Julia Gordon-Bramer "Anti-Gravity"

Julia Gordon-Bramer stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the September reading.

The next reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, October 31, will be a very special "Howl"-O-Ween Celebration." Admission is free, and the •chance operations• microphone is open to all attendees. We invite you to come in literal and or figurative costume as your favorite poet or poetic character.

Julia will be one of three featured readers at the Monday, November 28, reading at Duff's. Also reading will be Chris King and Drucilla Wall.

Anti-Gravity

The stars have learned to trust us
moving warily on their course
counting on the last astral
status quo.
But what if we decide
one day to just let go-- Release!
the beat of twenty-one guns!
What if we revolt and explode; blast
raining into space, flak
speeding from every snowy peak,
every curve of the greened
empty Earth?
A great loosening of shoes, doors,
hard cars, flowerpots, lions and keys.
Everything
that wasn’t attached
banded in the red
tie of gravity?
Pennies rushing like the bullety drop
off of the Empire State
Building. Our bodies becoming
missiles – all failing
to do the job of staying put.
Smiles into shrapnel hurtling
through space to puncture the dead
peace; to litter the cosmic clean
with debris. We’d fire and drill
holes of light in whatever we hit,
shooting into that solid, soft dark.
A pom-pom pummel
proving our existence;
An ack-ack-ack of final flash, leaving
trillions of celestial wounds
against a silk purple sash.
The steady nova tread with dread.
They fear us, you know. These souls.
Those holes. We are
full of them.

-- Julia Gordon-Bramer