History of Meat at Sparks of Consciousness
Bio: Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He also edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank.
Aesthetic Statement: There’s a certain finality to a story that I can never quite achieve. Narrative seems so damn sure of itself, and that’s most likely why I lean toward the lyrical. The fragmented and broken still hums. It still resonates with the blow that destroyed it. Certain grammatical units remind me of my birthplace, Pontiac, Michigan, where there are scraps in the streets too abandoned and too interesting to waste time rebuilding.
ALTPOETICS 