20180119

Seth Copeland


Six Methods

It is unwritten law of this)flesh
that someone must still be setting off fireworks
up to three_but_no more than four days after the
fourth. A dyad of quarto
staving off patriotisme ennuyé.

_thasts how it alway sis_ _ _ _ _

hhhhhhhhh(find)hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh(the ladder)hhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhh(to)hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhh(where)hhhhhhh(all the dreams)hhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhh(go)hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hh(once you)hhhhhhh(wake)hhhh(forget)hh

//autopsy photographs//Breathe a wet hummock moss at me//Lose
yourself//in a neighbor dog’s skull//Stand with me glassing the sea’s
ephemera//some 90s ghost rider comics for blunt wraps//Imagine jumping
in//a whole search history of klebold_harris//Imagine it is you//mantras
for new kids on the block hut_too hut_too
//Become fog with me I//
thought american beauty was shit but this//keep seeing you just so.



Worm Concordance

a)      when the Bernie Boney Berry bro dies_
   Heinrich late of old)(yore_
            I think you went dry_went dark
         poetic spec-ops/2 the jungle of Khristian hell-
               2 rage against lively bore_2 cave papa’s
face in_his 1 reprieve from

b)   unquenchable fire   but the worm does not die
Starts the passage off     Thanksgiving a friend &I discuss
the meaning of worm   there’s earthworm
tape worm   mezcal   worm serpentine squirm dread
all rot in our bodies   dancing in our stomachs
like a shutter of      butterflies

c) worms of a kind methinks/back2 Bone Berry
you my mongrel friend had the toxic moxie to climb
back through and yell at him some more from a comfy
Pulitzer post papa perch/Christ when do boys forgive
Daddies? Do they ever? Should they ever?



Norton Anthology, Reverse

the beats were mostly just junkyboys :_: ginsberg
a cosmic libertine_burroughs mostly just cumming a lot_
&I don)t mean ee( lasty like is kerouac
drinking) drinking) drinking)
mods dream christ dead :or fuck_grecian
orgiast after hunnish days
(((
then_thisthe hokey ballads ((abab))
some mass produced jingle_woo recites_
whitman spreads_naked_wet in tennyson’s kingly beard
(emily)(the)(twentyninth)(bather)
keats wakes/w/tears at his still living
still beautiful soft_shelley’s face eaten by albatross
)))
skip past drab pope couplets_dream god/w/milton
fuck god as donne_(does the bards grandeur
diminish?) will he perish?)_burn spencers silver
&luv some fart /w/ olde chaucer

deor slumps alone in a bar sobbing_
&what has changed_?



Bridges

a genealogy

Hwenraeg puððencat renden beoc þin hrulen.
                                              — said in the Anglo-Saxon)
and an old smithy yfalleth at Stanford
that was before Hastings.
Now KNIGHT has vestigial organs
and Mæster Bān got sick with Freynsshe
in his stinking blood.

Goodman Henrye shot his breeches
Gawking unPuritan at fancies nuding on
London Bridge.
Many sperm later the Pussycats
leapt crosspond on a bridge a coffin
Henry Allyn taunts redcoats at Moore’s Creek.

Young not-Henry reads Crane’s Bridge.
                                              (Crane crossed a bridge w/ a coffin)
HENRICVS NON OSSA liked the other Crane too
but drift too far under Mizz Bradstreet’s shadow.
Pulitzer cocktails make bad dreams. From
Washington Square Bridge he shatters reflections.



Do You Even Dream Songs

Teenage car crash on vhs.
Senior pictures with anthropologetic hairdos
dot local newspaper,
crumple snow gives way to trenchcoat
Robert Stack, pacing in fog,
You may be able to help soooolve a mystery

this is how he remembers it.
Orange bowl brimming pretzel twists,
sippy milk’s chalky wet.
Mother’s long brown weaves by and by,
looks for the huffy hen
redistributed in her genetics.

But he can’t just go back to it—
kneescrape, bikes, tropical punch—
never it was but deathdark, lying hours
caffeine wide, entombed, till
the sentient phosphene pressure snaps:
“Bootstrap yourself, mister. Bones make the man.”




Seth Copeland lives in a dishonest sea, just north of perdition. In some myths, he appears as the editor of petrichor. In others, of New Plains Review.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page
 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home