7-9pm, readings start promptly at 7:30pm
$8 entry (no one turned away for lack of funds), free for members
Kimberly Lyons
A Bath of Nerves
Today, “receivable” is an interjection
between the raggy shreds
contained in a boxed cell
in the head.
A lake extended to a distance
that seems to rise
as a vapor of tourmaline
diachronic convulsing green water.
A mind. A tissued responder.
A surface
resembling
a bath of nerves.
4/22/16
Vyt Bakaitis
Gentle Friend, Once Again
Our traffic lanes, sidewalks too many
leaves snagged, though not all were
cleared by the time ploughs came
rumbling early last month
after the lush first snowfall
even before the hurricane
had drained entirely away
That hands touch
to be swept back
A leafless tree carves its shade
to hide the silence
Let our eyes
work the night
trying to make out
a fine print
in the stars
Kit Schluter
Coign of Vantage
Take my word for it:
the blue sphere is the most laughable shape in all of geometry
because when its shadow arrives, mopey at the threshold
an unaccompanied poetry spills out—but it’s all been said before,
on a broadside, in luscious azure paragraphs
where clause hidden between clause apportions ethical contemplation
in a fantasy so habitual it has resorted to the asexual.
Tears of laughter stream from a fuzzy dupelet of blue paint
as I eavesdrop on the four older men holding court at the round table
as their words turn to pollen and cloud out their mouths
with the tedium of explaining the difference of a 0 and an O
to someone who has never before seen Roman script.
Kimberly Lyons is the author of books of poetry including Approximately Near (Metambesendotorg, 2016), Calcinatio (Faux Press, 2014) and Rouge (Instance Press, 2012). Her essays on the poetry of Bernadette Mayer and Joseph Ceravolo appeared in Aufgabe and Jacket 2. She has given talks on the poetry of Alice Notley, Pierre Joris, Barbara Guest and the Poetry Project in the 1980s. She is the publisher of Lunar Chandelier Press and has recently organized events at Anthology Film Archives in NYC. She lives in Chicago.
Vyt Bakaitis, a native of Lithuania, has been living in New York City since 1968. A book of his poems City Country appeared in 1991 (Black Thistle Press, NYC), and con/structs, his book of visual poems and photographs, came out in a limited edition in 2001 (Arunas K. Photo+Graphics, NYC). His reviews of poetry have appeared in World Literature Today and The Poetry Project Newsletter. Vyt Bakaitis has also published translations of poetry from several languages, including the anthology of 20th Century Lithuanian poetry he edited, Breathing Free (Lithuanian Writers Union, 2001). His versions of the classic Romantics Hölderlin and Mickiewicz are included in World Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1998). His translations of the poems of Jonas Mekas were published as There Is No Ithaca (Black Thistle Press), with a foreword by Czeslaw Milosz, and as Daybooks (Portable Press at YoYo Labs). Deliberate Proof, a new collection of poems, was brought out by Lunar Chandelier Press in 2010. Recent poems have appeared in Vanitas, The Brooklyn Rail, Talisman and the online journal, Eoagh (eoagh.com).
Kit Schluter’s writing can be found in the False Starts pamphlet, and elsewhere. Among his forthcoming and published translations are books by Amandine André, Anne Kawala, Clamanç Llansana, Jaime Saenz, Marcel Schwob, and Michel Surya. He is a 2016 NEA translation fellow, and makes books in good company under the name of O’clock Press.
False starts is curated by Steven Seidenberg (falsestartsreadingseries@gmail.com)