Too awake to be famous
Too wired to be safe


Rob Stolzer, Four Heads, 2001

The Unknown Lyrist's Easter Sunday Sermon to Himself
-- by Klipschutz

National Poetry Month or no,
I am, per usual, alone,
in that dreary little cul-de-sac
removed from luck and light,
BOOKS ON TAPE and MYSTERY,
green to yellow COOKING,
the bitter dream of TRAVEL,
surrounded by the pure pith of the ages,
the rotten, ripe and wax fruit of the age.
My eyes fall on an argument,
The Ordeal of Robert Frost,
no doubt misshelved, well-reasoned prose,
which I don't disturb,
having ordeals of my own.
Outside a weak sun shines
as my Rockports carry me
back to this Tendernob cavern.
(What used to be a “garret, carpet new”
now lists as “atmospheric, skyline view.”)
I'm sure he had it harsh,
still no matter how you slice it,
the ordeal of Robert Frost has gone to sleep.
I on the other hand rock on
from crisis to conceit,
elegy to chorus, cheek to cheek,
beset by editors and landlords without faces.
Curiosity contracts with accretion—
I'll take his sufferings on faith,
hold the detail.
The hired hand comes home to die,
that much I recall, the God-fearing solid souls
who take him in. Apples, birches, fences,
the virtues of persistence and blank verse.
This April afternoon could’ve gone worse.
One’s bookworm cul-de-sac
is the apple of another’s universe.

-- Klipschutz reads Easter Sunday 4pm at Valona Deli (Crockett, California), for more information, click here.


Eternity
--by Mary Ferrari

for Kenneth Koch

at the end of every cigarette that burns there is of course
a soft little bright light which means
hope! eternity! so you are not
killing yourself when you
smoke you are preparing for
heaven where the loving lavender
cigarette angels have soft ash wings
or for hell where a flaming cigarette forest makes
a marvelous explosion in which at least you are involved!


Postcard
--by Beth Woodcome

This morning the three dogs shat
on the floor and that’s what I woke to.

Before I even woke my body took itself
in, took it in like an immediate mother would.

Not every mother, but let’s get back to you.
One dog is now sleeping at my feet.

I know how that feels, that shame.
This is my sixty-seventh postcard.

Each time, when I say
I wish you were here

I mean to say I don’t know if you’re real
or intend to hurt me by having a body I can’t get to.