July 2011
32 posts
5 tags
Blood Wedding Reception
After Lorca
Shivering glass spikes my tongue,
my teeth a handful of hard-frozen snow,
a dream carried to me by a cold ivory dove:
knives, little riverless, scaleless fish, hardly fitting
into a fist, load the blood with jasmine —
flesh astonished, placed at the dark root of the scream.
Morning begins like a great moist tree trunk,
a mountain married to a decent girl throwing...
5 tags
Growing diversity from a sun-
drenched dream only to throw it
in a bouncy house to let it occupy itself
until lunch could be argued
as a sprawl of glass - the smudge
of a reflection and a prism of bumper cars
bumping against a blue sky.
-C.S. Henderson
5 tags
How to examine
the cartography of a pull-out
couch became a study in ascension
when my mother realized
the mattress was splayed like a cross.
My brother confesses he’s been stealing
meat from the deli again,
citing the right to not be valued
in the slices
and places them in his mouth
like wet, delicate petals.
Father gathers mother
boards in a pile and hammers
a lecture about...
5 tags
Mowing the Lawn
for DWP
The decoration of morning
starts with art deco fives
and bee stings up the leg.
A trip to the emergency
room is an elegant solution
to ending a poem, but blank
verse looks worse on a cast.
If we dismantle the consequences
by timeliness, then being no good
at saying sorry isn’t part of our plan —
the ones you liked never
changed for the better because
they felt...
5 tags
A History Record
To do:
Call mom and dad,
remember how great this year was.
Thank you card, said:
“Who else was looking pretty ok?
There’s a millionaire here.
I’m sick like that.”
It was World War One
(on the first day. Friday, too!)
and I shoveled the driveway.
Here’s the plan:
Indian left overs,
Brooklyn, home, nap.
Blitz Vegas in four years.
Back to Vienna,
On to...
7 tags
Reject 10
If love is studying the impasse
of movement of a wall placed
in your living room, then best
grow a debate-off beard and
fling the barometer of what is
and isn’t fair into the trash
with your empty shampoo.
-C.S. Henderson
5 tags
Weekends with Lorca
In the event that Monday
morning collapses under the sugar
cubes dragged from your coffee,
break through the sealed
window with branches of dreams.
The wedding fills with blood
your brought from Morocco,
and all you want to drink is orange juice.
The birds all sound the same
through the air conditioning, but make
dinner easy to roast with a microwave.
In the event that the dreams of...
5 tags
Yes, the Seasoning's Nitro
If you’re wishing to be like the Japanese
by giving up the gun for a pair of swords
with which to eat our rice, then what good
do the paces we set the table with do?
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
Solid as a flock of sparrows
you’ll come back
pinioned. Is it safe to infer
that hands are not wings? Even
uncertain, I know stretched
from certainty about how to
contain myself. I know I speak
but the air would not go
where I want it to go.
Will I be forced to dress
my hands for another
when I am stretched and old?
*See: 7/22/2011
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
When I am old, stretching
out my hands for another
to dress me, will I be forced
to go where I do not want
to go? I know the air would not
contain me, I know I speak
from certainties about the
uncertain, I know stretched
hands are not wings even
pinioned. Is it safe to infer
that you’ll come back as
solid as a flock of sparrows?
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
Convince me of the sincerity
of your politics with a cold
compress and a lampshade
at the speed of a broken toe,
at the plague of history,
at the dinner of mud and picked noses.
Being a revolution is not significant
when you melt like ice sprayed with Windex.
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
In the unspeaking presence of corrosion
and flow, a letter would not be enough
to stymie the burst. Have we come too
close to uncovering the machinations
of things hiding between the drywall —
things which keep the house’s ceiling
bound to the walls, things which keep
it from forgetting us in a day while we
step out for work? Your nature is tougher
than I’d like to...
5 tags
Old Skin
A fragile lung, diminished
like a finished piping bag trying
to cool soup.
Carrying little threads at the
ankles, trying to stitch
the carpets to the sheets
and make a continuum
to follow with a stooped head.
In the winter, fish are kept
in the cooking pots —
a fin gets half-way,
can’t reach
without an ally.
Splitting logs like herring,
dinner is measly and cold.
The...
6 tags
Itching girl scratches
her wrists to beautiful,
toes a bench like she
were tripping over the
Wailing Wall.
I thought the dream
would have happened
by now, but stomaching
the embarrassment that
sleep is only sleep is
Rimbaud’s prognosis.
For a sense of grief
I laugh over the bridge
towed in by the dogs.
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
Now I’m in bed,
tossing nods to solemnity
and trembling.
An action. A state.
Compressed to wooden
palettes the painters fleck
themselves to existence.
At the bank, cormorants
pick the locks while sparrows
woo them with soul -
James Brown at the ready,
man the dynamite!
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
Man laughs at the bridge,
afraid of the dogs
on the other side of the coin.
Dressed like a lampshade,
security guards him from melting
like the audience at the rimshot:
the orchestra applauds.
-C.S. Henderson
7 tags
You’ve left me unconvinced
that you can be sincere
when it comes to discussing
the astrophysics of elephants.
Help me with my trunk
if you don’t believe we’re
capable of punching out God.
-C.S. Henderson
5 tags
The chronic blindness of the evening
stands in front of the fireplace,
prodding “woo” to verbalize itself
away from the couch with the gaunt
poker of cigarette breath between
smiles. The amble of an ember
along the flue destructs the words
forward to an ellipse. If kissed, the grout
might not withstand crumbling
to a smokey pyramid atop the
decorative pillows.
The calm...
5 tags
We Stained the Lumber in Coffee to Give the...
but they called me a rivet
short of a scaffold
because one plank
never stabilized a whole.
-C.S. Henderson
5 tags
Inefficiency
You’ve been sleeping in front
of an open fridge again,
wasting the icicles I made
for ice tea — you’ve forced me
to drink the blood from
my shaving nicks.
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
Reject 9
If love is taking credit for finding
morals to put in our summer
salad, then we’ve forgotten the convex
landscape of a dinner table places
everything in a lens and
calcifies it to an unsuitable meme.
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
Reject 8
If love is a mime
trapped in a theme,
let’s say World War II
rationing, then virtuousness
is wordlessness because
you don’t need a sled
to feel the heavy pull
of your lot.
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
Reject 7
If love has trapped another bear
and is not sure whether to make
a coat or stew then we should
consider letting go of the change
in our pockets so we might hold
hands or at least come to the
table unarmed — some nights
it’s too warm and full to do any-
thing but wrestle with the teeth.
-C.S. Henderson
5 tags
My eyes scuttled across the tide pools watching children prod anemones, tender flowers that always wave when
there’s no one to wave to. I thought of our conversations, their undulations calm enough for me to set off. I think
like a hermit crab searching for a larger shell: knowing survival is an exception.
-C.S. Henderson
Duplications: Followup: A few notable Tumblr poets →
seasonsonearth:
In light of my post yesterday, I figured I would do well to point out a few poets I’ve found on Tumblr who may not be Language poets or even all that avant-garde, but whose praxis is not embroiled in the narcissism of unselfconscious Romantic “self-expression” or emotional catharsis. This list…
Another reblog, because if you follow me you should be following the other...
5 tags
What I Want When You're Either Here or There
To start a new world every day,
to burn down a forest
compress the ash
and make a city of diamonds,
to hold a bloodless revolution
where free speech is not won
with coups but printed in poems
replacing nutritional facts,
to witness youth as a raw fruit
marinating before a grill
branding it with age,
to say, “look at me, I’ve given myself
a bad name in place of ripening
to...
3 tags
Duplications: Against Self-Expression As Such:... →
seasonsonearth:
The Gesture
The question is: how does one hold an apple Who likes apples
And how does one handle Filth? The question is
How does one hold something In the mind which he intends
To grasp and how does the salesman Hold a bauble he intends
To sell? The question is When will there not be a…
While I try to keep this blog strictly original work, I’m reblogging this...
5 tags
Turn Around
There’s a doorstop getting bored in the corner of your room.
The potted plant looks amorously at your pencil holder.
The lamp gets envious of the night light’s laid back attitude.
The chair sighs as his back pops from a swift turn.
The shoes consider making a pyramid to boost morale.
The ceiling fan got drunk again and is trying to stop the spins.
The mouse ponders the...
5 tags
I woke to a man plucking
out my feathers. I am trapped
in a cubist hell,
there are no soft
edges here. I am prompted
to write silly things
and leave a trail of dead
verbs like “wait,” “seek,” and
“love.” Put off writing
your letters for a week,
when the sentiments aren’t
powdered by the velvet mediums
and are as true as knotted wood.
-C.S....
5 tags
You were baiting the icicles
rounding the veranda, waiting for the sun’s
orange to set them as torches.
Too heavy on the lines, I say, the
strings cutting into the thick tips.
Instead, I set the house alight,
hoping the sun envies my blaze.
-C.S. Henderson
5 tags
Tsar Bomba
In the event that we can’t reach an agreement, promise me you’ll fight hard enough to break the neighbor’s windows and let the patterns of diluted speech be forged into my skin. It was meant to be bigger but the furniture can only contain such a breadth of anger — we were the biggest in the world, loved because waves of our fire prevented us from touching the ground —...
5 tags
From Now On These Phrases Should Be Struck From...
In the carefully constructed
verdant woods
we were infinite
(but only because words can’t describe
your essence
coming from the depths of pain and sorrow and the ocean).
In pale moonlight,
You’re angelically angelic, an angel,
and I’m the last of mankind
succumbing to sickness,
my darkest secret
is that I’m forever lost and alone.
So what if this is just another...
