Vol. 5, No. 1 Contents

For several days in succession fragments of a defeated army had passed through the town. They were mere disorganized bands, not disciplined forces.

Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet.

Security alerts are not a western phenomenon; Seoul declared one yesterday. As of yet, they haven't given it a color, but when they do, I suspect it won't be pink.

I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not…

here is one thought enough to kill me—I have been well, healthy, alert, &c, walking with her—and now—the knowledge of contrast, feeling for light and shade, all that information (primitive sense) necessary for a poem are great enemies to the recovery of the stomach. There, you rogue, I put you to the torture…

I have an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner—let him on any certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, and reflect from it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it—untill it becomes stale—but when will it do so? Never…

…but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it…

A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity—he is continually in for—and filling some other Body—The Sun, the Moon, the Sea, and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute—the poet has none; no identity—he is certainly the most unpoetical of all of God's Creatures.

Ben Lerner's first collection of poetry, The Lichtenberg Figures, winner of the 2003 Hayden Carruth Award from Copper Canyon Press, is a sequence of untitled fourteen-line poems (with one fifteen-line exception) that run on the collision, the violence, and the unresolved resolution of juxtaposition.

Winter on the open seas is a grueling affair. Sometimes, the nets I haul up have turned to ice. I know this because the fish have begun to talk again. They say it was so cold…

Mother lying on the couch coughing fire,

the death of applause. Father puddled on the floor,

paycheck spent on modeling glue. Sisters, brothers.

Burn the couch, the television…

I had three husbands, two of them ghosts.

He gets out, leaving the gun,

opens the back door. He slides the double-

bladed axe off the seat. This, he thinks, is

what happens when you put off business.

Her story involves some cow trading,

over hard drinks and

horded chocolates. It's about a harpsichord.

And a record collection…

…and you were told ever since you could walk

never to look directly at the sun

but you do

you stand on the rocks and do…

The bed shuffled itself straight out the door,

little jerky movements on squeaky casters,

until one leg planted itself in the flowerbed.

Scrape from the perfect sky

a pocketful of that sock-you-in-the-eyes blue.

Grind it and leaven it with life.

There is a lowness to this light,

how the sun barely scrapes

past tree tops,

where noon is dawn…

"Would you still love me if I were frozen?" my brother asks from beneath his covers.

"I would still love you even if you were an electric dog," I murmur from across the room; the room I hate to describe.

We met in the apartment of accident. You carried weapons: a pen, plastic bags, a grocery receipt; necessary means of transience, unnecessary hubris. My tongue was barbed.

23:09:24 One forest says to another forest:

23:09:25 I wanna get some bees going back here.

23:09:26 What kind of beans?

E. Unim didn't last long at the Met.

The chief folly being her melange piece, The Staccatoed Invertebrate—

A plastic locomotive duct-taped to a wheel chair.

She thinks she's Harry Houdini's bathrobe.

Her spine curves into the turnstile.

He nuzzles closer, twice her size.

Language concealed in flashing signals.

There is rain on the rails.

Don't be shaking people's hands with that fragrance.

You're not missing much, just a bear dressed like a bunny.

What's my best friend's name again?

It's all skin and no apple.

piggy has no basis for thinking it's his dog. #1: his dog died last summer; #2: it died of (once there was an indian princess) heartworms; #3…

Canoes

and BBQ smell up

the faded metal…

once i knew an old man who very much enjoyed falling in love

and given more or less whiskey

could affect a transylvanian accent with some precision…

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day…

The great laws take and effuse without argument,

I am of the same style, for I am their friend,

I love them quits and quits… I do not halt and make salaams.