Dale Jensen


Another Sleuth Move

methods used were perfectly well only
only doors    for the luck world

    takes off his coat slowly
    an honest    he says
    i’m not just did

we’ve got to shift opportunity and motive
pause and ask what what you really are
the package on concrete    the probability of impossible
i know that voice on awake    lying
on the street in your rose bushes
that might be before the blooms trade themselves off
for automotive sandwiches    a clue to something
someone watching out for a window

    the door no longer sleeps
    on the sidewalk or the beach
    has a mind of its own

you should speak up    she said
even the front window is clearing its throat
an apex of clues is trying to seduce the apartment
the mattress you would expect floats an inch above the floor

    brilliance of detection
    the walls reach across
    to shake each other’s hands
    a concert on the radio



Boa

THe bOa SECRETly alive
conSTRICTed aROUND her shOuLDers
not compLACEnt lazy FEAtheRs

as she walked
it ran
with the wind



Here

heRe IS my hEaring aid
or is it my SOUL?
anyway     here IT IS
righT IN mY hand



Five Dictionary Poems

I  natural:
	
	the result
	or stake of the game itself

II  natural:

	occurring marvelous
	produced by food

III  hot:

	capable of a degree succeeding
	close to something sought

IV  parallel:

	imaginary offspring
	apart in musical pitch

V  parallel:

	system at the same time

Dale Jensen was born in Oakland, California, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and received a master’s degree in experimental psychology from the University of Toronto in 1973, with which he said goodbye to academia forever. In 1974, he embarked on a career with Social Security that lasted until 1999, when he took early retirement. He lives in Berkeley and is married to the poet Judy Wells. Dale’s poetry, which is heavily influenced by the Surrealists and such cut-up writers as William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, has appeared in such magazines, journals, and anthologies as Talisman, Lost and Found Times, Ur-Vox, Poetry East, Inkblot, Convolvulus, Dirigible, and many others. He published and edited the experimental poetry magazine Malthus from 1986 through 1989 and continues to very occasionally publish books through Malthus Press. He also has published seven books and five chapbooks of poetry, including Yew Nork (2014), Amateur Mythology (2017), Trump Tics (2020), and Some Coffeehouse Poems (2022), as well as an ebook novella, Why I Moved to San Francisco (2017).

 
 

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