claire donato

i just read someone else's body, a chapbook from cannibal by claire donato. aside from being weird and smart and funny, claire donato is great at line breaks. each line is a beautiful unit. you can see this best in the first poem, "The Night, What It Allows":

The walls are tearing

  out of their paint.     My legs

  are crossed.     I am not

listening to the TV

in the other room.     I am not

  listening to the television.     The window next

to the television is

  turning away.     The window is

open.     There is a person

outside of it, screaming.  I am lying

  on a television, my eyes are closed,

someone is breaking into my

house: I have always been afraid

of the night, what it allows.     I have

never been afraid of the depth

of your fall: in, on, arms, quarrel,

voice...I am never afraid

to layer my breath over yours--

and when I ask you to plot your anger

on a line, I am referring to fear, how

it is linear: see how mine moves

upward in a diagonal line?

See how it moves up to choose?

Why are you lying in a heap on the floor?

i just typed the whole poem. i didn't plan to do that, i just didn't want to stop. am i in trouble? who cares, do you see what i mean about the line breaks? beautiful.

here is another poem from the chapbook that i love, it is so great:

There are apologies I am too

You can read more poems and buy the book here.

a beautiful manhole

this is cool

katherine regina

feeling depressed for no reason and also a little scared of this. can anyone tell me what they're saying?

trailer for "i am in the air right now"

the talented greg lytle did a hand drawn animation video for one of the poems in i am in the air right now, available for pre-order from greying ghost press. i think he said he drew around 400 frames (*update* 750 frames!). what in the world. he is so good. this is maybe the best thing that has ever happened to me. if you have a short piece that you would like animated, contact greg.


I Am In the Air Right Now from Greg Lytle on Vimeo.

sometimes sylvia plath comes up on my ipod shuffle. her voice is terrifying.

"unless you're doing a character voice, ball, there's gonna be a beatdown"

have you been following the play over at venom literati featuring wayne koestenbaum, jesse ball, elizabeth taylor and dr. manhattan? i like it when jesse ball taunts elizabeth taylor.

what?

i just light boxed but it only got into one eye. my right eye feels much different than the left. what will happen.

they should call it a derek whiteout

i wish you were sitting in my office and looking out the window. it is a derek whiteout. it is never going to stop snowing. my head is permanently encrusted in snowflakes.

longtime boyfriend peter dinklage

was on 30 rock tonight and it reminded me of how much i love the station agent. he is so great.

last night

last night i dreamt that i married two packs of gum.

i was worried that marrying both packs would be like adultery or polygamy, but the clergyman performing the ceremony said it was okay as long as they were both trident.

"sometimes you got to have a different flavor!" he said.

they were berry and mint.

thank you mike jauchen for helping me find tokihiro sato

Sato exposes the film in the camera to light over a long duration. While the camera is in this mode, Sato tranverses the space being photographed with a small flashlight and mirror. Because of the slow exposure and his quicker movements, he himself does not appear on the film. Using the mirror to direct the thin streams of light, the artist highlights specific elements of a space's architecture. The process illustrates the invisible element of space using illumination as a type of drawing tool. The result is a construction of light captured on film.

does anyone know who this artist is?

i tore this out of a brochure a few years ago and now i don't know who the photographer is and i really want to know. it was an exhibit at the art institute of chicago. i think the artist is japanese. but maybe not. does anyone know?

what we were like before

i was messed up before this
i came to the hospital on a float
i had metal binges. i tried to eat my car.

everyday i decided to quit. i threw out all of the cutlery,
nails, kitchen appliances, etc.
i looked for the nearest parade

the man that ate an airplane was not
an overachiever.
he was mentally ill.

i want to be somewhere far

something wasn't right

when i woke up i couldn't see my arm.
i felt startled. i felt like the time
i showed up to an empty tent revival.
or the time i woke up and i couldn't see
my leg.

the stranger

i woke up to find my husband had been replaced
with an unrelated man.

someone called, i said.
"who was it?" the stranger replied.

i am not sure if someone
really called. it was late evening i think.

i think this phone is not
my phone. probably we are on a different continent.

i am going to dye my hair, i said.
"i have taken all of the knives from the bathroom,"

the stranger replied. i feel like giving up.
i am going to watch television.

poems are evaporating

the issue of we heart four things that shane jones did featuring me, blake butler, brian foley and zachary schomburg evaporated from the internet. i'm not sure why. does this mean i can send those poems to someone else? i don't think so. here, i will just put them right here. no one reads poems on the internet anyway.

yes or something like wow

i haven't been waiting for you to come back.
i mean, i know what is taking so long.
you have been reincarnated into scrap metal.
it's not something you should feel bad about.
i don't feel bad. well, i mean
i saw a thing about this girl that eats staples.
she finds them in the carpet. she can't stop
from putting them in her mouth.
she says her favorite food is pizza.
i think she forgets about her passionate
metal eating. like, totally forgets it.
she really thinks it's pizza that she wants.

so i know why you've been away.
something shiny or like,
heavy maybe.
something like yes or maybe wow

three weeks later

i tried writing him twice.
my hands turned to glass and
he chewed them. i remember

when he was a constant.
we fell in love while watching television,
then he ate it.

i tried writing him but so much
blankness. i couldn't feel
my mind i was floating.

i forgot the difference between him
and his twin. i saw his
face in the street and it didn't know me.

i had to smash it with my teeth,
everything went soft.
three weeks later he ate a robot.

the missing eye

i worry about how much a disease will cost. the first time i saw a picture of robert creeley i thought of my cat.
this is because of the missing eye.

when i hear the word "frequency" i think of all of the tumors in my body shaking at the same pitch.
today i thought "there will be a moment when i will only have three and a half minutes left."

i wished we were lying down together in a room that was blue and quiet. i felt the cat jump
on the bed even though he died a while ago.

i thought of the words "cat ghost" and then "hallucination" and "mental break." and then i thought
"in our century we have learned not to fear words."

i saw a doctor about it. except i changed the word "cat" to "faucet" and the words "jumped on the bed" to "i heard the water running."
he said "it happened, you are sad." and then i had to pay a fee.

i tried to get another cat but i kept thinking "cat death."
i closed my left eye and thought "this is how things are now."

sometimes i think if i hear "frequency" again i will start speaking french. i will have caught foreign language syndrome from the word "frequency." it would be ok because instead of thinking "cat death" i would think "chat mort."

the future blah blah

matthew savoca made a video poem and it's on here explodes my giant face and also it's right here. watch it, it's good.


blah future blah from matthew savoca on Vimeo.

i would like someone to look at me blankly and then say "chickens."

has everyone been reading sean lovelace's literary battles? i don't know how anyone can achieve this level of wit and chaos. i suspect cocaine. he 'interviewed' jewel for bloggers on bloggers day. also, he is very dedicated to nachos and frisby golf. is that what they call it? i don't know, he is awesome.

tao lin vs. william carlos williams in an epic battle of irritation
jesus christ vs. kim chinquee in a flash fiction match!

a beautiful sentence

patty griffin sang a springsteen song and then i listened to it 1,000 times

yellow circles of light

when it's hot my stomach hurts and i miss henry. henry is a person i have never met. i don't know how i can miss someone i don't know or i could feel so much. henry is like a coke bottle in the parade of auschwitz. i feel so much despair. everywhere i turn there is an animal in a cage.

when i have a problem i buy a red heart purse and spit into it until it is full. then i throw the purse on the subway tracks. the heart gets run over and i feel my chest inflate. every person is full of problems and spit and sometimes people are bad. or maybe there is a kind of badness that is like a bacteria and some people get infected with it but it's not their fault any more than getting the bacteria that causes stomach ulcers. this happened to my grandmother.

i like yellow circles of light and the shadows they make. when i am alone i miss henry so much my chest sinks down through the couch. i find myself chewing on a coke bottle and then i think, "remember how you are not supposed to be doing this." i can feel the glass in my chest. i don't want to do the dishes if henry isn't here. when i go home there is always a small animal waiting for me in the corner.

i want to know you

i love speaking french and listening to albums in the sun.
what are your favorite things. what kind of teeth grow
on your back porch. i want to know everything.

when you were growing up did your grandmother heat
the furniture? mine did. there were always fires
lit under the couch. the cat wore a helmet.

i want to know things about you so that i can feel
that i know you and that there is a you.
i am against the idea of a decentralized self.

for example, when i was in haiti i discovered beach balls.
this is a clear memory. if i was holding the beach ball
then there is a me to hold the ball and to remember holding the ball.

see. you know what i am saying. i love your brown hair.
you feel like email to me. i could lay down inside your long
sentences. i am always waiting for more from you.

i like it when the sunlight refracts off your eyebrows.
your eyebrows are like dark flames lighting your forehead.
i want to know every fire you have ever lit

and every house you have ever haunted.
do you have the internet in your pinkie?
i heard this about you. every time i sit down

i feel the internet coming up my legs.
it is a sensational feeling. do you have feeling
in your legs? see, i want to know everything.

tell me if you feel your feet. tell me how much sadness
there is in your body and where it is located.
tell me if your hands ever spark at night.

i want to know everything about you.
what kinds of trees appear in your dreams
and what whale is beached in your room when you wake.

i listened to this song 8 times

i am going to start posting songs that i listen to excessively. they will probably all be by will oldham. you are going to think i am boring and not cool. all of this will happen.

guthrie is like poetry only better

darah hulse is a good photographer. this is a picture she took of her daughter guthrie. loves it.