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New Poetry



THE LITTLE THAT’S LEFT

by Mark DeCarteret



windows do not wake
& the stars once our friends
are eating in

in the absence of trees
this temporary blind
w/even my breath

making more &
more demands
so tomorrow I’ll be moving
(we are moving) again

with very little in the way
of suggestions or light
yes a red blinking eye

w/guilt forcing its hand
& sleep making more sense
than is usual (sleep making

all the right moves)
the head seemingly
dismissed on the pillow

as is the marriage of night w/coincidence
where my memories disrobed
& we’re electing the marigolds

where we’re welcoming placards
or any distance we can put
between us & the darkness

as if bidding us go no
I mean it we have checked it
all out in advance

& I’m thinking (when wasn’t it
what) I was thinking...
now how did the world say it

turning slowly against me?
the mighty converged on the sale-seekers
those who tried adapting w/theme

rifling through trading cards
a mixer or the shoes
you could no longer fit in

so that must be the hand we were promised
pushing us off to where they
assure us more sun

when we’re finally convinced
of more movement
more of having it

checked out ahead of time
& how we’ll always be making
for this or that door



FEASTS/Week 29


st camillus de lellis

all my life I tried
dieting—pills and gin, lip gloss,
till finally, dirt worked


st swithin

normally the air
is more rain than air & day’s
end is more morning…


st helier

may my marauders
see me in many a dream—
armed w/my own head


st alexis

grab all you’re able
bards and beggars, if from God’s
table it’s fallen


st theneva

file one more under
cliff-flung, life saved by a fish—
she gives up lungs twice


st justa & ruffina

the two of them thrown
atop the lions like potter’s
clay or a horned thing


st uncumber

she didn’t bare dad’s
demands (read—dearth of men, beards)—
dear’s unnamed at death



NO IDEA


     for W.C.W.

but free
chickens
u catch m
that is the thing:
how we’re
promised
to dust
them white
feathers & all



LEAVING MORE ROOM


water enters my mouth
in place of the words
my tongue longed for

all has caught fire but the red chandelier
and the possessions I’d sealed in the pyramid

naked again I’ve returned to the heavens
surrounded by that light I’d forgotten—

so this is how it’s taken and how I let it be taken
sleep house like I remember you sleeping
once again I’m those whispers and that breeze you forbade



INWARD


one cloud cloned     & another     long over due
an ode to this wintry aloud     march’s lack of sound     its lone charm
a congregation sinking like an ark     rain-appraised & bled of the world     saith the Lord



COVERAGE


how the world
ever got hold
of this I can
only imagine



BUTTERWORT


it’s no different
than what it is

a blue top-billed
& angelically dubbed

& a yellow that will kill
basal rosette of sticky leaves

either it’s something or nothing
either it’s budding or not



AHEM


after calling back Arliss
& getting his machine
I returned to the sill again
drawing in some light
& some starling song
till all that I’d sighted & heard
seemed sky-billed or burnt
my backyard lacking for little
but his shit-eating grin




Mark DeCarteret’s work has appeared in AGNI, Boston Review, Caliban, Chicago Review, Conduit, Cream City Review, The Del Sol Review, failbetter, Gargoyle, Hotel Amerika , Killing the Buddha, New Orleans Review, Phoebe, Poetry East, Pool, Quick Fiction, Salamander, Salt Hill, Sonora Review, Superstition Review, Tampa Review, and Third Coast as well as the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press), Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader (Black Sparrow Press) and Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press) which I also co-edited. His fifth book, Flap, is due out with Finishing Line Press in May. Currently, Mark is the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Please check out his Postcard Project at pplp.org





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New Poetry


ADAPTATIONS OF
COLOR THEORY
AND SIGHT
by
Margaux Griffith


ALICE
by
Erika Ostergaard


UNDERWATER
MEDUSA
by
Sara Swanson


THE LITTLE
THAT'S LEFT
by
Mark DeCarteret


ISSUE:
S P R I N G
2011

THE NEW
RULES OF
W R I T I N G

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