The Target Bird

Questions, reminders, and false starts (or, ways to suck at...

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:51:28 -0400

Questions, reminders, and false starts (or, ways to suck at writing poems)

classic motorcycles

Sun, 19 May 2013 14:41:30 -0400

Ok, sure

Easily the best discourse ever had about The Great Gatsby, courtesy of The King of Queens

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:33:04 -0400

Doug: You don't think the Great Gatsby was lost before he became a magician?
Carrie: He's a magician?
Doug: What the hell else could he be? He's the Great Gatsby!

Poetry might be a mysticism but every time I approach it it flirts away awkwardly like a bird that...

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:42:35 -0400

Poetry might be a mysticism
but every time I approach it
it flirts away awkwardly
like a bird that can’t fly
and I’m afraid to pounce it
for fear it would confetti
itself like a fucking dodo.

Why am I even talking about poetry
in a poem? My head is empty,
so empty, and really I’m trying
to be cool like an asymmetrical
shirt tuck. But I worry because
asymmetrical wings lead to crooked
flight, and asymmetrical oars lead
to floating in circles, sort of
how your asymmetrical lace

makes me want to drink
my nerves away like they’re sea
sickness, and asymmetrical drinking
has me spinning around
your straight face, just like
an asymmetrical face is risking
ugly, and asymmetrical teeth

are a choking hazard, which is caused
by asymmetrical genes and that could
be a death sentence, but
an asymmetrical noose ain’t
gonna kill me as good
as we did the dodo.

I know futility is the size of the bird in my heart whose wings always celebrate the arrival of a...

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:31:35 -0400

I know futility is the size
of the bird in my heart
whose wings always celebrate
the arrival of a now

My weakness is that gravity
accumulates in seeds
blowing about the street
until they pile to a paralysis

There is no flutter
a noun can’t mend
into a pile of paralysis

I hear the wide world
spins itself into a pile of paralysis

I also hear you get caught
up in chants til you’re tossing
their corpses, dumb founded

I wonder if each month
approaches like wound clock
Or is that a womb?

Boy, that was sure surreal,
passing around envelopes
full of inconsequential stonings
of love through the sky —

I’ve stepped in it thick —
I think I lost

my breath a few times
and tried to mask it
with whiskey and now
I hiccup up and down
the whole city thinking

but what I really
want to say is
sueño contigo

tonight

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:47:49 -0400

tonight:

Hmm, do I dare disturb the universe that is Monday?

"Frank throws pebbles into the map if the world and readies himself to ride new waves to ruin"

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:56:57 -0400

“Frank throws
pebbles into the
map if the
world and
readies
himself
to ride
new waves
to ruin”

- from The Book of Frank by CAConrad

This is my mom. She is cooler than your mom. I wrote a poem with...

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:12:33 -0400

This is my mom. She is cooler than your mom. I wrote a poem with her in mind yesterday*. Read it, or don’t, whatever, but here’s to hoping she has the best Mother’s Day.

*this doesn’t mean you should read it as a Mother’s Day poem or a poem about moms serving as the “you.” Rather, she happened to serve as the analog for the “you” in the poem for my own interpretation. Go get your own mom poem.

Lit Mags on Tumblr

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:29:45 -0400

theaprilreader:

onehundreddollars:

engl272:

Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, fwriction : review, and Lightning Cake are three literary projects on Tumblr.

What other lit mags are on Tumblr?

N/A Literary Magazine!

We’re about to release our fifth issue.

NALiteraryMagazine.tumblr.com

The April Reader!

We publish at the beginning of every month

Yes! Support both NA and The April Reader!

infinitesplinters: thetargetbird: I’ve decided to smash the...

Sat, 11 May 2013 20:24:22 -0400

infinitesplinters:

thetargetbird:

I’ve decided to smash the state
like a window that got stuck
during a pivotal cross-breeze sonata.
David, you’d be proud of that first line,
but you’re too busy living out a post-
blowfish phase, all stickers and blood
and mucking up the dashboard -
how am I going to drive is all the way
to the airport without a feel for the road?

I shouldn’t mock you, even pseudoly,
because you’re excited about something
and you’re using the violence of silence
to build yourself a better room and I can’t
even muster a cogent sneeze
with all the sand in the air.

Have I told you how weird Nogales is
after New York? The tallest things seem
cacti, though empirically they aren’t,
but stand next to a pillar of spines,
put your arms around one and miss
the listless embrace of Rockefeller
or Flatiron or WT1. Sometime in a cloud
caught morning the cacti sparkle
even better than an open night.

Who let this poet out of his room?
Who out him in an airport lounge
at midnight with some hippie playing
James Taylor? Who taught these road
runners to actually stick out their tongues
in their mocking sprints. I didn’t even know
they have TV in this state - I’d like to
smash all of them for what they did
to cultural studies, with its chaos
of blancos party-crashing the rio.

Here’s to a single star traveling at highway
robbery speed into an Alex Mac
puddle of blue bullshit. If I’ve remembered
anything from my geology courses,
we’ll fall back into the ocean broken and stuffed
full of questions because one dream
is only a sixtieth of the prophecy we need.

Alex fucking Mac puddle of blue bullshit. Probably the best line I’ve heard… ever? And a reference to DWP. Man. Magic in the air, folks.

The Alex Mac line IS the DWP reference. AH THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF IT ALL!

Just wondering, is there an estimated release date for A Literation?

Sat, 11 May 2013 17:06:00 -0400

I have no control over the release date of the next issue. EDIT: Apparently it’s early June.

I will not take this jar of ashes. The simple things rest for a...

Sat, 11 May 2013 17:00:36 -0400

I will not take this jar of ashes.
The simple things rest for a moment
in our ribcages, they come back to us,
twist the heart notches backwards.
How is it that they fill?

Clouds, the TV with slight chances
of rain, the small miracle
of rain in deserted summers,
lists of names unfurling up
and down the stairs, our favorite
words stamping themselves out
in ashtrays, maniacs and clowns
asking us coyly about our vanities?

But there’s the truth, no? Dragging
along your carpets, crawling up
your walls, sliding down your banister
with a giddy smile and you wonder
what that’s like because you’ve never
had a banister in your life. I wonder
too, but let it be, hoping
it returns to the top of the stairs.

If it returns, I’m not sure we should
listen; if it stays still, we should dance;
if it burns down its smoke signals,
we should wave them high;
if it murders itself in its own skin,
we’ll recreate ours. Remember to
underline that last part twice.
One day we might cart it around
in our backpacks as poems in a slice
of stone, asking us, “Who are you, really?”

And we can say, “Right, okay, you got us,
our hands are up, but now we’re going
to have to crush you.” Or, “come back,
come back, come back!
We haven’t heard you yet!”

I’ve decided to smash the state like a window that got...

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:20:56 -0400

I’ve decided to smash the state
like a window that got stuck
during a pivotal cross-breeze sonata.
David, you’d be proud of that first line,
but you’re too busy living out a post-
blowfish phase, all stickers and blood
and mucking up the dashboard -
how am I going to drive is all the way
to the airport without a feel for the road?

I shouldn’t mock you, even pseudoly,
because you’re excited about something
and you’re using the violence of silence
to build yourself a better room and I can’t
even muster a cogent sneeze
with all the sand in the air.

Have I told you how weird Nogales is
after New York? The tallest things seem
cacti, though empirically they aren’t,
but stand next to a pillar of spines,
put your arms around one and miss
the listless embrace of Rockefeller
or Flatiron or WT1. Sometime in a cloud
caught morning the cacti sparkle
even better than an open night.

Who let this poet out of his room?
Who out him in an airport lounge
at midnight with some hippie playing
James Taylor? Who taught these road
runners to actually stick out their tongues
in their mocking sprints. I didn’t even know
they have TV in this state - I’d like to
smash all of them for what they did
to cultural studies, with its chaos
of blancos party-crashing the rio.

Here’s to a single star traveling at highway
robbery speed into an Alex Mac
puddle of blue bullshit. If I’ve remembered
anything from my geology courses,
we’ll fall back into the ocean broken and stuffed
full of questions because one dream
is only a sixtieth of the prophecy we need.

The World Lacks Reversibility

Tue, 07 May 2013 17:30:38 -0400

And so does time, which is why
my grandma tells me she grew up
in an era where indoor toilets weren’t
a given and that she remembers how
“glorious” her first shower at age 15
was and how she fears the world
our kids are growing up in: Make It New
and you can shit yourself when you wake
to the price of milk or a drone
asking to lend a cup of sugar and to put
your hands up. Just like the world and time,
the heart lacks so much, but I can
misspeak about that just as much
as I can flat out lie about it, and so
the dead seem everywhere I look.

I’ve been getting sad reading Bruce
Boone’s Wordpress, about how much
he doesn’t lie about the heart’s
irreversibility and how heartless it makes me
feel — maybe I’ll call a nebulous you
you’ll never decipher or deserve
and whisper “darlin” like a knife
soaked in blood, like a desert searing
off its horns, like a legacy that cannot come
from the softer world my grandma talks about.
I believe I’m being punished for something
more sever than the wall paper
not matching up, my nails peeling
as if I’m pulling spears from your Bronx-
filled mouth, and it could be my fault
you’ve unscrewed the world’s sensibility,
but it could be my fault for looking back, too.

I Wish I Were in the Woods with Joe

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:04:36 -0400

zacharylp:

5 May 2013

I wish I were in the woods with Joe
penetrated by music from above
too drunk to work and, anyway, on
the inside. I stand at the window,
feet below, open to exactly the elements
in the green grass, eyes on the green
morning to come, so that the day
loses its shape and turns to something
named and manageable: a back door,
a special kind of ignorance cut into
the dogwood. it’s a hard labor.
it will not let you sleep.

Oh man this is good.

You stretch your legs out half a city block, wrapped in...

Sun, 05 May 2013 16:03:48 -0400

You stretch your legs out half a city block,
wrapped in scaffolding, wounded things
trying to become the brink, but please, no
further. You’re a word I seem to know
but haven’t heard before, a slow heaving
domino of laughter, a silence that hears

its awful, longing self. Is mystery mobile
if it pulls in all the air like a breath shared?
Is it something to do with the weather
when the shadowfalls fill with immemorial
feelings, or is it a trick of light? I’m trying
to hold the line that trips a Wednesday

into its electricity, the awe and shiver
and downward arc that smashes
its meaning into the ground like a dead
bird. Is there a new language of trauma
waiting to be reached in that millisecond
of slippage? Rarely do I know what I’m hearing

when I first hear it and then I’m stuck
remembering imprints like the city
you stiletto. What does that really even mean?
I don’t know, I freak out, I buy another coffee,
I watch an arson sky impale itself on Midtown,
I feel like water trying to get back
to its original stream, I flail and return
to you like a horseshoe.

pith: Tuesday night’s Poetry Bomb event featuring Paul Muldoon,...

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:58:37 -0400

pith:

Tuesday night’s Poetry Bomb event featuring Paul Muldoon, Leigh Stein, Melissa Broder, Cathy Park Hong, Kevin Grijalva and Faith Hahn.

(See the rest of the photos on Flickr)

Good times.

I. I motion like a lichen when you ask me what I want; I say don’t disappear, instead fill...

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:06:57 -0400

I.
I motion like a lichen when you ask
me what I want; I say don’t disappear,
instead fill with a flicker
of birds. I’m not going to apologize,
I want us to be the first rate animals
required in New York but I’m worried
about all the claw traps left
on the parkway and how infection makes us
unable to depart without notice.

II.
Words like flight are boring and basically
meaningless. Everyone I know is
a tree looking endlessly for spring
to finally start and wasting
photos on shitty architecture,
saying they know this city from travel
TV, why see it outside of HD?
And then you’re talking about plasma
and I’m bound to be confused:
are we talking about TVs,
or that album from that Phish dude,
or the matter that could charge us,
or are you being cute talking about blood?
At some unprovoked, meaningful hour
of night, big too drunk but flushed
like winter boughs, I hope
we find ourselves part of things
that linger long after the cigarettes
disappear into the ceiling.

III.
Nothing takes place but space,
your voice neon italics buzzing
brown blue beauties. I’d like to dance
with your hands dipped in smoke
then rearrange the beds of every
hotel on Fifth into a wall.
I’m convinced smoke and trees
are conversing in their marvelous
silence, the history of instruments
conjured in a breeze.

IV.
Can you tell I’m making this up
as I go? Plans are like God’s
whoopie cushion, and when I’m serious
about honesty I’ve been happiest
billowing through life like an accidental
fart in a tight space. Maybe I assume
the best of myself and so I consider
all happiness accidental.

V.
I’m writing this on the subway
hoping to finish before a brisk
10 blocks beside the G
to meet for burritos. I’m thinking about
how much better words are
when understood in multiple languages
without a smart phone. And now,
about prudency, what a funny word!
I mean, of course, about how
we temper the dynamite
by stuffing ourselves through of straw.
What’s another margarita on a week
day if there’s no substitution
for choosing each other drunk
or sober? Regardless, tonight I will kiss you
as deep as the city does the sky.

cat leth ?????: So last night, after the AMAZING Poetry Bomb event, Kevin...

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:39:22 -0400

cat leth ?????: So last night, after the AMAZING Poetry Bomb event, Kevin...:

cat:

So last night, after the AMAZING Poetry Bomb event, Kevin [thetargetbird], Turner, Keith, Androo, and I got drunk and spent all night playing exquisite corpse - channeling the surrealists of the past and making collaborative poetry. We’ve decided to start a Tumblr Poetry Salon in…

Yes this was definitely as awesome as it sounds.

Hey I've been trying to find a place to place some of my poetry online. Is Tumblr a decent place to put it up?

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:37:41 -0400

Yes. Definitely. But I’m biased.