David Wolach


From Scripto Erratum

Emergent / Tense 2


                                                                 <center>


                          helio <br>

                                                                 </center>
                                       bacter              sense                at <br>
<!--
                -->
                          (xe)     ion                     sense                es

                                                                                              dull                ed


                                                                 <center>

                                                                   wordward       detroit    in     fect
                                                                                                                      ef


Emergent / Tense 5. (found poem #1) – for michael

{{      {rue de gerard} key

                                                                            mr      mr

                                                                            wiper wiper

                                                                            key     chain          mary    }


where
                     high
                     some
plaka
           bird
                     brown
brother
                     nights
                     laughs
           when                 }

---

From Prefab Eulogies Volume 1: Nothings Houses (chapter 2, “Examples to Take Home”)


Example of a Self-Referential & Recursive Concrete Poem

---

From The Cutting Room

diplomatic gestures on a bed

7/17/07
Re: North American Passage

Dear Mr. Putin:

may we plant our pole in your north? negotiate our way into your blue, cavernous ices? spill the ink on our sheets in our shacks and we’ll wash them clean. microwavable

dinner theater tonight! later the cabin, sultry fire, some hand washing and high-level
foreplay will follow gelato, a shared spoon. we’ll talk about gold and diamonds while

locking fingers. we’ll clear your brush, beseech you and besiege you. drilling languidly white teeth, talking tracks and feeling each other out, this orgy a small

cabal our names sound like biotech firms but. we are not ashamed of our nakedness
in this fantastic wilderness. we’re blazing trails down your back, laughing

as we mine each other for dirty high school secrets. perhaps we’ll play strip poke
her, bury our face in your northern otherness. forget the fauna. bottom, you

said: pourquoi les américains sont si poilus? merde et gras! we, branching turned our heads with violence southern-accent-like, um, excited: “mardi gras?”

and you, vying, you interrupted with your oil-rigged price fluctuations calculator. we, headless under the sheets said: nous ne pouvons pas comprendre! right?

and wondered how our mouths made these sound after all that rinsing. it was a momentary slip of the tongues, our tongues dancing the ridge line again, a kind of moan

replacing this frantic thrice of linguistic battering with a returning. back to burying
the hurried flickering lights of intermission over. any ice will melt temporarily

and so it’s alright baby. we’ll kiss hard for now. getting to know each other again for the first time, we’ll tussle in the morning like sweethearts. no talk of divorce or

property values, nuptials, deceit. you will have plenty of time to hate us
when we never call again. savor the morning in the morning! mourn

the afternoon with ugly conferences and ties. for now we must heat oceans,
dig our heels into the sideboard, bite the pillow and wish.

Yours as Ever,
America

-------

7/18/07
Re: North American Passage

Dear Mr. Martin,

i want to live with you. i’ve only seen your picture. i’ve read your letters, but what are letters? maybe i just want to plant my face

in your dirt and see if you dig it. i’m not this way usually. but i want to wash your dishes. play with your cats. dogs. elephants. bring up the heat in an old apartment

someplace. rub. the rub. i want to go places i’ve never been. ankara. jakarta. any place with a k, really. the moon also. restless. listing. poetry

is basically me with bells. what are we saying anymore? new new new york twenty-somethings. maybe there’s no new news but i’d like

to have a drink with you. a light beer. or a cocktail. twirl your hair in my fingers the way you do. until my fingers get stuck and it goes from hot to not

in a hurry. no fancy conversation, please. nothing about derksen or zolf or lisa robertson. no minor schools, please. stuff that stops us from getting

the hell out of here, going to ankara or jakarta or the moon also. how about just a hotel? hotel sex is still fantastic after all these years. isn’t it? don’t tell me your fears or your

case file number. i’ll google you later. after the sun rises. or the earth rises. or celestial bodies body up.

it’s more about black tights and sentences, laughing like idiots. that kind of thing.

Yours & Yours Only,
America



David Wolach is editor of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press and professor of text arts, poetics, and new media at The Evergreen State College. He is also a visiting professor in Bard College's Workshop In Language & Thinking. His books include Occultations (Black Radish Books, forth. late 2010), Prefab Eulogies Volume 1: Nothings Houses (BlazeVox, forth. 2010), Hospitalogy (Scantily Clad Press, forth. 2009-10), and book burning to ashen strophe (Dusie, 2009). His work has most recently appeared in 5_Trope, No Tell Motel, Little Red Leaves, and XPoetics. Often using multiple media and performative, Wolach's work has been performed at venues throughout the U.S. He is currently at work with composer Arun Chandra on a sound-text piece for 8 channels and 4 voices, "Modular Arterial Cacophony" (from Occultations).

For Wheelhouse updates, calls for submissions, and other news poetry/politik, visit David's blog at http://davidwolach.blogspot.com/.

 
 
 
 
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