Category: Smorgasblog

The Storialist

The racket

of our own loneliness is loud.
We crave a friendly crowd,

smaller than us, but the same.
We carve them, make a game

of choosing their dresses and
homes, their dreams.

Dick Jones’ Patteran Pages

When in public places the blood-bright stories
flap like order papers, like petitions in the hands
of the opportunists; when home movie zoetropes
stutter out one hot, bright thirty-second span
of a kid and a garden summer long ago, strung
between some bleak financial forecast and
another war…

Pohanginapete

Everyone seems to be welding, fixing things, making things in small dim workshops or outside on the dusty, potholed streets. We drive past an open shed, dark, full of big carcases hanging on hooks; past a man in a green and yellow dragon suit striding along the street, clutching the dragon’s head while his own head hangs between hunched shoulders as if depressed.

Pearlblossom Highway

The question of aesthetic value came up. Creeley suggested that value was created in the work, or rather, in the process of making, poesis, and in the community (or “company”) the poet/publisher built around the work (here defined as writing, aesthetics, and publishing). The professor then asked, But how are we to judge whether or not it is any good? To which Creeley responded, Who cares?

Kristin Berkey-Abbott

These quilts are ugly, ugly as crops in a year of no rain.
We weren’t thinking of art when we pieced
them together. We wondered how long the fabric would hold
together, whether or not we’d have enough scraps
to keep us warm through the winter.

Blogalicious

In eighth grade my teacher one day stopped class and disturbed me out of my trance. He said I’d been staring right through him and he’d never been so uncomfortable in his life.

Twisted Rib

“She’d fall asleep? and knit at the same time?”

“Yes. Her eyes would close and her head would nod but her hands would carry on knitting. And then at the end of the programme she’d wake up and have to undo it all.”

mole

My mother had a set of champagne flutes,
very narrow, which fascinated me because
they filled so quickly, especially

if you filled them with red wine,
which you’re not supposed to do…

Rosefire Rising

I feel heartbroken and sad for my poet friends who don’t understand this and linger in the “I must protect my content by not sharing it” mode. Sharing it is HOW you protect your content in the modern online environment. That is how you build reputation, how you prove the date of authorship, how you expand your audience, how you maximise your sales.

Zackary Sholem Berger

The everyday is the status which needs no update. The cold with its wrinkles carves itself into your face, into the internal image, the spiritual form, while promises and hopes can barely be felt, which is evern worse than if they never existed at all. In Hebrew there’s a word ashlaya, which means illusion. Its sound calls to mind things which appear, wink, and then slip away, transparent veils that are never uncovered, crawling like snakes with all the time in the world.