Nijinsky's Legacy
Nijinsky's powerful upper thighs
Friends, Americans, countrymen,
Lend Nijinsky a leg
Vaslav Nijinsky's missing brain
Belated carnation from the early 20th century
Our legs take us through summer evenings lawns crickets
Our legs erupt into music as we walk.
Kirby Olson's chapbook Waiting for the Rapture was published by Persistencia Press in 2006. He teaches philosophy and literature at SUNY-Delhi in the western Catskills.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Veronika Reichl
Reinhard
Reinhard's got himself under control. He's got wires leading to all his organs, but above all to his mouth. No unconsidered word crosses his lips. His mind has looked at everything. His digestion works. When he says, I'll do that, he'll do it. He can be relied on absolutely. If something doesn't want things the way he wants them, his will pulls on the wires, as if he were pulling on reins.
The wire cables hang slack most of the time. But when he asks himself, after a Sunday of relaxation, how it actually was, he notices that the cables weren't really slack. His movements were hemmed in. They could have been so much more vast.
Alexa
There's Good and Bad left over from Alexa's daily life. Nearly every day, there's a piece of Good for the glass case. But the Less Good, that is to say the Bad, that stays too and collects in corners; and it must be eaten; how else is it supposed to disappear? It must be eaten by Alexa, for there's no one else around; eaten up and then the corners licked out. This Bad is a dry lump, it fills her mouth and tastes like communion wafers. But licking the corners out isn't too disgusting. For they're Alexa's corners and they're clean and fresh and sweet—all except for the Bad, which must be eaten up.
Florian
Florian must become one with himself, or better yet, be one with himself. There are two Florians, the one and the other, that is to say the mirror-image. For Florian One and Two can become congruent. Or better yet, they were so from the start. And it is always a mishap, almost a kind of sin, when Florian One gets out of line. There were always two, and one could say that the second is the mirror-image, the model, the plan, which the first should conform to; the plan that could show how everything ought to be. This plan is beautiful, like Florian himself actually, for Florian does everything he can to match the mirror-image. This is stressful, for the mirror-image has muscles, his eyes shine, and he always reacts with esprit.
When Florian has aligned himself sufficiently with the mirror-image, his gaze shifts, the two images become one, and Florian sees himself three-dimensionally.
- from the series "33 Functioning Machines."
Veronika Reichl was born in 1973 in Baltimore. She grew up in Munich and studied graphic design and media arts in Stuttgart. She is currently completing her PhD dissertation, "Meaning Matches Meaning: Animated Film as Metaphor for Philosophical Texts," in Berlin. Her poems won the prestigious "Open-Mike" prize in 2003 and recently appeared in Circumference and Action, Yes.
Donna Stonecipher (the translator) is the author of The Reservoir (Georgia, 2002) and Souvenir de Constantinople (Instance, 2007). Her translations from French and German have been widely published.
Reinhard's got himself under control. He's got wires leading to all his organs, but above all to his mouth. No unconsidered word crosses his lips. His mind has looked at everything. His digestion works. When he says, I'll do that, he'll do it. He can be relied on absolutely. If something doesn't want things the way he wants them, his will pulls on the wires, as if he were pulling on reins.
The wire cables hang slack most of the time. But when he asks himself, after a Sunday of relaxation, how it actually was, he notices that the cables weren't really slack. His movements were hemmed in. They could have been so much more vast.
Alexa
There's Good and Bad left over from Alexa's daily life. Nearly every day, there's a piece of Good for the glass case. But the Less Good, that is to say the Bad, that stays too and collects in corners; and it must be eaten; how else is it supposed to disappear? It must be eaten by Alexa, for there's no one else around; eaten up and then the corners licked out. This Bad is a dry lump, it fills her mouth and tastes like communion wafers. But licking the corners out isn't too disgusting. For they're Alexa's corners and they're clean and fresh and sweet—all except for the Bad, which must be eaten up.
Florian
Florian must become one with himself, or better yet, be one with himself. There are two Florians, the one and the other, that is to say the mirror-image. For Florian One and Two can become congruent. Or better yet, they were so from the start. And it is always a mishap, almost a kind of sin, when Florian One gets out of line. There were always two, and one could say that the second is the mirror-image, the model, the plan, which the first should conform to; the plan that could show how everything ought to be. This plan is beautiful, like Florian himself actually, for Florian does everything he can to match the mirror-image. This is stressful, for the mirror-image has muscles, his eyes shine, and he always reacts with esprit.
When Florian has aligned himself sufficiently with the mirror-image, his gaze shifts, the two images become one, and Florian sees himself three-dimensionally.
- from the series "33 Functioning Machines."
Veronika Reichl was born in 1973 in Baltimore. She grew up in Munich and studied graphic design and media arts in Stuttgart. She is currently completing her PhD dissertation, "Meaning Matches Meaning: Animated Film as Metaphor for Philosophical Texts," in Berlin. Her poems won the prestigious "Open-Mike" prize in 2003 and recently appeared in Circumference and Action, Yes.
Donna Stonecipher (the translator) is the author of The Reservoir (Georgia, 2002) and Souvenir de Constantinople (Instance, 2007). Her translations from French and German have been widely published.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Peter Bogart Johnson
Victorville
Peter Bogart Johnson currently works as a grant-writer for a New York City non-profit, and also co-edits the journal LIT. He holds an MFA from The New School, and his work has appeared in I do this, I do that and in the chapbook anthology Earshot: the First Offenders. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife.
A desert ridge over a red roof inn. Day old typewriter, dried up orange juice. Bob's Big Boy, a thermometer. A clean, clean street. A backyard that goes and goes. Irrigation ditch. A tree out of nowhere. A car park and a light bulb store. Street racing and low cloud cover. A jet test. A water park. Snakebites. Lovingly held walkmans. Lovingly stroked velour. Foreign smog. A road to your house, a road over the hill. Long dips in the pool. Long dips between bulwarks and Yucca. A decent price for electricity. Air conditioning before lunch in the yard. Aluminum and stucco over the pool. A bright light, no tunnel. An onramp. A concrete divider. An onramp. Action movies, 32 oz's. A dusty sidewalk. It's dry heat, anyway. A subcontract for garbage disposal. A neon nameplate.
Peter Bogart Johnson currently works as a grant-writer for a New York City non-profit, and also co-edits the journal LIT. He holds an MFA from The New School, and his work has appeared in I do this, I do that and in the chapbook anthology Earshot: the First Offenders. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife.
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