What will happen when the last note dies? Who will have the last word? Perhaps the bridge is no longer—was never—a bridge but a cliff. Hand me the thongs. Thongs? You know, those things that pinch other things . . . Will the skyscraper become uninhabitable? Will the tongue become uninhabitable? japonica percheron laburnum bandicoot horned screamer Allas, allas! now may men wepe and crye! we execrate the warning moon adult attention bizy bizy bizy i ms u deficit dissocia- tive gratification i ms material disorder V for violent appetite chronic consumption ideation fatigue warning V for strong language gdnt gdnt lv accelerate the waning— Swa þes middangeard ealra dogra gehwam dreoseð ond fealleð. What will survive? Will anyone? We found her wandering around the neighborhood in her nightgown. She couldn’t remember where she lived. Words fail us. Twilight. Somewhere a chime. Will the guardians swallow their tongues? euphonium timbrels oboe piccolo ukulele Who will sing the world whole?
In a world where f*** is a verbal comma, abbreviation our lingua franca, pronouns tricksters and poetry little more than an odd patois, we may once again find ourselves coming apart with nothing to show for our pain but a deserted tower. “Ears Heavy, Eyes Shut” is a question—what happens if we continue along our present trajectory? Diane Beck on "Ears Heavy, Eyes Shut"
"Douglas Kearney’s Poetry of Performance" "Everyday life is itself a continual performance—of race, of gender, of relationships. The profound goodness of Sho lies in how Kearney self-consciously performs all these roles, showing how in the end the persona—a word itself derived from a theatrical role—cannot be separated from the 'real' person." viaHYPERALLERGIC
What Sparks Poetry: Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes on Ama Codjoe's "Superpower" "Each time I read 'Superpower,' I’m astonished by the turns the poem keeps making: from the playful to the horrifying, spanning over a hundred years in a few lines. The poem moves from an imagined fantasy of a superhero, to the folk hero John Henry, to an unnamed enslaved woman, to a (re)imagined memory of the speaker’s mother."
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