June 23rd, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of the last word
Please click each image to view in more detail.
photo – Sue Anne Tay
The Happiest Man in Shanghai
photo – Sue Anne Tay
Two Dimension Shanghai
Artist Biography
Sue Anne Tay is a photographer and author of the popular blog ShanghaiStreetStories.com. Her work has been exhibited around Shanghai, and published in National Geographic (online), The Atlantic, Foreign Policy and many others. She is also a co-author of “Still More Shanghai Walks: Shanghailanders & Shanghainese” (Old China Hand Press, 2011). She is currently working on a project documenting Chinese communities in Central Asia.
June 23rd, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of the last word and slut
Holiday Inn
All content by Swoon
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/33088578]
Straight lines in black and red have drawn an alternative outcome all over the bathroom tiles and I stumble across the floor like a three year old on a sugar high.
Sunspots outvote the closing of a perfect day.
The scent of fermented wheat pushes every shape of sound to the background as the mirror seems to have doubts about this reflection. An unfortunate act of force crippled an early ending. The clarity of it all blinds me. Nothing will ever be the same.
Unbridled screams of panic escape my mouth as anger takes over.
Stop!
At the breakfast table I put on a mask, made of the pleasure I extracted from our past.
The waiter smiles as he pours hot coffee over my head. I gauge your reaction. There‘s nothing there. In the room, the smell of detergent slaps the future in the face.
Cioran
Words: Peter Wullen
Voice: Bart Stouten
Concept, camera, editing, music: Swoon
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/39963089]
Cioran
rosa van lima met je bedachtzame glimlach prik een naald in je slaap doornen onder je kleed mysticus is de man die spreekt over je mysterie terwijl jij hardnekkig zwijgt in alle talen welke geheime stemmen fluisteren je toe in je ongeremde luciditeit en slapeloosheid je handen trillen en strekken zich bleek voor je uit klaar voor een buitenwereldse omhelzing met je don juan van agonie je rode lippen tuiten tegen het serafijns blauw van het weerspannig uitspansel voor je open raam eerst pak ik je op het aanrecht dan duw ik je in je kussens tenslotte kruisig ik je tegen de wand van je monasterium tranen en muziek lieve lady der lusten richt je half geloken ogen op in hemelse extase
Translation
Cioran
rose of lima with your cautious smile prick a needle in your sleep thorns under your cloth mystic is the man who rants about your mystery while you stubbornly keep silent in all tongues which secret voices whisper to you in your unrestrained lucidity and sleeplessness your hands tremble and stretch out in front of you ready for an outerworldly embrace with your don juan of agony your red lips pout against the blue seraph of
the contrary sky in front of your open window first i take you on the kitchen sink then i push you in your cushions finally i crucify you against the walls of your monastery tears and music dear lady of lusts lift up your half-closed eyes in heavenly ecstasy
Artist and Author Biographies
Marc Neys aka Swoon, born 1968, lives in Mechelen (Belgium). He has produced over 80 videopoems and has collaborated with various writers in different languages. His videopoems and Shorts have been shown at international Festivals. He creates his own soundscapes and released a first net label album ‘Dark embrace with a paper voice‘. In 2012 Swoon collaborates with Alastair Cook to produce a filmpoem for the Felix Poetry Festival and with ART VISUALS & POETRY for their Trakl Remixed project. Swoon made 2 video’s based on texts written by Sigrun Höllrigl.
swoon-bildos.be
vimeo.com/swoon
soundcloud.com/swoon-bildos
Peter Wullen is a poet and a writer. He published numerous articles about fringe music and culture in FRINGECORE, GONZO CIRCUS, FAKE, URBAN MAG, CUTTING EDGE, REKTO:VERSO, APACHE and he has a monthly column on GODDEAU.COM. His poems were published in nearly all the literary magazines in Flanders and Holland. Over the years he published three poetry books: KELP, ITHACA and BELLETRIE. He also works in the medium of video poetry. Videopoems by several international artists can be found on: https://vimeo.com/search?q=peter+wullen. His weblog can be found at: www.peterwullen.blogspot.com.
June 23rd, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of cigarettes and Amelia Earhart
Sheri Wright – Cigarettes
Sheri Wright – Cigarettes
Sheri Wright – Amelia Earhart
Artist Biography
Pushcart nominee, Sheri L. Wright is the author of one full-length book of poetry, Nuns Shooting Guns. She has four chapbooks: Sharks Never Sleep, Contains Scenes of Indigenous Nudity, The Courtship Of Reason, and the most recent, The Slow Talk Of Stones, by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has also appeared numerous other publications including New Southerner, Pegasus, Crucible and Kentucky Monthly Magazine. She is a regional chair for the Kentucky State Poetry society and is co-chair for their adult poetry contest for 2011. Ms. Wright is the host of From The Inkwell. Please visit her website at www.scribblingsandsuch.com
June 23rd, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of leftovers and Amelia Earhart
The Egg
At the back
of my father’s
refrigerator is a
jar containing alcohol
and a twenty-
year-old egg
from Norma, né
Norm, a budgie
of evidently uncertain
sex, who one
day laid it
in the sound
hole of a
Hopalong Cassidy banjo
that hung on
the far side
of the kitchen,
cementing Norma’s femininity,
and the tenacity
of my father’s
remembering—a reliquary
of potential, a
reminder of what
might have been.
My Mother, Approaching Takeoff
We, your offspring, are Officially Concerned.
You seem increasingly foreign to us,
like someone we have heard of
but do not know. We sense
you are moving beyond us,
that your hidden agenda
will take you somewhere
we can’t follow, that one day
all that will remain are sightings,
false rumors, the odd fragment of bone.
Author Biography
Magdalen Powers writes, edits, and teaches in Salem, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Spork, Southeast Review, Monkeybicycle, Alice Blue Review, and 5_Trope, among other places.
June 22nd, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of the last word
Was Spoken
Many many many many to be
Was spoken many many came
Word costume warnings falling
Your newspaper your return to sea
When we left we took our words – dig
Do your best words
In stone words
Copyright words
End of the line words
A good word functions
Will take you to the street but not the door
sit and stay for a drink – they run scared – leaving us experts
The helper is a coward
without place – we write about how missed they are
we write
To look for – at last words
when we come so close we write
to your bent whisper
Lost words looking for last words looking
And then what – now what
Looking for those lost word costumes – the way out map
around here somewhere
You get song quiet – something wide open expects you to catch it
these last words – never had use for alphabet memory
Agreement is not communication – repeat
your stinky vocals I got the hots – last words exile words
Extinct words – end of the world began many many many many bodies ago
with it went – our words went – out as silent – as powerful as any eternity
Author Biography
Fork Burke’s poems have appeared in Hoezo Lepels?, PRAXILLA, Lyre Lyre, and Maintenant. Licking Glass published a book of poems, poetic essays and other images in 2010 . Recordings include “Fork Remixed.” She received her BA in Creative Writing in 2008 from The New School and currently lives and writes in Switzerland.
June 22nd, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of Amelia Earhart
The Conspiracy of Air to Deprive Us of Sleep
photo – Anthony Bondi
Artist Biography
Anthony Bondi lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. His primary focus over time has been on making pictures. He has produced three- dimensional and inter-active installations for Burning Man. The “Tickle Me Tunnel”, for sale online, is based on his patent. <anthonybondi.com>
Tara Bratton is the model in the photo.
June 22nd, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of slut and the last word
Say Goodbye, not tonite
Sleazy. Her word not mine. Not hers either, maybe
her Nigerian father’s. Maybe I’ve seen too many Skullphones. There’s death everywhere. She almost died;;; Credit the anonymous tip. You could try living a little
lot less in the moment. First she thought I was Bi-
I just had commitment issues & used to drink & smoke
—now, it’s pretty much the same except I know when to stop. Or
When nothing in the plane fully functions, well…
I’d eat Kim Novak’s
chicken dinner,
big fucking deal.
I keep thinking about Joe Dimaggio and how I didn’t know the man.
He died in Hollywood, Florida
and there’re so many Hollywoods and Paris’
Africa has its own America.
Finland its Tokyo,
Mexico its Sydney. By any other name
a blowjob. I only buy cheap wine to drink out of some phantoms bellybutton
reciting Oliver de la Paz, Dear Empire
this hand is breaking itself
against your defense mechanisms.
I don’t know who ‘your’ is.
The surgeon general warns: The New Love
is saying what you mean
and not meaning it until you assure its authenticity.
I really am not sure
who this ‘you’ is.
Maybe your cake is from a gas station. ̇
What’s the expression…
damaged goods?
Author Biography
Michael Martin is a poet. Work has appeared in Drunken Boat, OH NO Magazine, Anti- and Swink. Michael lives in LA where he also publishes data and art through Brain Paper Press. (southroyalty.tumblr.com @gogogadgetpoet)
June 21st, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of cigarettes
photo – Donald Rilea
“Portrait Of A Poet, 1967″
photo – Donald Rilea
“Cigarette Break, Sendai, Japan, 1965″
Artist Biography
Donald Rilea is a 47 year-old high-functioning autistic man currently residing in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has been an amateur radio and stage actor, performing and published poet, radio talk-show segment co-host, and, since 1999, an action figure photographer. He has now branched out into other areas of photography, such as photographing local political demonstrations in the Las Vegas Valley, and local landscapes, among others. For more on Donald, please contact the editors of Unshod Quills.
June 21st, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of the last word
In Sao Paulo
The robot forests of Sao Paulo high-rises
Could not scream like the Iguazu falls
When they realized we were in the same country
At the same time
And never met.
Their muted tones stood in the sun all day
Tormented by the heat of indigestion
While listening to us rave about the beef in Argentina
In the same month of 1999
At different restaurants.
Author Biography
Judith Ossello currently lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Find her at www.writerloop.com.
June 21st, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of the last word
The Word For the Book
At first it was just the words for colors Blue
Red Green
Purple. And then the colors began taking on more specificity
mustard, ebon, cream turquoise, and soon the words
for the colors began showing the color each was describing before starting to mix together, bleed
leech, leaving an all -too-prismatic page
upon page upon page of words that no longer mean anything
or mean a little
too much
The word for the ankle bone in an undiscovered, extinct sea mammal The word for the world’s last mouth
The word for a word that sounds like it should The word of amazement
The inches. One mississippi.
The last place they expected to find themselves was in the word for the sensation of a tongue on a screaming tea kettle.
They had thought the words were from them, but they soon found themselves yanked about by the words,
as if the voice they thought was their own was actually a leash and collar,
or even
some barbed hook stuck in their throat
and attached
as if by string
to some celestial mariotteer.
Those kinda words.
The words it was helpful to have killed.
My word, she said, before walking into the fire. The word for opulence contra Wagner,
the word for getting fake ketamine but still, you know,
kinda feeling it.
The word digging its way out of the earth and straight into someone’s foot.
The word that used to mean little but now means vulnerable. The word imposed on the buildings of your city.
The word you word when you weep.
The word instead of the fist,
used either for pleasure or torture.
The secret word
that must be taught in whispers, or broken apart,
or can never be taught, only discovered.
The word that records its speakers.
The word imagined but never said.
The word rusted to the side of another language, having been disappeared from its own.
The word that takes longer to say than to write.
The word that causes phlegm to gather in your lungs.
The word that is beautiful for only one day.
The word that disproves beauty being truth.
The word that causes anyone listening to it to go
absolutely
bonkers
and start saying it to themselves.
The world word,
which has languages birthing and dying all over it.
The word for missionary sex with missionaries. The word that leaves just for a moment before
rushing back in for its lighter.
The word that gets lit as its spoken,
and causes the room to be bathed in copier-white light.
The word that forgets how it’s supposed to sound. The mega-word, nega-word, or ultra-word.
The word ore. The funeral words.
The word that needs money to work.
The word that opens up into a dictionary.
The word who lives his whole life never even daring to speak. The word on the internet, manifesting on every screen,
in every pocket, on every eyeball, through all the satellites. The word invariably convicted.
The word for missionary sex with angels.
The word used instead of a hairdryer,
instead of a scalpel, a satellite.
The word that makes the prayer holy.
The word that kills my grandmother.
The word that kills my mother.
The word that kills me.
The word that kills you, like
in a good way.
What book
is that word in?
Author Biography
Donald Dunbar lives in Portland and helps run the reading series If Not For Kidnap. His first book, Eyelid Lick, won the 2012 Fence Modern Poets Series prize and will be out in the fall.