The Nepotist

G.M. Palmer's poems are sincere and very smart, as is his blog and review site Strong Verse (click to read a very recent review of fellow friend-of-The-Nepotist Ernie Hilbert's book, Sixty Sonnets). The first two poems posted here chase down the physical and spiritual mysteries of life’s end (word to the wise, the second poem’s death is exceptionally tragic).  The third poem is something entirely different.  But that's how G.M. rolls: in his poetry, little is off limits and history is a favorite source of inspiration.

“Strapped to the gurney, I am no longer trapped / and the Spirit knows where I was blind; I pray / and the Dove flies from me as if the flood / of fear was a phantom its wings could wash away,” G.M. writes.  Not even for an instant do I doubt this poet’s sincerity; when he says “the Spirit,” that’s exactly who he means.  The Nepotist will now take a moment to once again point out how refreshing he finds such frankness.  Now you, Readers, take a moment as well and read these poems.  You’ll be—and I choose this next word with G.M. Palmer in direct mind—blessed by their candor and their crafting.

Thanks, G.M.

***

The Final Arc

          for Alan Sullivan

No place in the nuke ward but the MRI

delivers menace more than medicine;

though not for me; through these four years of dying

there have been few surprises; I have seen

my tumors shrink or grow with no prognosis

for salvation; but today a ceaseless sobbing

cleaved through the whispered conversations and curses

futile as a penitent before a king.

Strapped to the gurney, I am no longer trapped

and the Spirit knows where I was blind; I pray

and the Dove flies from me as if the flood

of fear was a phantom its wings could wash away

and in the silence of the ward I crack

a joke.  The laughter is our gopherwood.

***

Birth of a Nation

Rhea sweats, lost in the heat of her labor,

while two men battle over her contractions.

The static waves of the monitor cradle her cries

in a rhythmic circle-beat of straining hearts.

She moans in constricting pain and feral hunger.

Her husband says that she has had enough;

they decide that she cannot labor on in her state.

Against her wishes she hears the doctor offer

an intervention to preempt the pain.

Rhea says no I can through her dry lips

in vain.  They do not hear her tired voice.

The epidural spreads narcotic knives,

severing womb and strength from Rhea's mind

as amniotic fluid drains past her legs

no longer cushioning the fontanel.

Pitocin forces contractions into her sinews

while a wire is screwed into her baby's head

to watch the decels build with every spasm.

The doctor reads the charts with a legal eye

and calls to ready the O.R. for a section.

The baby's head recedes.  She cannot push

and so the doctor spreads her perineum

and kisses it with his knife.  She cannot push

and so the vacuum cap is stuck in place

five hundred millimeters tight.  He pulls

the child and Rhea tears from stem to stern.

Her child, born by extraction, is torn away

with blood and water at his mother's feet.

Everyone crowds the foot of Rhea's bed;

will they not let her see her firstborn child?

Weak, Rhea struggles up to see the child,

stillborn beneath the vernix and lanugo.

***

Malacorp

     a hymn to the 14^th Amendment

            Things are seldom what they seem:

            skim milk masquerades as cream.

                                    –  W. S. Gilbert

Malacorp awoke: ten million shifting eyes

focused on their groping mouths and prayed within their lies

for Malacorp to stretch its banks of flesh and gold and steel

and pixelated light to make the nation kneel.

Malacorp for Mayor!  The churchyard marquees shined

but the Board of Malacorp had bigger goals in mind.

Malacorp for Senate!  For Governor!  For King!

But the CEO of Malacorp, he dreamed another thing.

Malacorp the candidate was shining and immense.

Kissing babies and shaking hands at stockholder expense,

each primary was pricey and the competition roared

but Malacorp was triumphant, led by CEO and Board.

The steam was building nicely like the colors of the Fall,

Malacorp was polling in the sixties overall

and then that fateful Tuesday, Malacorp was on a roll;

five million times it voted for itself at every poll.

Its stock rose overnight as the news of victory struck.

The brutal winning margin was not beginner’s luck.

Malacorp our President!  Is what the papers said;

the Republic sighed a final breath and finally was dead.

The stockholders were millionaires now making all the laws

and never to the lesser folk did they give a moment’s pause.

The poor folk hadn’t voted, and not for Malacorp;

and once the thought was spoken, they weren’t thought of anymore.

The Constitution ‘mended so that Malacorp could hold

a third, a fourth, and fifth term, as it never would grow old.

All criminals, instead of jail, now worked at Malacorp:

the white ones in the office, the blue ones at the store.

Nothing now was taxed and each thing had its price.

The suburbs built their walls and all stopped being nice.

The cities grew like corpses swollen with the poor

who bought their food in markets that were owned by Malacorp.

Directors and stockholders all fell laughing back in smiles

as campaign funds metastasized in electronic piles

singing money spent on Malacorp was money duly spent

for now five million souls could claim they owned the President.

***

About the Poet:

Floridian G.M. Palmer's extralegal urban farm is a modern Rivendell for poets, musicians, political exiles, and children of all ages.  Regarding this newest house for poetry he says only this: "The final line of my first published poem, 'The Walls are all Mirrors,' is 'family is everything.' Friends are the family you choose. God bless 'em."

On the identity of The Nepotist:

The Nepotist lives with John Galt, Elvis, and the author of The Epistle to the Hebrews in an undisclosed location where they take turns planning hurricane paths. Seriously I've got no idea, folks, but I love John Q. Poet and he loves me. Friends of the Nepotist party in D.C.? Or do we need a support group? Anyway, I'm honored to be in such outstanding company. 

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

There's at once a shivering clarity and a trembling grace in these three poems by Ivy Alvarez. I'm bewitched by their gentle details, the wrenching sadness that lurks between every line break and the enjambment that follows, when it does.  Ivy writes, "A black dog blocks the road. / Pink flowers grow up a wall. Everyone else is asleep. I / don’t recognise this tree." I'm left with a sympathetic feeling of tremendous loss-- hers, my own, the entire world's.

Thanks, Ivy.

***

Phrases

This is our hill. I recognise it. From the pueblo, it is a

bump on the landscape. On its other side, a snake lies

flattened, becomes a belt. A black dog blocks the road.

Pink flowers grow up a wall. Everyone else is asleep. I

don’t recognise this tree. I don’t know the name of

this fruit. The palms wave Buen dia, ola. And I give

back my own small phrases. Que tal. ¿Donde esta perro?

***

En las montañas

echoes in the caves whistle clean through

some gypsy song splits the night in two

reaches the town

its multiple ears prick at the notes

houses above            necropolis below

skulls known by centipedes

bodies fleshy as a man’s thumb

cave walls            softened

by the daily brush

of skin-covered bones

potsherds

dark ochre crumbling into dirt

who are the visitors here

transgressing between two spheres

rain rivulets fall down

like hair around a mouth

swallowing sounds

a finger moves from above to below

the low earth groans a song

dogs bark out to shadowed gods

***

About the Poet:

Ivy Alvarez is the author of Mortal (Washington, DC: Red Morning Press, 2006). A recipient of writing residencies from MacDowell Colony (USA), Hawthornden Castle (UK) and Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain), her poetry is published in journals and anthologies in many countries and online. www.ivyalvarez.com

On the identity of The Nepotist:

As for speculating on the editor's identity... well, it's hard to say. I'm lucky enough to know plenty of awesome people who'd start something cool like this. Maybe if I had more clues... :-)

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

You can't meet Ned Balbo and not like him.  And if you've ever read his poems, you can't walk away from the experience without marveling at the sheer technical skill this man posesses, nevermind his poetic sensibilities and sensitivities and the way he winnows language through the sieve of a brute, editing eye.  These two poems below, based on the paintings of Nora Sturges, attest to that.  I mean, how does one work the word 'lepidopterous' into a metrically solid poem?  It ain't easy, and trust me, The Nepotist knows.  It also is no small task to write ekphrastic poems that at once buttress and comment upon the original artistic artifact while at the same time being artifacts of their own, separate, sincere, and enviably artistic in their own right. [U]nearthly sun / at standstill in the wrong part of the sky, / the ranger's stand deserted, everywhere...  This is the work of a poet with a wide-open heart and mad, mad craft. 

Thanks, Ned.

***

Marco Polo and His Porter, Lost

After Nora Sturges' painting 

It feels like waking up: you find yourself

no caterpillar, furred grotesquerie,              

but something that you've never been before—

The spectral light is proof: you're Someone Lost.

Your porter blinks: he knows that he's lost, too.

It's like awakening. You find yourselves

facing an uphill path, unearthly sun

at standstill in the wrong part of the sky,

the ranger’s stand deserted, everywhere

undying white moths, lepidopterous,                                           

and blanched cocoons that hang, unlike yourself,

from every branch. Your porter bears the weight

of bags resentfully, yet takes your orders,

startled by these chalky apparitions                            

shot like exiles from a grotto’s dusk

into the light to save you from yourself,

or, better, him from you. He'd gladly quit

if you'd pay severance for this pointless quest,

or, if not, start the metamorphosis

to Someone Found inside a chrysalis

where, sleeping, you'd hurt no one but yourself.

***

You Traverse a Country that is Destitute of Every Sign

of Habitation, the People Having All Fled

                After Nora Sturges' painting 

You’ve reached the border: yet another country

to survive. When will the walking end—

the hikes, the climbs, the crossings, the retreats,

mirage and borrowed map your only guides,

the stumps of young trees sharpened into spikes

you’d throw yourself upon—at least, you’d try,

if you could do exactly as you like.

The way ahead, the way back: both are lost.

Straw roofs are torn from A-frame cottages,

doors boarded up, bare trees with bark shorn off

(elder and taller than those whittled sharp)—

more speechless witnesses. No one is left

but you who’s only passing through, again,

always in transit, with no fixed address—

transient loner, man without a country,

walking across scorched earth, and proud of it.

And as you pass, you see on every surface

wings that twitch, silk-white; moth wings that fold

like crossed arms on a corpse, completely still;

wings from some far-off, undiscovered country

you can’t miss, however hard you try.

***

About the Poet:

Ned Balbo’s third book, The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (Story Line Press/WCU Poetry Center), received the 2010 Donald Justice Prize. His second, Lives of the Sleepers (University of Notre Dame Press), was awarded the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize and was a ForeWord Book of the Year. He has also published a chapbook, Something Must Happen (Finishing Line Press). He teaches at Loyola University Maryland.

On the identity of The Nepotist:

I’m not certain who you are, Nepotist, but I’m concerned about the disappearance from Facebook of a certain Nevik Nikrud who exhibits a similarly whimsical sense of humor. If you’re not him, you’d like him and ought to solicit his work; and if you are him, you should solicit his work anyway—for isn’t self-publishing nepotism in its purest form?

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

The vapid air of import covers this day— / As crickets wade in a tide of evergreen / without the faintest hint of speciousness, and / mosquitoes lurch in heavy flight for sustenance... / We are still struggling to grasp at meaning. It's sincerity, plain and true. It's not self-conscious at all, rather, its a poetic that is profoundly Conscious of The Self, that vaporous thing residing inside of each of us that makes us at once same and different, abstract and concrete, completely alive and still quite on our ways to being dead. The Nepotist prizes this sort of intra-poem dialogue quite highly.

The Nepotist also likes that Meghan wrote a clever little poem for her "Guess the Nepotist's Identity" theory.

Thanks, Meghan.

***

No One Knows These Bodies

Be they from womb to grave, or grave to womb,
no one escapes an ostensible truth—
All matter is unrecognizable.
It is as clear and vapid as ice.
No one knows these bodies... dead or alive.

No one knows whose dry bones are in that trench.

Their sorrow has been too long forgotten—

The screams of terror which accompanied

them into the void have dissipated...
Now buried by the sour song of youth.

Words mysteriously push through the air
altering the particles around them.

Soon, they are drowned by industry's instep...

An in depth reminder that impermanence

is ever-present in the subconscious.

No one knows those antique urns full of ash.

One day, that mausoleum will be razed

to make way for the newest construction—

All concrete and rebar... the building blocks

of everything vivacious and modern.

Those memories are thin as rice paper.
Delicate in nature... They can only
hold significance to the creator.
Yet, people insist on carving marble
effigy as an eternal refuge.

No one knows who sleeps in those shallow tombs.
They will continue to wither and mold
in the damp dark, until they float into
a new backyard... Just to be kicked aside—
Their importance lost long ago, with mind.

***

Rome

This city founded by Romulus and Remus

is where the ancient and contemporary fuse.
Once the forum for conquerors as glamorous

elites, it has become a clichéd impetus
with little more than food or fashion as a muse.
It is stifled by a tradition that binds us—

The daunting remnants of popes past and the pompous
remains of an empire's last chance at platitudes
long forgotten. Too often, it's the glamorous

veil of commerce that now hangs over the raucous
voices of those deep in the catacombs. They used
to croon about our indiscretions in chorus,

but they were soon drowned out by the imminent gusts
of modern sewage... a stagnant water suffused
with the leucite of future. It's an amorous

endeavor, to craft a conurbation on lust
for all that is unnatural and outwardly obtuse.
But, it is the acute that gets the best of us...

A rare glimpse into the truth of the glamorous.

***

What Happens in the Meadow at Dusk

~ For My Other

The vapid air of import covers this day—

As crickets wade in a tide of evergreen

without the faintest hint of speciousness, and

mosquitoes lurch in heavy flight for sustenance...

We are still struggling to grasp at meaning.

There is no record of the acidic breeze

that cut through those kelly blades at half-past three.

It was as noteworthy as last Tuesday—

Our memories are as thick as vinegar,

but posses none of its unique properties.

We seem odd and crass standing in the middle

of such an immediate delicacy—

Our pliable limbs sprouting out of a staunch

parapraxis, which renders us too rooted

in each other's prepossessed observations.

Yet, as the day dissolves, we sit hand in hand—

Awaiting the moment when cumbersome thoughts

can be shed for something infinitely more

gratifying... a breath less filled with granite.

When we realize that we have stopped pretending

to know everything... just long enough to see

that nothing is everything.

***

About the Poet:

Meghan Punschke is the author of Stratification (BlazeVOX Books, 2008). She resides in New York and has an MFA in Poetry from the New School. Punschke is a professor of English Literature, Writing and Communications. She has edited several publications, and her poetry was nominated for a pushcart prize in 2007. Punschke's new collection of poetry The Age of Marble is forthcoming. Please visit www.megpunschke.com for more info.

On the identity of The Nepotist:

Dear Friend,

In respect to solipsism, you could be my favorite person to half-exist.

Some may say that you, Mr./ Ms. Nepotist, are closeted narcissist…

But I disagree— I believe that you are indeed a man/woman of honor.

And certainly, an individual with an immense sense of humor!

(That is to say, you must be funny in order to be friends with the likes of me.)

Of course, it would seem that one who doesn't take themselves too seriously

should be the perfect proponent of such a refreshingly charitable ruse.

And so, I would like to take a contemplative moment to commend you

for your covert efforts, and the guts to take on such an intriguing endeavor.

On the behalf of all of us, I will proclaim that this act says even more

about you as a person than you will ever know… that you did so sans ego.

Yours Truly,

M—

Posted by Editor at 12:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In "Tacit Tactic" Daniel Casey writes "How many hours pass / Untouched?" and "Who do you / Touch in a day? From / Whom do you shy / Away?"  Those are resonant, important questions.  The Nepotist approves of resonance.  The Nepotist also approves of the following words and images, all of which appear in these poems:  graze, apologize, go ahead, dry scars, herping, beverage service.  I like this man's voice.  I like how on the one hand his poems employ (lacking a better turn of phrase) a lot of 'regular' words, but on the other hand, in stringing them all together, Daniel manages to hex these ordinary words into something magical ("Let's just sit here in / the grip of indifference" is a good example of what I mean).  It takes a proper poet to cinch those knots.

Thanks, Daniel.

***

Tacit Tactic 

How many hours pass
Untouched? It is a
Sentimental question,
Better would be something
Tacit. Who do you
Touch in a day? From
Whom do you shy
Away? When elbows
Graze on shared armrests,
Embarrassed we shirk
And apologize. Even
Inconsequent touch
Of fingertip on another’s
Hand giving you change,
Receipt, or beverage service.
I want to lay my hand
Palm out, the pasty white
Tender side up, inviting
With a nod—go ahead.
Let’s just sit here in
the grip of indifference
and not each other’s
presence.

***

Mountain Time

I’ve never seen Colorado from the sky
Look other than a thin, raw umber
Cut with dry scars into elevated land.

***

That Little Kid Instinct

Father & son, it’s a business
It’s a bonding ploy, a competition,
a mutual admiration society
of two parties like any real democracy.
So in the jungle where real men play at
being adventurers, soldiers, isn’t it cute—
scientists shrugging off the emasculating stereotype,
being called nails, tough as nails…
Speaking of pedicures, I wonder
how your precious lezzie lizzies keep themselves
pretty for each other? You’d think
a dynamic duo stumbling upon
18 inches of long disinterested reproduction
would flinch, but I guess we don’t need to worry
because like all coldblooded females
they’re so very confused about it all—
pretending to fuck, silly lesbos
can’t even get sex right. Thank god for these
intrepid men to christen findings properly.
Like all good white men in Vietnam
herpes-ing, I mean, herping around
living the life of a major player
and not some chauvinistic doctor;
what an inspiring role-model.

***

About the Poet:

Daniel Casey works as an adjunct composition instructor at Southern Connecticut State University and Three Rivers Community College because no one will hire him to do any full-time or salaried work. His annual 4 month unemployment inspired him to create Gently Read Literature, an Internet magazine that exclusively features reviews and criticism of literary fiction and contemporary poetry. As founder/editor of GRL, Casey still has an income under the poverty line, thus, he writes poems. Casey's poetry has most recently appeared in Poetry Quarterly and Spine Road.

On the identity of The Nepotist:

The Nepotist exists as a virtual friend to all and hopefully loathes Lady Gaga, Robert Lowell, and populist rage...Daniel is projecting...The Nepotist is probably Don Diego De La Vega or Sir Alex Ferguson or Lebron James's agent...or just a damn fine poet trying to give everyone access to other damn fine poets, Daniel Casey excluded.

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