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Experimental Poetry with Anthony Watkins

How Stein’s “Way Lay Vegetable”

 

Might distract toward or a pointing

Constellation around ambush.

Are greens out to get us? Or are we, thumbing

 

Leaves, itching for them?

A veiny seabed divulges wonder:

How we render the paralyzed

 

Vegetables, how gradations of exile from normie human

Function allows calipers of descent along Jacob’s.

 

Our rock, she did go on.

It’s remarkable. Like how rakes

Go on and on about spirit and noble ideals,

 

But prior to scraps, lets lay hands on the basics:

A fresh meal of our plucking from earth,

Each other. Grammar as well,

 

As we trace conversations, the roundness of a gulp,

The escape of swallows.

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Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo works at the Department of Humanities of the University of the Philippines Los Baños.

Like all a semi-quashed better-feel,

 

too much you in you, like a chestnut missing husk,

 

do the largest liquid sky

else, black thick, evil backlog, tarry wrath

downpour. Faith in ghastly gush of doubts

you have the century melting out

 

qualms rare and sure. Behind beauty and benchmark

I welcome mystery of every denouement

a season a treason a dido in the end

get something. It’s Between. Treaty and the tryst.

What saves can become the best soliloquy

 

you thus become the rare clock,

and I’m one of your stronger hands

trust is like the sky full of paper-flights

not quite the stone in stone            But of course

we can know rain

words have unknown metal often thawed in rains

 

an ancient aunt mused on a strange misogyny:

“Mendicants and minds share an equal way and uproot”

she was once my mother, who showed

the proverbial road destined to the liability of nectar

roads can go only through long silent battle

wine and milk and water and blood

the liquid in all liquids ravishingly shimmers,

Reflects

 

so, all rains demand of a rainmaking daddy,

momma deciphered before saying goodbye

I could smell some reeds burning in her words

I could hear keepsake read the same

 

sure,

you can take a century to complete one page 

 

 

Jayanta Bhaumik is currently based in Kolkata, India. Basically from the field of Metaphysics and Astrology, he also finds time to cruise around the world of poetry.

Passed on Route 80 near Kimball, Nebraska:

empty lanes,

circuitry against gravity;

empty names,

grounded.

 

 

Joseph E. Petta is a librarian and college instructor. He lives in suburban New Jersey, with his wife, daughter, and refurbished lawnmower. His haiku have appeared in Narrative Northeast.

Sprinkler from my American Childhood

 

Dika dika dika dika dika dika dika dika

Dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit

 

Dika dika dika dika dika dika dika dika

Dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit

 

Dika dika dika dika dika dika dika dika

Dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit

 

Dika dika dika dika dika dika dika dika

Dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit

 

 

Mark Gilbert writes poetry and prose and in between. His recent work may be found in the online journals Sonic Boom, Human/Kind, and Twist in Time.

Terminal

 

Christian culture’s crucifixation

Nails us to our seats as, station by station,

We travel the trammeled line

Until we find

That terminal

More primal.

 

The humanstrain’s end-of-line stop

Is Ragnarok.

Everyone please disembark

Into the dark —

No light, no map —

Mind the Ginnungagap.

 

 

Robin Helweg-Larsen is British-born but Bahamian-raised. As Series Editor of Sampson Low’s Potcake Chapbooks he strongly advocates formal verse . . . but surreptitiously writes other poetry as well. Please don’t tell.

Raindrops on Window

Better than Starbucks began wholly as a creation in my mind. Now the wonderful collaboration of dedicated editors is creating a magazine that I could have only dreamed about when I was starting out as a one person organization.

 

Having said that, there are no direct connections between U Penn, Al Filreis, KWH (Kelly Writers House), ModPo (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry), or any of the actual affiliated programs to ModPo and this magazine, other than I have been a part of ModPo for several years now. There is, however, a strong spiritual and intellectual connection between BTS and ModPo.

 

If I had not gotten involved in the larger community of ModPo, I don’t think I would have restarted a literary publication. I am certain I would not have added a Formal & Rhyming Page, and probably not a Translations page. I have a pretty narrow preference for poetry, but the course and the people at ModPo have expanded my view of poetry to the point that I decided if I could find good people to help me do it, we would make BTS as broad of a source of styles and genres as possible.

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Thus, it seems fitting that we dedicate a page to my fellow students at ModPo, and/or anyone who wants to share experimental poems. The thing about experiments is, they often fail, but as the point is to learn, not to create perfection, even failed experiments in the lab or on this page, will offer something for us, if we will find it. and when the experiment doesn't fail . . . well, you will see! - Anthony Watkins

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