(Click on poem titles for poems)
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Avril Thurman is a poet and visual artist living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Currently a Junior at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, she was recently published in Brighton Approach Vol. I, and has her sights set on New York City, where she will represent the AAC in the New York Studio Program for the Spring Semester of 2010.
poem and visual response by Nicole Greiner
For the Love of Flesh-Meat and Bacon
Flesh and meat are life!
Somewhere along the lines I grew these enormous boobs
On an adult, this living, leathery overcoat weighs about 11 lbs
Areola with nipple shown in its normal position
Dali dreamed of Hitler as a white-skinned girl
Whose thighs produced white cream to numb a man’s genitals. Called to linger
she played the role of a cyborg
When I go to piss, it’s late
For an anterior horn of the lateral ventricle
From the bladder or seminal fluid, from the testis
Note the two shunts, the Botalli’s duct (8)
And the significance of hip and pelvic joints for erect posture
And with my face on fire I am suddenly ashamed
I find it very beautiful.
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Nicole Greiner is a Senior in the Sculpture program at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Her work currently addresses the liminal state and transformation.
poem and visual response by Dan Lansdown
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Dan Lansdown is a visual artist who currently cooks his drawings. He is a Junior at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
I DO NOT WISH TO SPEAK OF CUCUMBERS, BUTTERFLIES, BRUISES.
I do not wish to speak of cucumbers, butterflies, bruises. Dreams
have been many of late, and not a one a mushroom cloud.
A bad cloud. Nor a cloud in the shape of a cloud.
During the downhill, I raise my arms,
winging, to embrace falling catalpa and light pollution.
Which is never heavy, it is only the way we see at night.
Condensation seems ever less and less about molecules,
and more so a cold glass, weeping on a hot day.
There are many kinds of sadness. I read there were
613, to be exact, only 58 of which are legible.
I read of these:
Sadness of having options, nude model sadness,
sadness of feeling the need to create beautiful things.
Oh, there were more, and many more
I have constructed out of loose-leaf, opal, and breath.
Like coins. Do not spend them all in one
go. Here is some advice:
Do not take advice.
Try to locate your equator:
It is harder than you think. I have tried
and after many false meridians, ended up
(ended down) in Antarctica with Herzog, narrating. He speaks like a child.
It is for this we should envy him, to speak nothing of,
and without, accent. It is not a matter obtuse, it is purely continental.
When I say obtuse, I do not mean to say elbows are
ever greater than right nor lesser than wrong. I would never say that.
I wouldn’t dream of it. Any more and less than less would
I dare to dream of looking in a window, only to notice that
the falling snow turns my hair lavender, or astro turf jackets on pepper shakers.
I would never dream that. None of this is true. Make sure.
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POEMS TO BE READ TO SMALL ANIMALS (collagraph)
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TWELVE POEMS FOR FRANK O’HARA (three-color woodcut on lenox rag paper, plywood, excelsior)
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Avril Thurman is a poet and visual artist living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Currently a Junior at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, she was recently published in Brighton Approach Vol. I, and has her sights set on New York City, where she will represent the AAC in the New York Studio Program for the Spring Semester of 2010.
(Click the link below to read the Poem)
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Kassia Borycki is currently an AAC senior, a fledgling designer, and a maker of pirogies.
on the street corner, the space
you call your highrise. Wad it up
into a nylon portrait, migrate it
to the country you invented
with your friend in St. Louis.
Remember?
One day he typed, Let’s start
our own country—
and this felt clandestine,
probable and aquamarine.
From a cracked cookie it rang
against the commotion
of leftover Szechuan chicken.
Time to collect yourself,
those good selves, those good
rain tarps, those Hail Marys,
those happy divers.
Time to collect those good
silly putties, the city centers,
the nay votes, the old vascular
occlusions. When the time comes
couches will float away
with eyes sewn into their seams.
Always time to collect,
always time to be a good swimmer.
Or was there a misspelling
at your funeral?
Was it always just time?
TODAY’S FORTUNE: SOME NOTES ON “TIME TO COLLECT THOSE GOOD”
Time to collect those good
This was a shining moment in a hopelessly dull week. Do-It-Yourself fortunes! In addition to the obvious after-dinner fun, the unfinished fortune was like a dare when I needed some prodding. Writing has been hard going lately, and I’ve been mining the strangest places for poems: old emails, the urban planning books my husband reads like romance novels, ads in magazines. Fortune cookie threw the first punch, and I countered.
My relationship to this poem as it stands is that it is a work-in-progress. I wrote the first line, “it’s time like it never was,” and let the poem find its own trajectory. I like where it went. There are inklings of flooding and destruction in there and also the hint that maybe the poem is about time rather than collecting, or perhaps they’re the same thing. Sometimes the freedom of letting the poem just say whatever it will makes for a magical experience first time out. Other times, the language needs some work and the magic exists in the tinkering. In either case, magic = discovery. I’m not sure I’ve found the sparkle in this poem yet; I hope it’ll happen that I can ratchet the volume up several decibels in each line during revision. Another question I have: the poem is written in couplets. Why? Couplets make a lot of sense to me as I’m putting them down; they seem to allow both tiny bursts of compactness and room to breathe in between. If the poem just flew down the page it’d probably be a different poem. I’ll likely experiment with line breaks and stanzas, but I’m ninety-seven percent sure I’ll go back to the couplets.
The repetition of the partial fortune is working for me. Sometimes all a poem needs for a backbone is the momentum of repetition. “Time to collect those good” opens up space for, quite literally, absolutely anything to happen. What happens is this series of oddities like nay votes and silly putty—all things that swirl around in my head sometimes. The repetition, in particular, has unlocked a whole series of poems—none of which I’ve written yet, but I’m getting excited about them.
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Alexis Orgera is the author of two chapbooks, Illuminatrix (Forklift, Ink) and Dear Friends, the Birds Were Wonderful (Blue Hour Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bat City Review, DIAGRAM, Folio, Forklift Ohio, Fou, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, H_NGM_N, In Posse Review, The Journal, jubilat, Luna, No Tell Motel, Sixth Finch, storySouth, The Rialto, SUB-LIT, and The Tusculum Review, among others. She works at New College of Florida where she edits New CollAge magazine.
Read More of Alexis’ work:
“Hurricane Warning” http://www.notellmotel.org/poem_single.php?id=1823_0_1_0
“We Didn’t Have Rules but We Had a Kind of System” http://www.strange-machine.com/issue03/alexis_orgera.htm#poem1
“On the Exile of My Throats” http://thediagram.com/8_1/orgera.html
“The Red Dress” http://foumagazine.net/12.html
“Unlike Many Land Mammals” http://www.h-ngm-n.com/h_ngm_n-8/2009/4/21/alexis-orgera.html
“See June Run” http://www.hubcapart.com/ink/18freight.php#18e
AT THE PIANO
1.
Christmas:
In my mouth,
Everything.
Your resentment
Towards children
For living without you.
Candy dishes
Wrapping paper,
Come time
Unwrapping
Our own Seth Green
Blow up dolls
And cocktails
Honey,
You look fatter
Than ever,
It’s great to see you.
Waste
Of time,
Green and alive,
Clean, unfamiliar
Territory,
Full of feathers
Tweety Bird key chains.
2.
Douglas
Remember
That time
We watched porn,
Sneaking sneaks
Like kids
Snooping for
Christmas presents.
New York City,
I’d rather be. Beautiful
Images?
A minute the music stops,
Living
Under rocks,
Around trees,
Through sweater vests.
Come Alive.
Shut your eyes
And you can feel it
For miles
Around.
Around underpants
And tube socks.
I’ll take my purple
Suitcase and leave you
With your unresolved issues.
Shut your eyes,
And you can feel it:
Nobody wants to be here
Any more than you.
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Tabatha Rufft wants to be a giraffe when she grows up. She enjoys pasta and green tea. Currently, she is majoring in Visual Communications at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, though she still doesn’t know what that really means.
SO
Let’s push back this curtain of uncertain truths
And finally see through the dirty pane of glass
(What a pane in my glass!) we’ll see
That words are words, blah blah blah
And I’ll admit that everything is boring
Except what I find interesting but
All else is rubbish. Let’s be Frank,
Colliding with greatness is all fine and good,
What could be better? But being great is underrated
And of course impossible for anyone under 40.
Mediocre middle man (woman?), my
Icarus-ness is astounding.
Historic days never held my attention for
Too long, sorry you bleeping beepers, but
I don’t know why you’re so exuberant.
Exhume, expel, excrete, exude?
This muddle of expletives is exhausting.
All I want is to be affected by something!
Someone(thing) save me from this numb death.
Brooke Blankemeyer is a Junior majoring in Illustration at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Originally from Columbus, Ohio, she is drawn to beautiful things and feeling interesting textures.
She also really enjoys all aspects of food.
(Click on the links for the poems)
2. River Scene: Men Dragging a Net
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Northern Kentuckian Sara Relojo is a 2009 Art Academy Graduate, where she earned her BFA in Illustration. She currently enjoys teaching her three year-old students how to replicate Cy Twombly’s magic.
INCLINER 