Notes from the Bunker & Susan Parr

Dear Readers,

Submit to eleven40seven! Do it, do it now! Also, just in time for spring break, Susan Parr's first collection of poems, PACIFIC SHOOTER, arrived in the mail. It is a great book--wickedly smart, a roller-coaster of sonics and thrills. Check it out. (Full disclosure: I did write a blurb for this book, so I'm biased)

FORMAL MANNERS

To be read in the voice of Björk

Imagine the wail a belly constructs—


some dim yell, amped into yodel.


Quick—it comes up in the pipe—


it jostles the throat.

 

As it erupts, imagine the wail 


consumed—a bygone polyploidy, 


spiraling back into its author—


cancelled bruit shooting downslope 


into the stacks; fading to an eerie

 

ciceronian babble—to a companionable


music, written on the wet pancreas.

 

This is the torrent and the absorbent craft.


__

 

THIS IS NOT A LEMON

 

But its representation. An ephemera,


Scoop of one, cool, supine on a plate.


Let's say winter had its way with the lemon.


It pipes up now and then like a sequin


When the spoon catches light, catches


Sugar-and lemon ice; shows


The surprisingly green frail face.

 

This is not lemon: though lemonish,


Its color is wet—yet less so in the melting


Facets—an exasperating lemonlessness—


Disappearing fact. Taste a bite.


If that's lemon inside the ice—


Why is it lime-like in this light?