Poetry. Published by Unsolicited Press (February 2022). 98 pages. Design by Kathryn Gerhardt. Edited by Alexandra Lindenmuth. Available online at Unsolicited Press website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million. Available in Washington, D.C. at Bridge Street Books and Politics & Prose (Connecticut Avenue).
In a nutshell:
Per the memo recently circulated in triplicate, Metacarpalism establishes new standards for humor, elegy, and form(lessness). [n.b. Future works that don’t measure up will be returned to the factory.] These very lovely strophes memorialize after-sex ambiguities, Beef Pineapple Robots, (C)harm Cities, Peoples Who Don’t Listen to Music, anybodies (sic) named Danish Kroner, and sonnets, although what is a sonnet, everything is, nothing is, whazzzzapppp! You will laugh. You will weep. Simultaneously. Or separately. Kind of like a front flip and a backflip all at once. Or separately. Purchasing a copy will support a great small press. Thank you for your time and consideration. Well all right then. Two sample poems:
I’ve Got That on My Radar
—I’ve got that on my radar.
—Me, too.
—Do other people have it on their radars?
—Everyone has this on his or her radar.
—What was there if there was no radar?
—Carburetors?
—Faithfulness?
—Heh heh heh.
—When my girlfriend moved in, she kept her radar.
—More women are keeping their radars these days.
—Do you see blips?
—Only when I stand up too quickly.
—Sometimes when I’m alone, I hear applause.
—Maybe you’ve got The Clap.
—Do you have it on your sonar?
—Should I have it on my sonar?
—The sea ice, after all, is melting. . .
—Do you have that on your deep space probe?
—I’m not sure I care for that phrase.
—(…)
—(…)
—Do you drum in
the woods?
—I have no drum. There are no woods.
—Then you must throw percussion to the wind!
The Emporium of Youth
Seen from another angle as when an area—
station, square—contemplated on a Sunday.
The expression may calcify into a demonstration
of thistle-thorn dismay. By “imagine your face”
I mean “shadow,” your expression itself a shadow.
These colors: sky, stone, graffiti: these colors now.
The emporium of youth versus the emporium
of adulthood. If Person A will ail at Point X,
then Person B will ail at Point Y. (Loneliness
aggrandizes the symmetrical nature of most pain.)
Whereas a big galosh of dirty cloud busts open
a caucus of old doves. Brighten the ticking synapses
versus what warms the solid-state capacity for violence.
These colors: stone, wood, tower: these colors now.
The difference between idling (unit of riverbank)
and waiting (unit of high-rise). Rust, rusty coloring,
what gnaws into our porticos of awareness.
By “imagine your face,” I mean the uncorrected
ritual of love. Or the sliding scale of sunlight,
or the balloting of voices in airshafts and alleys.
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