Our Drunken Boat (from Metaphysical Licks)
Georg liked Rimbaud, read him to me, then our craft paper got soaked. Schwester stürmischer Schwermut/Sieh ein ängstlicher Kahn versinkt/Unter Sternen,/Dem schweigenden Antlitz der Nacht. Also on his bisexual p. 74 it went silver. Greta’s brother Lukerl liked young men such as the thin French-Arab one, olive skin, dark curly hair, name him Hassan. Olive notebook the building she could build for her brother in the forest of the city of her head, it would be whole and simple. Except fragmented and complex. Leaves lit the window. The question about truth relative to the prose poems. Correspondence versus something else. Two features rejected which Greta or Gregoire wants back: correlation of language and world, importance of first person singular. Lukerl beautiful when young, and he and Gretal went into the forest. Lemon dots on white shirt. Reality if and only if poetic. Novalis’s magical thinking fights the analytic death grip. Supposed to redevelop my muscles, but I like my arms to be ’70s slender. Philosophy once an academic discipline. Leiden nicht. Now it’s a toy vessel. A paper boat. Or origami. The seas of language also folding in.
Gregoire Pam Dick
from Cave
Grasping a signless
piece of light that was going to stand in
To connect to
this, achieve the kinds of things that we expect
from flowers (what becomes dark
is bright now; what’s bright
darkens) (vulnerable
to looking agitated) They are like
us: We know
that we are going to be photographed.
So—just
wondering: Can I use your cave? Your cave
will be the cave in the allegory of the cave; here it is
outlined in greenish brightness
Frances Richard
Shouldering (from Limbinal)
we’ll slowly unfasten incessant roots, wind, foliage
sprout on our shoulders where the slow can’t take root
skirmish of the great azure boulevards
if i stir depends on you
luminous shoulders, silent and with gestures, flaunt the incessant
a despair similar, where is the firmament?
if tonight i summon you will the season be hourless?
if i shoulder your season’s nights will the hourless summon?
though lacking a handrail, i flood the house with spectacular pleasure
hand pointing to yesterday’s hour, embracing all hours, a time much larger,
heightitude, ramifications
offer my shoulder, translucent with this exploratory season
waves flood, sleeves hoist, scramble up a bloom, sprout a shoulder scorched
a leafed wing rambles hearing your answer
the only constellation gashing at dawn
Oana Avasilichioaei
Gregoire Pam Dick (aka Mina Pam Dick, Jake Pam Dick et al.) is the author of METAPHYSICAL LICKS (BookThug, 2014) and DELINQUENT (Futurepoem, 2009). Also an artist and translator, Dick lives in New York City, where she is currently doing work that makes out and off with Büchner, Melville and Michaux.
Frances Richard is the author of Anarch. (Futurepoem, 2012), The Phonemes (Les Figues Press, 2012) and See Through (Four Way Books, 2003). She writes frequently about contemporary art and is co-author, with Jeffrey Kastner and Sina Najafi, of Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Fake Estates” (Cabinet Books, 2005). Currently she teaches at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Exploring the infinite social, political, intimate possibilities of language through poetry, translation and sound work, Oana Avasilichioaei has published four poetry collections (including We, Beasts, 2012 and feria: a poempark, 2008) and four translations of poetry and prose from French and Romanian. Her newest poetry collection, Limbinal, a hybrid, multi-genre work on notions of borders, which includes new translations of Paul Celan, and a co-translation with Ingrid Pam Dick of Suzanne Leblanc’s The Thought House of Philippa are appearing in spring 2015. Though she lives in Montreal, she frequently crosses borders (www.oanalab.com).
False starts is curated by Steven J. Seidenberg (falsestartsreadingseries@gmail.com)