Monday 18 March 2013
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Filed under
read today
And I say to her, all the time, “stop
Clubbing seals.”
But I mean “stop clubbing, seals.” She knows now,
I once held a mirror up to a flashlight fish during a night dive. It responded by blinking its lights faster. I managed to get the fish to separate out from the school it was in and to follow its mirrored image for some distance along the wall. It seemed intrigued by its blinking reflection, in the way a parakeet with a toy mirror might be, but eventually the fish became so frantic in its blinking—desperate, I would say—that I covered the mirror with the palm of my hand. The fish hovered for a moment, then swerved to rejoin its school. I imagined what the fish had experienced was similar to what I might have experienced if I were to meet a stranger on the street and speak to him, only to have every word mimicked. If I were to say, for instance, “Don’t I know you?” And the stranger were to respond, “Don’t I know you?” If I were to say then, “You look familiar.” And the stranger would say to me, “You look familiar.” I’d say, “Do you have a sister named Marge?” He would say, “Do you have a sister named Marge?”
“I’m only trying to see if I know you,” I’d say.
“I’m only trying to see if I know you.”
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2013-03-18 ::
Siel
Sunday 17 February 2013
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Filed under
poetry + publications
Issue 62 of Sonora Review — in which you can find five of my poems — is available now . Here’s one of them, titled “Who”:
Who approaches,
chair-like, blind legs demarcating
an exhausted plane.
Those had had knees –
bridges
to form the number ||
Llove: | No negatives in this algebra |
Read the other four by picking up for $12 a copy of Sonora Review, a literary journal published by the University of Arizona. The issue also has some great poems by Claire Sylvester Smith: “I need a volume conversion for / drizzle.”
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2013-02-17 ::
Siel
Monday 31 December 2012
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Filed under
read today
He looked her in the eye affirmingly but kept glancing at her mouth. It was like the zipper of a purse with lots of money inside.
Remember our nostalgia
for cold, depopulated metaphors?
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2012-12-31 ::
Siel
Tuesday 11 December 2012
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Filed under
poetry + read today
Holly Amos’s chapbook “This Is a Flood” is made up mostly of love poems, spiked with wires and antlers and teeth.
My favorite lines are these:
Today is an argument against clouds
both flimsy
& miraculous.
You can download it as a free PDF from H_NGM_N. Read it, then go hug some clouds –
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2012-12-11 ::
Siel
Monday 19 November 2012
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Filed under
poetry + publications
Three of my poems are in the brand new November issue of PANK! I hope you enjoy reading them. Here’s the beginning of “Hollywood Forever”:
Halloween came, sticky with the amniotic glow
of cheap candles and slapdash saints. We went
to the cemetery uncostumed so I could find
his naked face among the grinning skulls.
The other poems are titled “The Smoking Sun” and “Swing Practice.” Read them all at PANK, along with great work by other contributors. I especially recommend “I Fall In Love With Every Attractive Woman I Meet (#17)” by Dillon J. Welch.
Image via PANK
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2012-11-19 ::
Siel
