A few months ago, poet Heather Minette, a former contributor to {isacoustic*}, asked if myself and our revolving editors might take a look at Half Light– her unpublished second book of poems. The hope was to maybe have a few of the poems accepted for publication on-site and in volume fourth of {isacoustic*}, and to see if the work warranted an advance blurb or review. After reading the work, it seemed to us that perhaps within this Half Light was an act of direction, a phantom compass. As such, we approached Minette about publishing the book via {isacoustic*}, and from there we prayed for the blessed north.
While waiting to hear, I read the book a few more times and felt my seeing needed some saying, and so wrote the following reflection on the book:
~
~
As a child, I told my mother the alphabet was broken…
View original post 347 more words
Dana Alsamsam is the author of a chapbook, (in)habit (tenderness, yea press, 2018), and her poems are published or forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, Gigantic Sequins, Poetry East, Tinderbox Poetry, Cosmonauts Avenue, Fugue, The Boiler Journal, Salamander, BOOTH and others. She is a Lambda Writer’s Retreat Fellow in the 2018 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. A Chicago native, Dana is currently an MFA candidate and a teacher at Emerson College.
~*~
Hair Cut
Your mom was the kind of person
who forgot the leftovers on the stove—
she didn’t even flinch opening the door,
my hands twist-tangled in your long, girl
hair, your striped, Target t-shirt crumpled
beside us on the floor—a small monument
to matching bodies, to holding pinkies
in school halls, to me: queer homecoming queen
royalty. You wore slacks, a terrified grin
and slouching ruffle socks as we walked
in a fluorescent gymnasium—hypervisible—a sea
of eyeballs…
View original post 454 more words
[removal musics (ii)]
how naked
the alien
as it paints
pictures
(nest
after nest)
for the ghost
of a bird
birds
want
~
[removal musics (x)]
this father
handing bibles
to prison scene
extras, his sadness
sorrow’s
nondescript
editor…
the drive-in’s
elegiac
dog
/ nose
to the scarcity
of theatrical
emptiness…
the fish a cigarette burn on the body of god
gets bigger
over time….
how unfair
to insomnia
the monster
with child
~
[give god my space in the unleft church]
as you count on your teeth the losses
I’ve turned
to stone
~
[no musics]
I am to bed without supper for hiding my face from the lord. in the city, my brother is handcuffed for biting his wrists. still unborn is the calf that invented sadness. do I look like what you feel when you look at me? I think there is only hell.
~
[prognosis musics]
get a rabbit.
put a penny in the microwave.
run.
ask
for a third
breast
any
size. burn
on a kiss
your son’s
foot.
pretend every day
it’s just
for one.
~
[muscle musics]
a tadpole
in my mouth
I pin
with my knees
my smallest
brother
our first
kiss
on the cross
of the startled
mime
~
[dust musics]
the treehouse oven, the breadlit
moon- so what
he don’t remember
right or left
which hand
shot
his brother, how many
fish
per nightmare
pocket
the small christ
of lover’s
grandmother
have, later, a weak
child, a sibling
of some
nobody…
imitate
when alone
at the grave
of that clumsy
cat
the sound
of a sobbing
tacklebox
the boy from the second garden takes a bath)
(boneless angel whose love of knitting
out loud, Ohio sounds like some kind of eating contest
–
a mother here is partial
to prose
to the ovenly quiet of a spotted tornado
–
oh human
thumbprint
in a horse’s
ear
when was it
that emptiness
left
the sea
–
is meal
the most common
bruise
this was after your brother had died everywhere
I was calling shotgun for poverty’s mistress
during a game of shirts and skins
I think by then
jesus had fed
nearly two of the five
thousand
with a sunburn
and an ambulance
& most animals were still having four dreams)
anyway, something flew into your mother’s mouth
and the look on her face
told nobody
it had teeth
some recent and not so:
[thirst rag]
mouth a souvenir from the exodus of shapes-
her mom
ate something
blue
~
[vertices]
a female bodybuilder is yelling at her father for refusing to turn off the mower. a half-naked boy on a bike coasts past them both in the direction of a woman who’s professed to have a snake that’s all ears. I am in a third floor apartment crookedly hugging a window air-conditioner I nightly dream has fallen. my kids are together on a bottom bunk under a blanket stabbing each other with a pair of scissors from the mailman’s last meal. the neighborhood widows lean on separate swing-sets and shape their memories of toy pianos. I can hear it now my brother saying that any and all travel is anti-childhood as he explains to my mother why it is that grief gives god closure over exit to the subconsciously alone.
~
[I know by cobweb]
(I know by cobweb)
the childbearing age
of a ghost, that dream
has taken
mirror, and also
that I cannot reopen
the mouth
my mouth
erased
~
[a delicacy, here, this harm]
mother my eyes
my longest
miracle
mother my bones
I owl
your voice
above my son
how much hair
can christ
swallow, is it human
to want
for the uni
cyclist
a more
cinematic
church
~
[survived]
I learn early on in the poem
that god can hear an insect
cry. how terrible.
there’s more-
~
[beheadings]
poverty is nothing more than jesus pouring milk from a soldier’s helmet into the nest of a delirious and elsewhere bird. how long have you had that invisible mirror? I can’t taste blood. fever is my mother’s crown.
~
NOTE:
thru June 11th, Lulu is offering 10% off all print books AND free mail shipping (or 50% off ground) with coupon code of BOOKSHIP18
poetry collections, mine, self-published, are here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad
I was copycat
to your
baby machine
game shows were the work of grief
I was the fat kid, jumping rope
had the bug brain
of a palm reading
scarecrow, quick
to imagine
the past-
who was it
told adam
he had something
on his face, moved
he
like the ghost
itch
of deeper
gods
