July’s a funny time because of vacations and America and hot dogs and home run derbies. It’s also funny because sometimes you are born and everyone wants to get together and just be born together (see above). It’s also also funny because who has time for anything anymore.

Here’s the shit that was the shit this month.

READ MORE >

This was a big week for Kim Kardashian, who recently became my BFF in an iPhone game. It was also a big week for poetry because–like Dan Gilbert–poetry can’t stop won’t stop.

Don’t worry, I’m still here.

——-
I.

mouth mouth mouth

some words onto righthere  rises eyed
from under  full lift my arms hold
(this weight of you)

Alexis Pope, “(soured)” (Leveler)

II.

I heard the mothers
call me trash. Beyond

me lay some other
me: a supine body

in the summer heat.

Caylin Capra-Thomas, “The Mine Fire Speaks” (Boiler)

III.

My greatest flaw is that I’ve granted my future-self permission to question myself at any time.

Michelle Dove, from “Alt Vices” (ILK)

IV.

Jon tells me
about a girl
who wants

to put her hair
inside his
belly button.

It’s a thing

Rob MacDonald, “Fetal Position” (interrupture)

V.

I want to teach this song
to the children we won’t make.

Ruth Awad, “Shame, Abridged” (Diode)

All weekend I was in New York, which is like AWP all the time (((minus the one time they had turkey legs ((although I’m sure if you put your mind to it you can find a turkey leg in New York (although maybe not because that seems to be a “country” fair type thing and believe it or not I didn’t see a damn deer until I was 18 years old so what do I know)))))). I got back to DC on Sunday and at work on Monday I gchatted Mike and I says “Sucks, dunnit” and he says “wha” and I says “not being there” and he says “TRU.” Which was a little confusing, since it wasn’t really that memorable of a weekend, but then I saw that Lauren Russell interviewed Dana Ward at Hot Metal Bridge and Dana said:

“I can’t imagine writing, or thinking at all, without doing so somehow with others, especially those friends permissive enough to co-create, & then perpetuate, a space where its ok to fuck things up by writing stuff that might say really really stupid shit, change each other’s minds, & then still be around no matter, going on doing writing, not writing at all, keeping up with one another out of need & love, for the specific forms that people make, so doing.”

And then at that point the cab rides and the dad shirts and boxing gloves made a little more sense.

——–—

I.

Before I begin to say what will be the thing that will be the first
thing you hear today, let it be known: we are all in distress.

Erin J Mullikin, “Naked On The Internet” (Alice Blue Review*)

II.

Every day I exercise and I tone and I skinny myself into a spectacular hell

Natalie Eilbert, “Freaky Friday” (at COVEN, Brooklyn, NY)

III.

& ask again & my uncle out in the field with the spade & my uncle out in the ditch with the spade & I went into the lake & thought about the farm & I went into the lake & made my will & all of the farm to my brother & my sister in the house & my father in the ditch of his fields & the goats up in the mountain struggling with the grass.

Lisa Ciccarello, “I only thought of the farm” (The Volta)

IV.

I have gotten good and high, you see.
And I do sometimes try
to be at least
a little pretty.

Joshua Kleinberg, “Yorick” (Spork)

V.

I could cry at anyone’s home movies.
Bruised haircuts, inflatable pools—
I would score them all in B minor.

-Kathy Goodkin, “Ancient of Days” (Dreginald)

———-

xxx

*K, so that’s the link to the poem and doing that removes the nav frame. Here’s the link the whole issue but that link isn’t going to work forever, because it’s just a link to the main page and one day it’s gonna have a completely different issue, so if you’re reading this in 2039 and you can’t find this poem, give me a call and we can find it together.

OK, we spend a shitload of time talking about books in this piece and just about absolutely no time talking about all the free-ass online “content” (LOL) that exists in the world and that seems weird and absurd considering that me and 3.7% of you wallflowers used to read this thing (and other things) in Google Reader and now that’s not a damn thing anymore but you’re a thing and I’m a thing and the follow lines are the thingiest things I got googly-eyed over this week yanawahmean.

——–—

I.

The law does not say sorry. The law says get inside with our skin but do not leave home without it.

Gina Keicher, “Naked On The Internet” (Birdfeast)

II.

I will also admit
how moved I am
by instrumental versions
of terrible songs
in restaurants and that
I’ve never understood
why at the end
of the nightmare
the murderer and I
eat a meal together.

Anne Cecelia Holmes, “If You Ask I Will Tell You” (Sink Review)

III.

If toilets flushed forwards

there’d be more poets.

-John Ebersole, “Until My Stomach Is A Microchip I’m Not Impressed” (BOAAT)

IV.

a new myth in which my hands are put down
at the wrist. where the bone is cut off at the elbow
and thrown to the hounds. a new constellation
where a boy drags his dead dog across the night sky.

-Sam Sax, “Hands” (Smoking Glue Gun)

V.

Perhaps I cry because I can’t believe how much there is
that I don’t believe in
Whatever I am, please look later

-Monica McClure, “Skunk Hour” (GlitterMOB)

———-

Oh boy and check out the new issues of Anti- because the whole this is just whoa.