the burlesque poetess(s)

poem-a-day week24 “Delicate deli inappropriacy in ascots & bowlers”

October 11-17, 2010 week24: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
http://locksmithy.livejournal.com/tag/poem-a-day
http://poetesss.tumblr.com/PAD

(re-demonstrating how not to stash money your first day of busking in broad daylight)

164. October 15, 2010 (fri. rain’d out buskin’ lead to Brookline flyering/debauchery)

Desire is matched by
The distant rhythm
Telegraph the breast
This tasteless catechism
An anxious calm

There will be no copper jingling
As it tumbles out of hat, hair
Loosened into small change
Twisters as our tips rain onto

Boutineer, bound breast, sidewalk
Stage too damp in this Oh, Boston
Storm means roaming Friday night

In flapper cape, in character to flyer
Flaunt kamikaze song at the Jewish
Neighbourhood’s sex shoppe?

Let me regale you with linen napkins
And kugel samplers- delicate deli
Inappropriacy in ascots & bowlers:

Nearby hospice patron
Speaking at a Friday night volume
In a rather rowdy restaurant

We normally love the place
But it’s just TOO LOUD tonight
Repeated to waiter, manager, busboy

Until we finally notice
Their untouched soup and wine
(If we’d been fastier ruffians

We’d have pounded it and toasted
Them L’Chaim! on their way out)
You can’t kick Semitic gem’d gesticulations

And youthful jazz hands out of a booth
For being queer(ly dressed) and bubbly as greps
Water, giggling animatedly ‘bout fisting

In cartoon voices vaudeville bespeaks
Folks rather spiffed up, you can’t point us out
As those rough lookin’ teens with silver topped canes

Lesbros in chimney spout tophats! The one with
The nose ring and monocle! Tattoos and cuff links!
It’s how the boisterous/bourgeoise

Get away with any everything
Isn’t it? Starched & collar’d delinquents
Matzo ball robber barons

Of your calm soup and crackers evening
Paying customers as pretty as we
“Get away with” enjoying ourselves, entertaining
Anyone warm-blooded as bouillon broth

(top italics are ‘poems by removal’ i wrote via The Passionate Life)

the rest of the poems li(v)e below!

Read More

35. for @cgleason on dublin and the flights of writers from it

Given its history
of mass emigration,
Ireland was once a nation
which seemed to exist
in order to be abandoned.
(And documented,
as by those in love?)

Samuel Beckett left banana peels
in filing cabinet drawers, the stage wailed,
waited, never the same. Absurd, even.
Theatre disrobed in silence, intentional curtains
frame breathing, awkward emigré actors.

Thomas Kinsella left office Ireland for London,
his poems break dawn with daggers,
Justice wanes before his giant glasses, but
his classes made ‘mericans want to read
the Irish, rustic-ly pine for see-through green.

Joyce? Typhoid couldn’t keep him from vocation,
not even failing sight and Croatian teaching
posts, Nazi invasions, Jungian treatment, epiphanies
caught and writ— even a cyclops in France could see.

Oscar emptied of witticisms by labour
camp, drained of his flair for fashion
-able exits, dreary parlour banter—
ended his days in Parisian anonymity.

As Mr. Fryer commented
on Mssr. Wilde’s final part of life he was:
beaten but not bowed, still a clown
behind a mask of tragedy.

+

by your poetesss

the italicized beginning of the poem/built-in-epigraph is Siobhan Marie Kilfeather, in her intro. to Dublin: a cultural history. picture by photodash

*master/mistress list of secretwitter poem req’s from 6/09

poem-a-day week7 (white rabbits, evelyn evelyn cirque soiree, father’s day)

http://locksmithy.livejournal.com/tag/poem-a-day
http://poetesss.tumblr.com/tagged/poem_a_day

(week1 - week2 - week3 - week4 - week5 - week6)
*‘ccompanying poem-a-day ‘llustrations

June 14-20, 2010, week7: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

my above-the-cut teaser poem this week is pertaining to no good Lewis Carroll-ish antics in Brooklyn at the Galapagos venue. in close 2nd and 3rd are my poems about playing the Evelyn Evelyn/amanda palmer tour finale after-partay, and my ridic’ piece for mon cher fop pop, for father’s day. enjoy? enjoy.

46. “it’s not just their tentacles”
June 17, 2010 (‘Tale’ at Galapagos, Brooklyn)

i never thought i’d say this, but this is a great albino
Coney Island draught. A medieval dinner table on dark Water
St. Restaurant across from the Galapagos, an industrial cave

theatre of piano Pierrots and fairy MC’s, aerialists
motioning their mirrored silhouettes in the floor’s
reflecting pools to cross over, join them in rhinestones,

garter’d leotards and cloud silks. My contortionist muse
joins us to merch, sashays in layers of lace, PVC, metallic
undergarments jingling in giant headphones & boots

daring anyone to do more than squint at her sparkle
on the subway. On stage, a stumbling white rabbit with porcelain
clock-face clanking ‘gainst pearls, the Red Queen

(who does not throw fits, just inkstands!) traverses the aisle
with accordion, glowing amply where one ought (over heart).
We rouse audience from reverie of burlesque psychoanalysis,

our furry fixation with the fairy tale, our penchant for skeletal
puppets and trees. i escape the venue’s prison-like restroom
(spotlights on each toilet, ladies, everything else dim cement)

for the Brooklyn Bridge park, tiny tea lights surround
a couple on the rocks, a late night wedding
photo shoot. i could live here, i think for the first time

before the feeling of millions of people on pills and billions
of tall burning buildings in every direction closes in. Our Wonka
Walter and i fantasize about forest-life. A pocketwatch

click, and no hanky to dab our upper lips. We’re terribly
late, and these directions aren’t even in the prisoner’s
handwriting! We’d best be headed home to Boston,
Wonderland for this band of stoop-sitting rabbits.

the rest of the poems li(v)e below!

Read More

34. a love/lack poem for @lizziekit

@lizziekit asked for a poe-em about love, the lack thereof or the inability to hold onto it. nerd angst ensued?

No replacement valves without receipt

My love is an inkpot with a prior engagement
ring of crustacean pigment settled at the bottom
in a frown. My nib’s gone missing, my voice

is a rust mute fountain pen, no choice
verse flows to cool a sunburnt beloved’s
brow, no place to sail parchment sailboats.

The pawn shoppe appraised my lust—
the jewelry box with the locks worn off
for tuppins, said so in magpie scrawl.

My gloves were made by Shakespeare’s
father, surely. Who else could stitch so closely—
holding hands with roses, supple prosody,

quill fulfilling stage left fantasies. My ink-stained
palms applaud the cruel danseuse, a sparkling bauble
I’d drop inside an unstrung viola da gamba, and leave

behind a curtain after a salon and cigar. My love
is an instrument I let rot behind the buffet service,
grow to be forgotten amidst polite party chatter.

I received the invitation in sapphire ink,
but already pawned my evening cloak
for more paper, my night mind must have
someone lily-pale and patient to confide in.

+

by your poetesss

31. @YoAdrienneKatz’s fabulous professorequest

this is the sexiest depiction of Charon i’ve ever seen, and it’s a bit mantastic, so i’m stoked to share it. stay tuned, week3 of my poem-a-days will be archived here as well asap. and it’s tumblr tuesday, if you fancy, you can tell the world/-ternet that you fancy this here tumblr, too! » recommend/creative writing directory

Artist Calcar’s landscape backgrounds for full-page skeleton figures, layers of muscle.
(- Art & History of the Book)

The literary landscape was overgrown with muscular poems,
and your lectern (the stuff of legend) hacked away at hungover
monosyllabic student replies with the tar-handled machete, humour.

Shaming scotch sweat and good ol’ gin breath into lapping at
the fountain, into taking notes, into taking coins into their mouths
to taste the majiscules and majesty better, Highness. They crossed

the pond with you, your voice. Anything for the Socratic ladder,
the sign of the cross, the signature sneer of a villain we love
to talk about behind the author’s back.

*

I majored in the sound a well-made padlock makes
underwater— a twisted key turning its cog-testines to click
just so, disturbing coral as well as whales.

You took my graduation tassel and mimed moving it to the right
side of my face (the side my mouth curls to speak, to protest this—)
and then you considered the left, beneath my Boop lashes,

the old parchment-coloured Cruella streak in my hair.
Who pretends to adjust another’s motorboard during the dummy
diploma-hand off? A professor as fabulous as you, who believed
the rumours, and didn’t see my flask, the crossed bones of my busted left hand.