Robert Nazarene To Read at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, May 23

Robert Nazarene will be one of three featured readers at the Monday, May 23, reading at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

The other readers will be Susan Spit-Fire Lively and Eileen G'Sell.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Robert Nazarene was founding editor of Margie/The American Journal of Poetry and in 2006 received a National Book Critics Circle award as publisher of Tom Thomson in Purgatory by Troy Jollimore.

Church is his first collection of poems and a second book is nearing completion. His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Salmagundi, Stand, the London Times, the Oxford American, and elsewhere.

Dolor

I have known the ineluctable grief of waiting,
the desolation of fluorescence and its quiet
accompanist: the low drone of vending machinery.

The sadness of the silent switchboard;
of sleeping pushcarts, empty reception areas;
the unending
tunnelry of immaculate public spaces; the odor
of antiseptic, the pale standard face of nightshift
workers; the grey duplication of mornings;
the quiet

clatter and clink of the cafeteria -- slowly
regaining consciousness.

Out the window,
on the street below, the clamor of children
filling the crosswalk, crowding the playground.

The baby got sick.
The baby
never woke up.

My baby: wrapped in linen,
stiff, still--
perfect,
in her box.

-- Robert Nazarene

Note: Originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Eileen G'Sell To Read at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, May 23

Eileen G'Sell returns to •chance operations• as one of three featured readers at the Monday, May 23, reading at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

The other readers will be Susan Spit-Fire Lively and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Eileen G'Sell teaches English and film studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is also publications editor at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Recent and forthcoming work can be found in Ninth Letter, Zone 3, Interim, and the Boston Review.

Susan Spit-Fire Lively To Read at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, May 23

Susan Spit-Fire Lively will be one of three featured readers at the Monday, May 23, reading at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

The other readers will be Eileen G'Sell and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Born in Belleville, Illinois, and raised in Cahokia, Susan Lively is a poet, spoken word artist, author, emcee, and producer. She performs at venues in the bi-state area under the name “Spit-Fire” and has performed at and hosted literary events at local colleges and universities. She created and hosts the Open Mic Night @ the Cigar Inn in Belleville and is a member of The Eugene B. Redmond Writer’s Club of East St. Louis. Susan’s spoken word performances have been featured on internet, radio, and television and her poetry has appeared in Head To Hand, the East St. Louis Monitor, the PEN, the Journal of Pan African Studies.

Erasure

Sensual bliss,
such never-ending excitement.
Just the thought of you,
the very thought of you,
sets my soul on fire.
With glistening dew,
and a racing pulse,
I betray myself.

Give in to this,
give in with wild abandon.
Abandoned on a sea adrift;
a sea of unbearable pleasure and pain,
our bodies clashing together, again and again,
I give of myself.

Excruciating, extreme passion,
bursting its way through my veins.
The exquisite sweetness
will drive me insane.
You have total control,
replaced by someone I do not know.
There’s only so much farther left to go,
before I enslave myself.

Warm, and wet, and
hot, and hard, and softest yet.
My heart is wide open,
I have lost all hope and,
this is how I became myself.

Throbbing, and aching,
and loving, and hating.
Lying in wait and,
so high are the stakes.
Sensual bliss,
give in to this.

Excruciating passion,
so warm and wet and,
throbbing and aching.
So long I’ve been waiting,
to erase myself.

-- Susan Spit-Fire Lively

"Campus Coffee" by Christy Callahan

Photo by Colin Michael Shaw

Christy Callahan was one of ten readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan Spit-Fire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Campus Coffee

On Friday, my husband boards a plane for Missouri,
honeymoon shifting to a semester abroad.
I stare out the window of my Galway hostel,
and if I squint enough, I can see him return.

I lay on my bed’s patterned quilt,
hand-sewn edges tattered and fraying,
and coil myself into a dream.

When sleep no longer charms,
I sit on the stoop with the landlord’s
cat, watching pigeons dethroning
one another from the streetlight.

By Sunday, I am tired of sleeping,
and my dreams are starting to contain
more pigeons than people.

When my phone fails to find my husband
I walk one block left, return to the stoop,
then one block right, eyes on the streetlight,
pigeons volunteering as tour guides of Galway.

On Monday, I tell the pigeons it’s time
and walk three blocks past the roundabout
to my summer apartment at Gort na Coiribe.

Wednesday morning I walk in windy rain
across the bridge that passes a dilapidated
tower house, a smile tugging my left cheek
as I picture myself crawling through its rubble.

The first day of class still makes my palms sweat.

On Friday, the pigeons develop a buddy system to trigger
the automatic doors of the university, stroll to the café,
and order white chocolate banana mochas, shooting me a wink.

-- Christy Callahan Clagett

"Going to Find It" by Chris Parr

Photo by Colin Michael Shaw
Chris Parr, co-founder of •chance operation•, was one of ten readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan Spit-Fire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Note: Please click on the poem below to enlarge it to a readable size.

Going to find it...

(formerly “Lost Children”)
(for Don McGlashan & Ivan Zagni)

Chris Parr adds that this poem, "goes all the way back to New Zealand, before I moved to the U.S. and Boston. I wrote it originally for and while listening to a track on a very interesting EP (I'm sure I still have it, on vinyl) by Don McGlashan (genius behind The Muttonbirds, and Blam Blam Blam before them) and avant-garde guitarist Ivan Zagni, which they released in NZ in the early 80s."

Chris Parr reading "Going to find it...," also known as "Lost Children", backed by Tiger Mountain, circa 1997. (You'll have to open two windows if you want to listen to the recording and read the poem at the same time. Sorry 'bout that.)

Chris Parr by Tony Renner

"What Is. . ." by Scott Miller

Scott Miller was one of ten readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan Spit-Fire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.


What is...

What is...
Merriment molded from mayhem
Order ordained from chaos
Life lifted from death
Happiness helped out from sadness

What is...
Boldness beckoned from bashful
Courage coaxed from fear
Seeing sifted from sight
Understanding ushered from perceiving

What is...
Kindness kindled from hate
Feeling fondled from apathy
Friendship forged from a stranger
Questioning quilted from exposure

What is...
Art?

-- Scott Miller

"If You Want to be Miserable, Become a Vegan" by Will Kyle

Photo by Colin Michael Shaw

Will Kyle was one of ten readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan SpitFire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Will Kyle, a native of St. Louis, earned his BA in English at the University of Iowa and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Will also performs as a singer/songwriter at open microphones around town. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Barbaric Yawp, Great Lakes Review, Earthwords, Big Muddy and elsewhere.

If You Want to be Miserable, Become a Vegan

The sky patters
the roof. You

finish, slip
your spotless

dish into the
sink and scrub

out the drawer
marked Meats.

A square soy
patty lingers

on my plate.
It jiggles

when I poke it.
I wish for

Jimmy Dean
and savor

my last pool
of yellow over

easy as it
ebbs toward

the toasted
whole wheat

with a half
moon missing.

In the garden,
a starling

at the feeder
bullies the thrushes.

The fence rattles
as the garbage

truck beeps
through

the alley
to collect

empty jerky
bags, Twinkie

wrappers,
and cans of Cool

Whip. I ought
to drive

to a bakery
that serves milk

on my way
to work.

I try to screw
the pooch

with the soy.
She sniffs

and withdraws,
leaving only

a screw you
fart behind.

You aim
your sponge

at the cheese
drawer. I mourn

Jarlsburg
and Velveeta.

You say
White Russians

are not part
of our future

routine. Ice
cream too.

What about
Frozen Yogurt?

When I go
for the paper,

a raindrop blows
in my eye.

Why not
a sputter of grease

spit from
crackling pan?

I sigh and rub
my face

as I will come
dinner: broiled

tofu, steamed
broccoli—no cheese.

-- Will Kyle

"Villanelle for the Wife of My Stalker" by Julia Gordon Bramer

Julia Gordon-Bramer was one of ten readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan SpitFire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Villanelle for the Wife of My Stalker

He follows me around like the Moon at night,
waxing close over everywhere that I’ve been.
She pretends that everything might be all right.

She cuddles their baby and smiles too bright,
entrapped in his hard golden band ‘til the end.
He follows me around like the Moon at night.

He plans my return, makes arrangements, despite
what his dark moods, blow-ups, and death threats have meant.
She pretends that everything might be all right.

Long brown hair and beauty mark; she loves to write.
He’s made her his model of me, from back then.
He follows me around like the Moon at night.

He lies smug in their bed. With her, but not quite.
What’s unknown won’t hurt, and the truth can be bent.
She pretends that everything might be all right.

For five fearful years, this man has been my blight--
His forever love-curse we three cannot end.
He follows me around like the Moon at night.
She pretends that everything might be all right.

-- Julia Gordon Bramer

Julia adds this note: "Form doesn't have to be boring. It pushes the writer into new and unexpected places. Still, every syllable, the meter, and the repetition have a purpose. And with the villanelle form, it becomes like an incantation. Poetry is serious, powerful magic."

"Untitled" by Laura DeVoto

Laura DeVoto was one of ten readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan SpitFire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Untitled

Here I stand waiting so patiently.

Tell me what you want from me.

I gave you may soul and my heart yet nothing
was enough, it never was from the start.

I ask the lady for a ticket out of town but
instead I hesitate and look around.

All I wanted was for you to miss me, I
craved your energy, your spirituality, and your
mysteries. With my sympathy I took care of
your misery.

Yet, like a seashell on a sandy beach, I
was washed away.

I tried peeling your onion layers but you
built a wall and grew more.

Soon that wall became impregnable and you
slowly faded away like a silhouette in
the distance.

The path we carved was not written in stone
and its unfulfillment has left me cold.

The things we take for granted are only what
we imagine but in reality the facts overwhelm
the imagined.

The flair of your persona has left me
intrigued, this painful agony has pushed
my pride to its knees.

The sun has set and my departure is soon
to go its way, but I slowly turn my
tear-stained face and ask why...

The sun rises,yet to what degree.

Who does the blind lead, if everything is made
in China and we Chinese?

Corporate monopolies leading everybody into
poverty, world leaders taking advantage of
their sovereignty.

Technologies turning the planet into zombies.
Air quality so foul it's a struggle just to
breathe, depression and anger leading everyone
to self-destruction.

Gotta find the truth and believe, pick our-
selves up and reconstruct our democracy.

Endangered species and we're running out of
trees, crime rates so high it's a struggle
just to leave.

Why is living life such a fight to finish,
survival of the fittest when every hour is
a minute and every second is infinite.

-- Laura DeVoto

"A Day at the Museum" by Daniel Eberle-Mayse

Daniel Eberle-Mayse was one of ten readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan SpitFire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

A Day at the Museum

I woke up and looked at the clock on the wall of my bedroom,
and I realized I was late.
So I scurried to make my coffee and roll some cigarettes for the road,
not bothering to brush the tar from my teeth or wash the death from my skin or
meticulously pick what costume will best convey the image I want to project to the rest of the world on this particular day.

I kissed my conscience goodbye and I told her that I loved her
like a hack actor or a dog barking for a treat.
And then I set off in my two-toned, battle-worn, champagne-colored car
and tried my best to keep my tired, sin-soaked, sleep-deprived brain
from leaving my body to the ravages of the other throttling death machines
that would tear me apart if disregarded for even a second.
And I arrived before I knew it at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center
just in time for the prison tour my well-meaning probation officer signed me up for.

Out in the parking lot I looked at the dull, unsmiling, muddy bricks and the twisting, malicious, arachnid intricacies of barbed wire.
The armor-plated arrogance of the sauntering, vacant gargoyle guards,
and the acrid stink of their glistening, oil-slick shoe-polish
sends the vague taste of vomit to my tongue as they pass by in their man-shell mimicry.
And after entering and sitting through the cautionary tales that I've heard a million times before,
we embark out to the "yard,"
where wet and dripping cat-calls from pathetic broken warriors ring out and bounce off each other in their crowded, sweating, sloppily veiled agony,
desperately searching for a distraction from the monotonous horror
of this regression to animal baseness.

Sad museum of powerless ghosts, what do you think when you swallow men whole?
For we are all savage hateful creatures filled to the brim with murder, excess, failure and spite.
Why, then, do you choose these paper tigers to devour and consume?
I can't help but believe that it's nothing but a coin toss,
'cause I'm just as much a liar and a killer as all of these monsters.
And no matter how high we lift our insipid egos with stale lovers and families we never wanted,
it will never change the stark unchanging fact
that we all belong in this zoo.

-- Daniel Eberle-Mayse

"Prophet" by Colin Michael Shaw

Colin Michael Shaw was one of ten readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan SpitFire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Prophet

Awkward introductions and casual fumbling
Relieve the tension and excuse the shaking girl
Who sat where you belong,
Lovingly weaving the basket I can put my feelings in later.

But I can’t see your simple spring cotton, ordinary beauty, sensible shoes...
Only your North City lights,
“Little lavender colored mints,
Teacups hung on hooks,
And pirate’s flying saucer”-
Because the multicolored jewels that spill from your lips
Make me “feel like I have tears in my eyes”.

So I close them, acquiesce,
To concentrate on your careful telling,
Of “scribbled notes in dove-blood ink on yellowed vellum”,
Delivered by the harried prophet from outside the cafe,
To you, then me --
Secret whispered from the edge of my memory,
Told softly as Grandmother’s hands, neatly folding linen napkins,
And a with kid’s smile, behind intelligent eyeglasses
Now I know what he said, but won’t repeat,
In a language I can’t speak,
But now understand.

-- Colin Michael Shaw

"Surfing" by Jim McGowin

Jim McGowan was one of ten readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan SpitFire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Surfing

Encephalomalacia
is the
softening of brain tissue
at 1:45 AM.

All four lobes feel like pillows
lulling off to zombie sleep,
the strobing through control images,
dropping some LCD,
REM with both eyes twitching, lids open.

The time when reptilian brain is king.

The Familiar Stranger with
999 different heads and a blue suit
with coordinated universal tie
tells me

I should sit back,
relax and enjoy the ride,
trust in the men with the plans,
invest some blood in the stock market,
go buy some Cheetos.

The smile has 31,968 pearly white teeth
thanks to the magic of carbamide peroxide
aka 'whitening gel'.

One head suddenly breaks away from the others,
swears that God will provide
if I just order a DVD.

Another head breaks away
and says it can tell me the secrets
of making money and getting chicks.

Yet another breaks away
and tells me my penis needs a pill
to look and perform like a serpent.

Another and another and another

(beyond the... tacos... initially... eat... stop touching... gorgeous...)

begin peeling, like layers of an electric artichoke,

(what we do know... slammer... now... closed over... cracks in the fuselage...)

changing like machine gun gurus on full automatic.

I choke on the images,
riddled with slugs and slogans
complacent, dreaming,

I choke on my Cheetos.

(On the internet
I once saw a Cheeto
shaped like Jesus.

There's got to be a connection there.)

Oh why am I awake but I'm not?
Why am I awake but I'm not?
why am I still awake but I'm not?

Listening to

Here's the secret to..
Here's the secret to..
Here's the secret to..
Here's the secret to...

Servitude, Control, Lunacy,

A propagation of inert species.

Depersonalization disorder
is total detachment from self or surroundings.

Prosopagnosia is the inability to
recognize your own face in a reflection.

Catatonic stupor is complete deficit of motor activity
due to psychological dysfunction.

Those confined to mental hospitals
take drugs and watch TV all the livelong day.

Or is that watch drugs and take TV all the livelong day?

Whatever.

There are some who believe
this is a great potential for therapy.

-- Jim McGowin

Lindsey Klees

Lindsey Klees was one of three featured readers at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan SpitFire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

"dem bones dem bones" by Bob Reuter

Bob Reuter was one of three featured readers at the April 4 reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, May 23, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Eileen G'Sell, Susan SpitFire Lively, and Robert Nazarene.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

* * *

dem bones dem bones

She ran the damn roost when her old man was alive. You'd hear her screamin' orders at 'im all day long, you'd see her during the work day sneakin' in the apartments she rented, when the tenants were away -- then she'd snipe at the kids down the street. When the old man died she she came all apart, you'd hear her cry some nights by herself. I still remember her out front of the row apartments, bow-legged, feet planted firm, her body weavin' like a fighter an' singin' that old song bout dry bones and a red dress, how she missed 'em -- and then it started raining from somewhere up inside her skirt and i could hear it crackle an' spatter on the dried leaf covered sidewalk.

-- Bob Reuter

"Sandra Lee Scheuer" by Gary Geddes

The award-winning Canadian poet Gary Geddes was one of three featured readers at the reading at Duff's on April 4, where he read his poem commemorating the May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings.

Sandra Lee Scheuer

(Killed at Kent State University, May 4, 1970
by the Ohio National Guard)

You might have met her on a Saturday night,
cutting precise circles, clockwise, at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, or walking with quick step

between the campus and a green two-storey house,
where the room was always tidy, the bed made,
the books in confraternity on the shelves.

She did not throw stones, major in philosophy
or set fire to buildings, though acquaintances say
she hated war, had heard of Cambodia.

In truth she wore a modicum of make-up, a brassiere,
and could no doubt more easily have married a guardsman
than cursed or put a flower in his rifle barrel.

While the armouries burned, she studied,
bent low over notes, speech therapy books, pages
open at sections on impairment, physiology.

And while they milled and shouted on the commons,
she helped a boy named Billy with his lisp, saying
Hiss, Billy, like a snake. That’s it, SSSSSSSS,

tongue well up and back behind your teeth.
Now buzz, Billy, like a bee. Feel the air
vibrating in my windpipe as I breathe?

As she walked in sunlight through the parking-lot
at noon, feeling the world a passing lovely place,
a young guardsman, who had his sights on her,

was going down on one knee, as if he might propose.
His declaration, unmistakable, articulate,
flowered within her, passed through her neck,

severed her trachea, taking her breath away.
Now who will burn the midnight oil for Billy,
ensure the perilous freedom of his speech;

and who will see her skating at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, the eight small wooden wheels
making their countless revolutions on the floor?

-- Gary Geddes