The Nepotist

Days are, and the planets scuttle into a wickedly delicious, throbbing and delightful arrangement of auspicious alignment.  Other days, they cannot manage even the idea of such a feat. 

Today I present three poems by Jennifer L. Knox.  Which makes it a rare day of the former sort.  Ho, best of donkey.  Ha, best of horse. 

Fuck, yes. 

Thanks, Jennifer.  

***

The Mules of Death Valley

Hauling bone-white borax up from the hellish Harmony

Mine Works in July. Each on the train, the end

of its line. The end, mule. Ya.

How sad. Soft ears and whip-

cracking clever, drivers said.

Patient. Affectionate. Loyal. Beloved.

Ho, best of donkey. Ha, best of horse.

They can kick in all directions but won’t

willy-nilly. Ideal companions for lone

prospectors plodding past Badwater’s tease,

past the thin, unhinged shacks of Rhyolite.

There [he spots two specks—another

man and mule—maybe a half day’s off].

Why would God give such gifts to an end of-

the-line animal that loves only this world now—

loves only those of this now—the ones mad

enough to leave green homes and farms for Furnace Creek.

There’re no others to love.

Both are the ends of their lines.

For years Scotty blabbed about a mine so deep

it went clean through the earth.

The only other set of eyes to ever fall upon it were

a mule’s.

Why give soft ears where God’s grace

melts fast as ice?

***

Marriage

All year, crawling home from bars—through snow, rain and sweat-stinging summer nights. But in August peonies began to beckon me from the kept yards of houses we’d never own because we couldn’t keep money in our pockets, because we were always going to bars, because we never cared for the quiet work of caring. We stuffed ourselves fat on clutter and glitter—on meat and beer and Mardi Gras beads—taking in and in but never taking care. How did such blowzy flowers manage to come back after nine months of bitter winter? Tough blood. I’d steal them whether in full fluffy bloom, or still in budlike fists. The bright fibrous stems were a bitch to sever, even with my teeth. Many times trying to boost a bouquet, I yanked a whole bush out by the roots. He’d stand on the sidewalk with a dark smudge for a face and say, “You know what’s gonna happen.” And I did. I’d carry home the flowers I’d risked getting busted for, not trim the stems at an angle, not fill a vase with water and a pinch of sugar or a penny to keep them fresh, nor arrange them high to low like children in a class photograph. Instead I’d dump the lot in a heap on the kitchen table, pass out in my clothes, and snore all night like a pig. The next morning, we would wake to a million ants pouring from the flowers, down the rusty table legs, and onto the wine-spotted rug. Ants are the fingers combing the Filofax pages that are the petals of the peony. I could’ve left them to live, to thrive beside a house—maybe with a little girl inside who made up stories for the flowers about princesses in feathery skirts, but I didn’t. I killed them, then stuffed the seething, gorgeous things into the trash. I could’ve planted my own outside our rented house, heavy with dead Christmas lights, but I didn’t know how to grow things then. I still don’t really, but it’s rare I get drunk enough to tear up someone else’s garden.

***

A Coyote Walks Into a Quizno’s

How gameless must’ve been the plains

to drive it through the traffic of Chicago.

How flat-out busted to muster nonchalance

and sidle by a winding lunch crowd line seeking

handouts from predators and curl up by a cooler

in the dead-end back. Too bushed to shrink

from our hunger’s sour scent. Giving up,

closing in, or had it snapped—seen itself

a son, prodigally lying down among its like?

’Til Animal Control arrived, serene—green

eyes low, but not deferred—primed to parley:

“From one hunter to another, brother,

spare a scrap? I’ll get you back.”

***

About the Poet:

Jennifer L. Knox was born in Lancaster, California—home to Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the Space Shuttle. Her new book of poems, The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, will be available on Bloof Books in Fall 2010. Her other books of poems, Drunk by Noon and A Gringo Like Me, are also available through Bloof.

On the identity of The Nepotist:

I think the Nepotist is a type-A workaholic who feels extremely confident in his/her own skin. A cross between Christopher Walken in A View to A Kill, and Ru Paul. He/she probably carries a gun in his/her pocket, but keeps the bullets in a different place. Like Finland. I don't think he/she hails from any of the southern states. He/she often surprises friends with his/her cooking skills, and may regularly participate in live medieval role playing games, like jousting. I'll say Reb Livingston.

Posted by Editor at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Nepotist notes that he's often quick to celebrate a poem's loveliness, its beauty, its grace or even its pulchritude. But none of these adjectives, however, is particularly apt when describing the following two poems by Andrew Shields. Do not mistake me: these are fantastic poems. Andrew's diction is firm and his sense of the poetic line and how to harness its force to pummel a poem towards its inevitable ending is unquestionable. What prevents me from using soft, pretty words to describe these poems is simply the gritty undercurrent of the poems themselves, the non-flinching stare with which they challenge me , the sadnesses they re-enact upon the page. They vacillate (within stanzas, even) between the harrow of a certain kind of truth ("Grandma drowned another litter today") and the agony of an altogether other kind of mystery ("The ants scavenge the burnt-out house"). No, if these poems are 'lovely', it's only in the way a very sharp knife is lovely; in the right light they glint and gleam and it's a fine, stabbing, dangerous point they come to. 

Thanks, Andrew.

***

UP SHIT CREEK

Somewhere, something's rotten—the stench

is everywhere here, upstream from the weeping willow,

where we used to go after school in fourth grade

and take turns kissing Johnny Watkins. We'd hide there

where nobody could see us but the dragonflies

and pretend we knew what we were doing.

Afterwards, the boys would take turns

calling him a sissy and beating him up.

God, nobody goes near him now—his nose

is brown as my tan. And the other boys

don't think kissing's for sissies anymore.

We come up here with them; the abandoned jetty

rusts in the current. The water behind it

is always still, the eddy marked only by insects

and fish. What's left of a canoe lies on the shore,

with two broken paddles. There's an anthill

beneath the canoe, and a stream of ants swarms up

the overgrown lawn that once ran smoothly

all the way to the house, perfect for croquet

and garden parties, everybody wearing white,

pretending to be rich. Kids do the drinking here now.

The ants scavenge the burnt-out house.

One room still has a roof; its walls are covered

with names and dates, who loves whom,

scribbled curses; the floor is a maze

of candle wax and cigarette butts,

shards of bottles and shattered windows.

Most nights, there are half a dozen kids,

drinking, smoking—last night was the first time

we were here alone.

                                 Hey, where is he?

Wriggling out of my sleeping bag,

I grab the T-shirt from on top of his—

"Fuck You," it says. Ricky's favorite words.

I squint through the thinning fog and see him

lazily zip up on the shore, spit

into the stream. There's hardly anything

to him, he's all arms and legs and hair,

but he's got a great ass, and last night he proved

he knows what he's doing. He wades slowly back

through the grass, pulling out a cigarette

as he passes the canoe. When he stops

to light up, I step out, in T-shirt and underwear,

my hair tangled, my eyes scrunched up

against the sun low over the trees behind him,

nose wrinkled against that smell. "What time is it?"

Taking a good drag, he checks his watch.

"Time to go." I walk the last few steps

to where he's standing, and slip the cigarette

from between his fingers. Lifting up my face

to his, I give him a lingering kiss, then take

my own drag, surround myself with smoke.

"We're gonna be in trouble," he adds. "Well," I drawl,

"no reason to go then, unless you're hungry."

I take him by the hand, head back to the house,

going back to where we were the night before.

***

COCK AND BULL

Grandma drowned another litter today;

she always seems to do that when I'm here.

When I was little, I'd get upset

when the mother started mewing and mewing,

looking around for her kittens, but now I know

she'll have forgotten it all by tomorrow.

She'll stretch out in the sun and sleep

until it's time to eat, then sleep again—

if this stupid rain has stopped.

If I weren't stuck here on the farm,

grounded for staying out all night with Ricky,

if I were back home and the sun was shining,

I'd lie beside the Hicks's swimming pool

and take off my swimsuit top to catch some rays,

and then when Ricky'd kiss me, his tongue

would be in my mouth, and his hands,

cold with the water he'd just been swimming in,

would make my skin shiver and burn.

Nothing to do but listen to the radio—

nothing on but shit my parents like,

country folkie stuff. Some guy's whining

about a rooster crowing—he's gonna leave,

and maybe it's better, some stupid crap like that.

I'd leave if I had anywhere to go.

"Don't think twice," the whiner sings to me.

"It'll give you time to think," Dad said.

Well, Dad: at least we used a condom; you

knocked Mom up when she was seventeen.

We woke at six and could have gone home then,

but why go home just to get in trouble?

It's not the same when the farm is punishment.

It's not the same since Grandpa had to sell

the stud bull that brought home all the prizes

from the County Fair. The ribbons are

still hanging on the wall. All he did

was stand in his stall all day and eat and eat.

I'd go look at him whenever I could.

On sunny days, they'd send me out to play,

and Grandpa'd always send me out whenever

other farmers brought their cows around.

As if I'd never heard my parents fuck—

heard the creaking; they never say a thing.

Ricky even asked me if I'd liked it.

And here I am without him, on the farm,

in trouble, thinking fucking twice, three times,

about what I did—and how I'd do it again.

I'd do it again, I'll do it again, goddamn it,

where's Ricky now, I want to do it again.

***

About the Poet:

Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland, where he teaches English at the University of Basel. His poems and translations from the German and the English have appeared online and in print in many places over the past dozen years. His band Human Shields plays songs he wrote (and two he wrote with lyrics by A. E. Stallings), as well as a few covers. He also publishes a blog.

On the identity of The Nepotist:

I don't know if I have ever drunk tequila and played Scrabble with the Nepotist, but I suspect it would be fun to do so (although these days I tend to single malts rather than tequila).

Posted by Editor at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm tempted to call these three poems by Amanda Auchter 'impressionistic.'  For, in the way that an impressionist's painting gestures at an image with a wash of color here or an emphasis on natural light there, these poems blur gently-- masterfully-- at their edges.  Their lines are fluid; they bleed into their own evenings.  In the poem "Flood" Amanda writes, "Along the Gulf / where the house of your childhood stood, / each pane bubbled out of its framed socket, / the power lines split / the muddied ground. Chris, that whole city / was a grave you’d never visit."  The effect of this is an at-once stark, startling, and sensitive treatments of her subjects.  Even the imperatives in the last poem here are softened by her technique.   "Consider his heart an erratic / lover," Amanda writes.  "It forgets its own music."

Thanks, Amanda.

***

Flood

     for Christopher Lirette

All the balconies were shard-tossed, broken

by the wind.  You held your important saves

on the red eye north to Chicago: someone’s

Collected Works, a train set with a missing

engine. Your Claiborne Street, your bon temps,

grew smaller as the plane climbed

above the delta and paddle boats, the speck

of your roof.  A painted orange X,

a sea’s swallow.  Along the Gulf

where the house of your childhood stood,

each pane bubbled out of its framed socket,

the power lines split

the muddied ground. Chris, that whole city

was a grave you’d never visit

again.  When you left the country

for what you said was for good,

your voice static and high wind,

you were still flooded, a ditch

filled with debris, a refrigerator

taped shut.  Your house

ten feet below the canal’s ruined edge.

***

Aceldama

     with a line from The Gospel of Judas

After the kiss, after you hung

wrist-snapped, bile-

            tongued, I walked the dream-

carved streets, my body

            a broken tablet, and listened for you

to say, Lift up your eyes and the rope,

            my mouth, filled with the red hinge

of hunger. Look

            at the cloud, a tooth grinding out

your name.  And the light

            within it shadows over the city, the stink

of camel-rot, garbage. In the twilit-

            tree, I wait for my body

to burst back into earth,

            into the stars surrounding it.  How alike

we are now: flesh-strung, forgiven. And the star

            that leads rises over this field

of blood.  In the bark-stripped trunk,

            your pale throat, the knothole

of eyes.  What little choice I had

            in the grove, with your face against mine,

the bright moon between us.  Not yet,

            you whispered, pressed my fingers

into the wounded dark.  The way

            is your star.  How far was the crucifix, then,

the scattered silver.  Your ember-

            lit breath, dark bread on my tongue,

the branch my body would break.

***

Letter to the Doctor Performing the Stent Surgery

Photograph the heart’s chambers,

valves.  Work my father back

from the lip of almost death, from the table

he filled with fried eggs, sausage, Miracle

Whip.  Scaffold him with mesh, wire,

hug him against the thin balloon

catheter.  Watch the divided highway

of his heart, how each vessel twists

and wrecks into the soft

beginnings of decay, the fire-

sloped hills of organs and veins.

Unmake the father he’s become—

a body filled with storms and sickness,

a tongue of butter, grease.  A hole

punched through sheetrock. Forgive

the boiling sea of his angry hunger,

how he overlooks vitamins, fruit, birthdays. 

Consider his heart an erratic

lover.  It forgets its own music.

*** 

About the Poet:

Amanda Auchter is the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review and the author of The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award judged by Rigoberto González and of the chapbook, Light Under Skin (Finishing Line Press, 2006).  A former Theodore Morrison Poetry Scholar for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, she has received awards and honors from Bellevue Literary Review, BOMB Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, and others.  Her writing appears in American Poetry Review, Court Green, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches creative writing and literature at Lone Star College-CyFair. 

On the identity of The Nepotist:

The Nepotist has a flair for fashion and adores his/her martini as dirty as one can get.  Recent reports claim The Nepotist was on the pom-pom squad back in high school, but read Shakespeare on the sidelines.  The Nepotist has several unusual talents, among them: fire eater, line editor, speed reader, and, of course, cocktail maker extraordinaire. The Nepotist has amazing hair and was once a candidate for Breck commercials back in the late 70s.  

Posted by Editor at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The three following poems by Joe Milford are vast, sweeping, and self-sustaining. They move under power of their own feet, their own feats, even.  These are the sort of poems that The Nepotist always finds inspiring, the kind that, when I read them, I'm almost invariably fooled into thinking that I can write poems that cut through their own vast, sweeping, self-sustaining spaces, too.  It's not that they're facile-- good heavens, these aren't.  But they crease the origami of their lines so smartly that I'm tricked into thinking that, given the paper yourself, I too could fold a thousand vellum cranes.  What Joe employs to make these work so well is an ease-of-speech, a well of experience, a steady diction, and the ability to not be distracted from his subject.  If you've enjoyed his online poetry show as I have, you'll even hear his voice in your head as you read these to yourself.

Thanks, Joe.

***

FIRST SALVO, TEST VOLLEY

Some have been wounded.

This story ends with wonders.

Roll the die. Guitar solos

Fall from the sky, pelting

Your sprawling personal Vegas.

My horse ran from the gunshots.

I'm writing from the escarpment.

Did my letters get homes? The kinds I'd have

Healed in? You hold your important spheres.

I wonder to about the dangers of those axes.

This place is a trodden heaven.

I call it Exhiliation. Sod afflatum.

The street's darkness only said

Let me breathe, and I never asked,

I just looked once, and there, everytime,

There was always light in that fastidious black.

I ask if it is okay for paper, like a writer.

Usually, I depend on the cosmos or carwrecks.

Usually, I am lucky for keys and ink-soaked ribbons.

I incriminate--let Degas paint me absinthed on a bench.

In sign language, I am a sidewalk crossing.

Never to be satiated embrace that with a run-on sentence.

To hell with thou cavalcade--I'd rather eat moldy manna.

Come-on and nuke the saturated savannahs.

We in the jungle of social braid and fiber optic brocade.

Let's quake waiting for it--that dropping hard hammer.

I wish Wordsworth were here talking of dissecting nature's ears.

Crimes of fathers that are shivers of shrapnel or rain.

An etude for Wordsworth--I could buy some new strings

For an Aeolian harp, new mortar for an abbey;

I could introduce Stephen Jay Gould to him in the afterlife

And talk of daffodils and the spiral of the ammonite.

I could be humanistic (not scientist, not Romantic--just right).

The new protocol was always the same protocol--

Watch your flank, march, put the strongest or the most hated

At the point and hope for the best

(reward them who leave with their legs

Still attached). Be feckless--reckless for books

Of blood-script and in certain states, admire these lies--

Play the greater hand under the wasps' wings.

The gulf above your head, the dire background.

Spitting out the fingernails, prostate at the cinema.

"And you thought that you could make it" became

The title of the movies of our lives. And you thought

That you could make it without being used and without

Being used in turn. I have no receipts for any of it.

There are orbs of truth that break by accident.

The twigs snap and ceramics crack alerting many hunters.

This joke is its own candor; destruction is a wave

In a stadium. Realization is a particle in an aquarium.

Give me some light waves use each other like a din of receipts

Pushing the numbers like nature would. Orbs of

Truth I break by accident—while orb hording.

Psychological warfare only exists in poems,

Or at least I heard a tree say that, while falling in a tempest.

When truth takes off its skin, there's more and more of it,

And we cringe. The aurora borealis can be caused by palm-pilot.

The possible is in that pillbox. Your friend is the cumulonimbus,

Its acidic promise. Wash in the within of not--"Everyone's life

Is the same life if you live long enough": great poet Charles Wright.

Nod off in the acumen of besot.

You dove into technology

And only one white dove stabbed out.

I am just trying to help these people into the well.

We don't lilt like bugs do (we impale).

They suckle blood and move;

We suck and suck and suck and stay.

Locusts on vacation in disarray.

Wind, wind through me like a wicker soul

A screen door on a condemned house.

Those droplets are wasted--wipe your brow.

Safety is the other good lie, a sty on the eye of the sun.

Move through and on, caloric chariot of desire.

You are as strong as the next white blood cell fight.

Do not accept your lot—shed the gorgeous poisons.

Ignite . Go into your zoo with all of your might.

***

SOME POEMS

Some poems come in with a shredded noose around their necks and ask for

          pancakes.

Some poems are papyrus in a skiff in a dried riverbed.

Some poems are armadillo thorned taloned whale baleen cartilage.

Some poems wait on street corners for their man.

Some poems are not poems insomuch in that they prisms.

Some poems go like fourth grader loses tooth in gym class.

Some poems were lost the first time you wrote them just like this one.

Some poems make my dick hard.

Some poems can scare a deer into jumping into barbed wire.

Some poems hunt fox and pigeon.

Some poems are the best and worst dogs you ever had.

There is a poem that can kill a shepherd. one can kill a barber. one can kill a day-

         trader.

Some poems are aeroplanes not airplanes.

Some poems only occur on ballcaps or bumperstickers.

Sometimes idiot politicians accidentally say poems.

Some poems are sometimes. once. never. twice interdimensionally. thrice.

Some poems are a tight necktie.

Some poems flat-out refuse with violent vigor to be tree or bird poems. go figure.

Some poems ask you how it feels to be shit-kicked.

Some poems have never seen rain before and don't care to.

Some poems never got written by Jesse James but they should have been.

Some poems are quiet the first time they ever see her.

Some poems outright refuse to tell the future.

One or two poems you will meet tonight will attempt to swashbuckle.

Poems do not give power point presentations.

I met a poem once that would beat you with its own femur.

Some poems insist on being called thoroughfares and not roads. oblige 'em.

Some poems want to be outfalls but they are stuck as lakes.

Some poems study the science of speleology.

Some poems don't believe in luck but pretend to long enough to trick you.

Some poems ask you straight to your face why you killed yourself.

Some poems radically defy Olber's paradox.

Some poems are goatsuckers and they fear them in Puerto Rico.

Some of these no-good-for-nothing poems need to be deloused before you read

          them.

Some poems are bitches.

Some poems will only eat food from a diner that serves barbecue.

Some poems can give you a stroke.

Some poems will never tell you their daughter's names.

I saw a poem tap an aquifer of the most pure water and then drink it all before we

          could taste it.

Some poems insist on calling a rusty pocketknife a rapier and you best let them.

Some poems taste like litchi.

Some poems prefer furry toilet seats. I don't read those.

Some poems are the two or three matches in the jumbo box of matches you get at

          mega-store.

Some poems are paramours.

Some poems just say Wyclif Wyclif Wyclif Wyclif over and over and over and

          over.

The T-square can measure a poem once--no more than.

Some poems have eyes like the monstera--the Swiss cheese leaves.

Some poems have come back from hell without their eyes and need your help.

Some poems are rubber bands in summertime.

Some poems had to bartend for a while to afford their rent.

Some poems need a can-opener.

Some poems crochet on airplanes to hide their uneasiness in marriages.

Some poems haunt underwater photo-shoots.

Some poems are in toto.

Certain poems agree to just become a part of the transcendental clonoid.

I had a poem turn into a blouse one time and it had a bullethole in it. no shit.

Some poems only travel by pedalo.

All poems are satyagraha. of course they are. this advances English empires.

Some poems play football with leather helmets on and tumors wandering their

          skulls.

Some poems come scarless to you to remind you that they were not born from

          hurt.

At least one sidewalk you ever walked the full length of in your life was not a

          poem.

Every ant on the planet is a type of poem. a mirror of everyone also typing.

Out of all of the grocery bags I have placed under my sink for three years, at least

          one's a poem.

Some poems are eyebrows.

Some poems zip kabang.

Some poems ride railroad cars across the country like remora.

Some poems drop a cool pail to the bottom of a well and draw back up for you to

          drink.

Some poems only wear white t-shirts.

Some poems don't like the avant garde as they churn butter. it's kosher.

Some poems are only about sails. some poems are only about storms.

Some poems are a haystack or a kayak.

Some poems are hot air balloons, the first ones ever, from Peru.

Stupid poems suckle.

Some poems rely on SIGINT. Scary shit.

One poem I read was the Piltdown man. That was a let-down.

Once my stepfather shot a poem into a horse with colic. She was a Palomino.

Once a poem was snowy mountains drawn with crayons.

Some poems are Eskimos of the worst variety.

Rotting tigerlilies are poems. So is sea salt.

Some poems chase tail.

Some poems have tail or tails. or try to chase tail, those randy bastards.

Some poems are coins never to be tossed or spent.

Some big-hair bands never leave New Jersey--are those poems?

Some poems refuse to be victims. readers find this vague. insplintering.

Some poems are desklamps and they feel they need more love you know?

Some poems only talk to Clive Owen. some poems don't blame them.

Some poems smoke weed until they are over it. the it is up for choice, what-not.

Some poems collect scarves and hovel in bunkers and hover over silos.

Some poems evade radar by flying under swamps.

Some poems are a changed diaper.

Poems are O-mouths in ecstasy.

Poems and such and so, perhaps, ergo, and so on: hack. indulge, forward, xerox.

Soon some poems will eat shmores with a shmoe.

Once a poem went into a graveyard and erased all of the stars. that hasn't

          happened yet.

Some poems are no shit, no shit--for real.

Some poems do ceremonial dances and have no feet. They hover-tate.

Some poems in my blood won't let me quit this poem.

Some poems are an artistic drunken back-alley in Savannah, Georgia pizzle.

Some poems are a messmate for fucksake. Then they drink sake.

My wife asked me how to end a poem tonight.

I will never tell her how. I will tell her they have no end.

She thinks me cruel. she thinks me an authority. She says I snore with dishes to

         do.

Some poems are just the dried beans in the cabinet waiting.

Some poems linger about a marriage like an endless display of cabinets.

All poems are what is not opened not what is left nor rust on the hinge.

***

HYDROMEDUSAE

          for my family

I was born in the country Cnidaria. I was not metachronal

Nor planktonic. We were not actually fish. We behaved

Always as if submerged. We became living umbrellas

Because of the rain we created. We floated in air waiting

For rain. In Cnidaria, you are already always underwater.

You are salty and know it. You guard the shit out of your salt.

We were named for skyphos, Greek for drinking cup. Irony

In our vibrating membranes. Rust upon the lips and names.

In Cnidaria, as a group, we are called a bloom. I am sure

An atom bomb is also called this with proper altitude.

When you died, father Aurelia, I was watching a special

About jellyfish. Even in Cnidaria, I receive fiber optic

Surges through my nematocysts. I get the messages.

Polyp I am. Polyps kill us. Polyps of blood siblings

Go to funerals. We all must drift upon the tides, though,

And our particular species lungs about as best it can.

I am not honoring the man. I know I am avoiding

The true bloom. It hurts in me, the barb inserting its

Poison. Like Ramen noodles trickling down from

A floating city and attacking--an alien UFO image,

But we are still all walking umbrellae. It is not raining

Again until Papa Joe says so. I miss that guy. I miss

Being underwater in his thoughts. I miss being in his

Woodshop. I mainly miss those minutes when I thought

It was going to be okay--he stretched my childhood out.

He showed me warp and saw and craft and whittle. Poet

He was. When you are falling through the death of a father,

Umbrellas hardly slow your view of the impact trampoline.

In Cnidaria, the spawning of new umbrellae is controlled

By light. We need light to make us. Funny that we are not

Transparent enough in Cnidaria. Most great restaurants

Can and do serve us. We are menu items--easily dispersed.

There is a great fluorescent protein, called aequorian,

Which illuminates all dark and liquid things. I think

It even illuminates blood. Papa Joe is swimming through

My veins, his umbrella billowing, his protein giving

Its faint yellow-green light; he plants Cnidaria inside of me;

He makes me into a floating well-lit city. I pulse back to him

As best I can, in my own billows; I undulate, breathing flames

Underwater, a miracle for him--breathing away from the bloom.

*** 

About the Poet:

Joseph Victor Milford is a full time professor of English and a published poet. His first collection, Cracked Altimeter, is being published by BlazeVox books. He is married to the poet Chenelle Milford and is the host of The Joe Milford Poetry Show (http://joemilfordpoetryshow.com) and co-editor of the literary journal, SCYTHE (http://scytheliteraryjournal.com).

On the identity of The Nepotist:

One of the problems with nepotism is that it is rarely so openly embraced. It’s a secret handshake thing—the “good-old-boy” network. I like this open display of friendship publication. Still, I see its many controversies. Hopefully, all of our “good friends” here are good poets, and I include myself in that statement—I’ll embrace nepotism rather than pretense these days. Stay a mystery, editor sans nomenclature.

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I like what Cody Todd's poems do with sound. Scroll immediately down to "Bosola" to see what I mean (looking for marrow and gristle. She died with her. / babies on a pedestal). But there are other things here to admire in his work as well. Specifically, the turn of images and events in "ORP-967," and the tightly contained poetics of "Otherness," a poem that seals hermetically upon itself in such a way that, like a lettuce in a Tupperware crisper, the visual descriptions retain their greenness. That's hard fait to accompli, a fresh ekphrastic. Finally, I have to give Cody props for the balance between innovation and tradition that these poems strike upon the page. Keep your eyes on this poet. He's going far. 

Thanks, Cody.

***

Otherness

I. Homer’s Coming Storm

Fog so abundant, the world had failed.

Medusa was the victor. The ocean

was illegible. Its sounds tallied our loss.

Atlas wept because the weight increased,

one thousand-fold. Gulls darted between

the milk of what could have been

a boat that was the half-erased first letter,

as in the third letter of the verb: Roar.  

He is the born collector, but why did he want

to drop everything and run as far as he could?

A laugh somewhere. If we could hear it,

we would have probably all laughed too.

2. Hopper’s Night Windows

They’re endless. Everywhere, the city

is freckled with them: curtains, flailing

like respiratory devices. How quaint,

how intimate, this room, and while the world 

crawls along like some starving, three-legged thing

on its belly, I want nothing more than a tall

glass of lemonade in the night and to watch 

the moon, obscured by our neighbors

that we know of and never see.

3. Caravaggio’s The Tooth-Puller

It might as well be God there. The bored indifference

from the onlooker. The patient grasping at the

ineffable light that blankets his hand. Some judgment

hovering above them all, even the one

being dismantled. It is always a heaving cry

towards mercy, or the maiden-name of X.

It brings finality, like the patient,

who equated his tooth-pain with his disbelief

because most certainly it means, greatly,

to watch others suffer.

***

Bosola

Carrion birds feasting on the rotten.

fruit above the mire. A very quaint.

invisible.

devil in the flesh, listening to the hate.

eat itself behind his eyes and lycanthropes.

have smashed the hobbyhorse and ale kegs.

looking for marrow and gristle. She died with her.

babies on a pedestal. Her kiss. Uttering.

that point of light. Muttering. Fluttering. 

***

ORP-967

Officer Hoyt,                         Boom!                             

Take heed, they’re              flipping pigeons

to sound off to the neighborhood: I’ve arrived.

I didn’t  know you liked  

to get wet.                         PCP, angel-dust, you need to

hear this city, taste this city,

lick this city. God eats your heart.

I know it isn’t pretty. It’s ugly,   

but its necessary,

                                    Smiles.  

     Cries.                          You got to decide: Sheep

or wolf? Otherwise, God shrinks you

into an uneaten fig.

The innocent mothers and daughters,  

                                    they’re the ones who catch

a stray bullet in the noodle!

            Make the criminals puke with a pen.  

You slept with my child             in your arms.

When you kill someone on duty, they have to be

            your slave in the afterlife.  

The shit’s chess,            not checkers. Put this            medicine

up in you. Cheers.                         Back to the world.

Boom!                                                I will burn this fucker down!

King-Kong aint got shit on me!             My white negro,                        

you know what the gas chamber smells like?

                                                                        Pine-oil.            

You said,                                     "I will do anything you tell me to."

***

About the Poet:

Cody Todd is the author of the chapbook, To Frankenstein, My Father (2007, Proem Press). His poems have appeared in Hunger Mountain, Salt Hill and are forthcoming in the Lake Effect, The Pinch, Specs Journal and the Denver Quarterly. He received an MFA from Western Michigan University and is currently a Virginia Middleton Fellow in the PhD program in English-Literature/Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. He is the Managing Editor and co-creator of the poetry journal, The Offending Adam (www.theoffendingadam.com).

On the identity of The Nepotist:

Cody Todd never met any Nepotist. As far as he is concerned he/she doesn't exist. Of course, he inhabits a cave and writes his meaningless drivel by candlelight and stays warm wearing a fur coat, well, a faux-fur coat that came from the fibers of many a moth-antennae. He salivates when he looks at graffiti murals and loves driving around Los Angeles and listening to terrible songs such as America's Horse with No Name and Todd Rundgren's In Your Eyes. If you met him, you probably wouldn't like him, but if you laugh at his jokes, he may propose marriage to you, beware! He is from Denver and chews tobacco. His poems reek of wet cheeks and wet jeans. You can find him at the University of California, but if you have read this far, you really need to pick up a newspaper or a crossword puzzle, seriously.

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