Watch out, the world's behind you



RIP

as we go up we go down


Raymond Pettibon, No Title (I don't know why), 1985

What We Want
-- Linda Pastan

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names--
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.


Sad Advice
-- Robert Creeley

If it isn't fun, don't do it.
You'll have to do enough that isn't.

Such is life, like they say,
no one gets away without paying

and since you don't get to keep it
anyhow, who needs it.


Last Call
-- Kim Addonizio

It's the hour when everyone's drunk
and the bar turns marvelous, music
swirling over the red booths,
smoke rising from neglected cigarettes as in each glass
ice slides into other ice, dissolving;
it's when one stranger nudges another
and says, staring at the blurred rows of pour spouts,
I hear they banned dwarf tossing in France,
and the second man nods
and lays his head on the bar's slick surface,
not caring if he dies there, wanting, in fact, to die there
among the good friends he's just met, his cheek
in a wet pool of spilled beer.
It's when the woman in the corner gets up
and wobbles to the middle of the room,
leaving her blouse draped over a stool. Someone is buying
the house a final round, the cabs are being summoned,
and the gods that try to save us from ourselves
are taking us by the neck, gently,
and dropping us into the night, it's the hour
of the blind, and the dead, of lost loves
who come to claim you, finally, holding open
the swinging door, repeating over and over
a name that must be yours.

the sun highlights the lack in each


Sofya Mirvis, Before Dawn, 2012

The Colors Are Off This Season
-- Sarah Hannah

I don't want any more of this mumble—
Orange fireside hues,
Fading sun, autumnal tumble,
Stricken, inimitable—Rose.

I want Pink, unthinking, true.
Foam pink, cream and coddle,
Miniskirt, Lolita, pompom, tutu,
Milkshake. Pink without the mottle

Or the dying fall. Pink adored, a thrall
So pale it's practically white.
A tinted room beneath a gable—
Ice pink, powder, feather-light—

Untried corner of the treble.
I want the lift, not the lower.
Bloodless pink stalled at girl,
No weight, no care, no hour.


The Poet's Occasional Alternative
-- Grace Paley

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper
the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor
everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems
because of unreportable
sadness I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along

time is the enemy
time is the guide


Hans Hollein, Erotische Architektur, 1969

* From Harper's October 2013:

-- Amount Verizon charges the government to tap a phone line for one month: $775

-- Amount Facebook charges the government for access to user profiles: $0

-- Number of states in which it is legal to fire someone over sexual orientation: 29

-- Amount New York City fined two sanitation workers for accepting a ten-dollar tip last year: $2,000

-- The last year the World Series-winning team didn't have at least one player implicated in performance-enhancing drug use: 2005

* More Klipschutz reading dates:

OCTOBER 4
Foothills Writers Series 12:35 – 1:35 p.m.
klipschutz reads at
Maier Performance Hall
Peninsula College Campus
Port Angeles
more infor

OCTOBER 6
Seattle
Claustrophobia reading (tentative)

OCTOBER 7
Authors in Pubs reading @ 7:30 p.m.
klipschutz: Featured Reader
Jack London Pub, 529 SW 4th Ave., Portland, OR
(beneath the Rialto Pool Room )

OCTOBER 8
Mother Foucault's Bookshop, 7:30 p. m.
klipschutz & Douglas Spangle
523 SE Morrison St.
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 236-2665
(between SE Grand & SE 6th. St.
just east of the Morrison Bridge)

* “If Frank O’Hara and D. Boon share a lesson for me, it’s that you don’t need a reason to make art other than to delight your friends.” -- Dobby Gibson