Seth Parker
Per
Capita
Paul
Muldoon: ‘The
neighbor’s walking, the neighbor’s mist’
Christian Bök: ‘Business
up front, party in the back’ John Ashbery: ‘Hot for air news’ Charles
Wright: ‘Cartoon mouse’s eyeball missing’ ‘Goggles, nature’s eyepatch’ Nathaniel
Mackey: ‘Fruits are Jewish; Pepsi the state of Israel’ ‘Fruit
wears the yellow
starfruit, the yellow cherry’ Jorie
Graham: ‘Hoola hoop after school until your
brains fall out’ John Tranter: ‘Fly your car into your heart’ ‘Exposed meat’ Harryette
Mullen: ‘Burp; name colors; last one makes a sex sound’ ‘Too civil to
have animals on
us’ C. K. Williams: ‘A pornographic movie, Texas-style’ ‘Kissing the biggest violence’ Eric Pankey: ‘Swearing, lipstick’ ‘Shotgun venue’ Charles
Simic: ‘Stab you with a knife, for angry looks’ ‘Chest titties’ Pierre
Joris: ‘Cold wives and shiny paper’
‘Mammories, longer than the road that stretches’ August
Kleinzahler: ‘Corn maze’ ‘The
most pathetic death, shallow lake, plausible recovery’ James Tate: ‘The castle may be haunted’ ‘Cliche the
atmosphere’ ‘Rats in the orchard’ Ai:
‘Made to look like Thomas Dolby’
‘Really pronounced cuss words’ Lyn Hejinian: ‘A cat
screaming at a groin’ ‘Wall of Baywatch episodes’ ‘Point through the light, the meat
light’ Tomaž Šalamun: ‘Liver
puppy anthem’ ‘O, meat light’ Forrest Gander: ‘Black janitor, Todd Rundgren’ ‘Paint on
a piece of window, run over with a streamroller’ Mark
Strand: ‘National anthems of
the main countries’
Adrienne Rich: ‘Luxury
product, fond believer’ ‘A mini
entertainment community based on popularity, peer approval’ C. D.
Wright: ‘Nature’s cruel joke, like gargantuan breasts’ ‘Think of your writing in terms of
quarter-mileage’ Joshua Beckman: ‘Hoist
the flag briskly;
lower it ceremoniously’ Yusef
Komunyakaa: ‘Warm spring cider accidentally broke in again’ ‘Jesus can’t shame you to pieces’
To
have a balance of things, like fruit that never shows up. To be sad like a Roman is sad of his vice or
folly, lampooned there in the arcade.
The heavy butler, choked there by the baronet’s gesture.
To
put a frame around that moment would be to construct by fitting and uniting the
parts of the skeleton of a structure around that moment. The frame in a dark
alleyway, with a mysterious pursuer, shadowy, near the museum. Fourteen pictures of the
frame.
To set the thoroughbred on fire.
To have a formal or fashionable attire or style of dress, a particular
costume or outfit. The
fall line, where the water shows you something over the ice, like a hunter.
Why
do ribs hold grace lightly? Why does an
ear hold memory? Single gestures like hogs’ threats, and they’re burning also.
To put G-d here, and fashion the
kitchen. Interview you, loving how you say it three
times for me, slowly: on horseback, with rifle, in cowboy hat with eyepatch. The
clearer shovel makes a house, like a stamp, opening up in the shovel
language. To beat the
dust out of the hocks, and take the year away.