4 Short Poems by Byron Lee

Byron Lee was one of three featured readers at the September 27 Chance Operations reading at Duff's. Also featured were Julia Gordon-Bramer and Sean Arnold.

In addition, stepping up to the Chance Operations open-mic were Tiffany Mayet, Erin Goss, Matthew Question Mark, and Spit-Fire.

Dave Stone performed saxophone improvisations before and after the featured readers and following the open-mic.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, October 25. Featured readers to be announced. Music interludes by Learn, Artist!

Right Now

Right Now

I want to see you. Peruse your
Present. Take in what will
Never pass your lips. Stumble with you towards
Shared sacrament and lie
With you among the wreckage.

I want to know you.

Right

Now


The Missing

Cigarette-toasted voice
Wielding wit that
Left me
In stitches.

Dimpled face between
Autumn strands
Seared in psyche.

I'm missing the point of not
Missing you,
Raging down a one-way
Street, wishing
Dead End would appear.


Food

It’s my
Drug

Better yet, it's
Everywhere.

I head to the break room to
Tie one on.

AA meetings in the gym.
(I get nowhere without a
Sponsor.)

I get the
Munchies without the
Smoke, but I'm just as lazy,
After the hit.

When the world beats me down,
I take it out on
The bag.

Krunchers, Lays, Ruffles.

Any one of 'em will do.

They're all the same.

No matter how many I
Pick up, they never get jealous.


Dilemma

Should my pants peak at my thighs?

Should I dangle participles?

Should a smile be rubber-stamped on my face?

Should I broadcast every thought unfiltered, or should a bitten tongue clamp
          down every concern?

Should my neck snap to the drums, or should my head bang to the riffs?


Should I choose between store-bought brands of black and white,
          or should I mix my own gray?

"Feng Shui" by Julia Gordon-Bramer

Julia Gordon-Bramer was one of three featured readers at the September 27 Chance Operations reading at Duff's. Also featured were Byron Lee and Sean Arnold.

In addition, stepping up to the Chance Operations open-mic were Tiffany Mayet, Erin Goss, Matthew Question Mark, and Spit-Fire.

Dave Stone performed saxophone improvisations before and after the featured readers and following the open-mic.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, October 25. Featured readers to be announced. Music interludes by Learn, Artist!

Feng Shui

Splinter-friend, where are you
hiding within your own
hoarded creations: wedged in the waiting
to live, under the skin of the paint,
the fleshy space between the words
in the sorest forest of books? The impossible
sure for the eye to set and rest
on just one clean thing. I mean,
it hurts. That paper scatter of thoughts
and the cluttered piles of lack,
burying the faith you hold so dear;
It is rusting under the table. Here,
it’s hiding beneath the hair,
breeding in the dirt and lint
like a dirty sailor. You, virgin-girl unclean,
still trusting in an uninterested God. You asked
me once if I wanted
to rescue you,
if my intention was Hero. No, fair
maiden, I know I am
as safe as your old food;
too ripe, a Petri dish
of a million micro deaths. I know
I am tempted to lean
toward the edge, the black dots of toxic
mold on your window ledge.
I know that I’m fascinated
with the Biblical lies
evil tells, with the false
pictures of light,
with the blood wet prayers
to cold, dead air. I
know our hearts
are pure, and yet
I watch, rapt: you
tumbling through
a cluttered, junky heaven
where the too-bright closes its eyes
to the shine you force on the dust
and He will gloss and grant
your every careful, withheld plan.
He will reward your
everything that you’ve prayed-for,
He’ll give you room
to store, and store. He collects
every healthy vice because you
believe. Believe
you’ll find the right words in a magazine,
the right Pantone shade of green,
the perfect note
in a song you won’t sing,
and you hoard what you can
bear because
you know, you know, you know
He’s in there.

Somewhere.

-- Julia Gordon-Bramer

Dave Stone Providing Musical Interludes at Duff's on Monday, September 27

Dave Stone by Dana Smith
Saxophonist Dave Stone will be providing the musical interludes at the next Chance Operations reading, Monday, September 27, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Byron Lee, and Sean Arnold. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3.

Already signed up for the open-mic are Matthew Questionmark, Shane Signorino, Spit-Fire, and Erin Goss.

Freedonia Music says:

Whether it's jazz improv or free improv, Dave Stone's playing is known for its passion, intensity & inventiveness, a genuine and personal voice, a consummate musicality, and a propensity for singeing eyebrows and twisting knickers on a regular basis.

Sean Arnold to Read at Duff's on Monday, September 27

The next Chance Operations readings will be held at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, on Monday, September 27. Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Byron Lee, and Sean Arnold. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3. Musical guest will be Dave Stone.

Sean Arnold is currently a poet, anarchist, MC, visual artist, roustabout, and bread delivery truck driver living in St. Lucipher, MO. His writing chronicles the pretensions and directions of everything and nothing at the same time but, most importantly, often straddles the line between idleness and revolt of thought. His goals in life are thus far both grand and minute.

Arnold was first transfixed with poetics as an angsty preteen. Now 22 years old, he has with his first book of poems, Soliloquy from an Open Summer Window, taken these inclinations to their most logical conclusion yet. However, this first book is just a stepping stone in one vast open letter to those left indignant and smarting from current political pastures, but also optimistic and secretly in love, convinced another world is possible.

$1.37: The Cheapest Cup of Solitude Yet

$1.37: the cheapest cup of unsustainable solitude yet tucked in
               the armpit of an acoustic breeze,
& folks with twice my eyes on a semi-back street unearthed by
               brick red wings.
making digging motions in the armpithairs of loneliness,
an open invitation to sing loud if it at least rustles the hairs.
and if i’m lonely what the fuck are the young people supposed
               to do without me?

fuck ’em. They can keep their society, belligerence,
i need a smoke and a gray prairie.

if you want a poet, i’m yr poet, but otherwise i’m a papercup
               half-full of desolation out the window. you can have yr
               air-conditioner culture,
the wind is hot but it’s nice, it tickles my arm hairs, these tiny
               tallgrass blades, each one a different story, each story
               a scorched desire to be different.
transformation is each throttling cartwheel of the wind.
i couldn’t write fast enough to catch it, but it’s still in my mouth,
               fragmented, snagged in spit,
each dry accent a staccato breath,


it is knowing what you want in a world wasted off its ass
               in post-post-modern superironic indecisiveness,
too cool for nothing is nothing to cool for.

sweating the devil out in its own wind, supergodless supergod
a steady forfeit of time to bones,
protestant anti-wind-ethic, bone grind annihilation, too slippery
               for it, bursting clouds in the argument for a transient sort
               of god,
the highrope of synaptic burn of not knowing what the hell
               yr saying.
having time like i have nothing,
fighting off redundancies with a heavy sword,
hammering out the nothingness,
into a flat sheet of wind.

-- Sean Arnold

From: Soliloquy from an Open Summer Window
Saint Louis Projects 2010

Byron Lee to Read at Duff's on September 27.

The next Chance Operations readings will be held at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, on Monday, September 27. Featured readers will be Sean Arnold, Julia Gordon-Bramer, and Byron Lee. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3. Musical guest will be Dave Stone.

Byron Lee is a features writer for Limelight Magazine and River City Examiner. He is a graduate of Lindenwood University's MFA in Creative Writing program and has been published in Drumvoices Revue and The East St. Louis Monitor. He is a resident of North County.

Requiem

The fruit of your mind was
Mine for the taking, but I was
Distracted. Thorns from brittle branches
Cut deep. Ants, given the
Power of bulls, ran roughshod
Through my head.

Forgive me.

For running from the
Passion that pulled me in. For stepping
Back from the table with my cards
Held to my chest. For wanting a tailor-made fit, when your
Off-the-rack ways suited me
Just fine.

-- Byron Lee

Julia Gordon-Bramer To Read At Duff's on Monday, September 27

Photo by Michael DeFilippo.
The next Chance Operations readings will be held at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, on Monday, September 27. Featured readers will be Sean Arnold, Julia Gordon-Bramer, and Byron Lee. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3. Musical guest will be Dave Stone.

Julia Gordon-Bramer recently came to realize her last 21 years in St. Louis trumps 20 years on the East coast, and she's having real problems accepting that she is now a Midwesterner. Over those landlocked years in the Lou, she launched and ran the '90s alternative rock zine, Night Times; wrote several thousand poems (a handful of them decent); picked up a BA in English from Webster and an MFA in Creative Writing from UMSL; and today, when she's not flipping Tarot cards, she teaches English at St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley.

She's been published in MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry, Bad Shoe, The Arkansas Review, CARVE, Indiana University NW's Plath Profiles, and others. Her program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis nominated her for Meridian's Best New Poets 2010. Her groundbreaking article on the underlying mysticism in the work of Sylvia Plath can be read here while she completes her latest book on the subject, Fixed Stars Govern A Life.

Disclaimer

Opinions expressed herein (“our Relationship”) did not reflect reality in any way.

Past promises should not be construed as contractual or otherwise binding.

Previous history does not constitute or imply affiliation, endorsement, recommendation or favor.

Author (“Me”) has full discretion to add, alter, or remove all or part of

memory of you (“You”) at any time, and cannot be held

liable for any losses or damage, direct or indirect,

caused or alleged to have been caused by our breakup.

No animals were harmed in our making.

No stars were harmed in our breaking.

Only me. WARNING:

I am a professional.

Do not attempt this at home.

-- Julia Gordon-Bramer

[Originally published in Bad Shoe, August 2010.]