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3/21/2018

The Colossus - Sylvia Plath

3/21/2018

The Colossus
BY SYLVIA PLATH

I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It’s worse than a barnyard

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.

Poets to Come - Walt Whitman

3/21/2018

POETS TO COME
WALT WHITMAN

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a
casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.

Read the next generation of poets at Moran Press. Subscribe below.

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62F on St. Patrick’s Day - #Poetry by Gabriel Ricard

3/21/2018

62F on St. Patrick’s Day
By Gabriel Ricard

There’s a building next to an honest-to-fucking-god Piggly Wiggly,
and it’s usually a children’s theater. But sometimes,
you can make something else of the awkwardly-built stage,
or the long, winding series of rooms
where they keep decades worth of costumes,
and a couple of rooms where she remembers
people changing into things that didn’t really fit.

Doing honest-to-god-but-god-only-knows-what, as well.

She walks into the Piggly Wiggly,
because that’s what you do,
when you don’t give a single giddy fuck
if the story you’re writing in an almost embarrassingly-consistent,
smooth, painful motion of fury and compassion and vodka
is ridiculous or not.

Except for the part where she doesn’t,
she throws a stray shopping cart
into whoever wants her to sign the petition
that will surely, finally
put Hillary into a prison farm
outside the city where most of the moon landing
was performed for tall, blue-ball children
in military cosplay.

Watch and be amazed that she didn’t actually touch the cart.
That is fucking magic.
It’s the easiest type of magic to steal, endure, or borrow
during tourist season, The waters are absolutely sick
with tens of thousands of screamers
wanting more or less the same exact thing.

If you’re a waitress,
she wants to tell more people,
it’s a long bucket of shitty months
and shitty, malevolent rain.

What else do you have but magic?
And courage.
Miles and miles
of weak, unnecessary courage.

It’s one of these things,
or something else entirely,
that keeps her focused
on the beer and hot dog sandwiches aisle,
and not on the casual mountain of a dude
she just knocked into some bananas.

Call the fucking cops.
She would be fucking ECSTATIC to meet
another ex-boyfriend’s coercive father.

She fully intends to surrender,
but mostly that’s because responsible dog owners
in their 30s surrender for the evening
around 9, midnight.

The children’s theater is either empty,
or it’s filled with cohorts and their cheerful ghosts.

Or children.
It might be packed with other people’s kids.

**I hope you enjoyed the new poem by Gabriel Ricard. Purchase Gabriel's debut novel, Bondage Night by clicking the cover image or the button in this post. Thank you for supporting Moran Press.**

PURCHASE BONDAGE NIGHT

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5 Things You Didn't Know About Austin Davis

3/19/2018

5 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT
AUSTIN DAVIS

Austin's first collection of poetry, Cloudy Days, Still Nights arrives this spring from Moran Press.

I’m actually pretty young. I’m 18 years old and this year I’m finishing my senior year of high school and next year I’ll be studying creative writing at ASU. “Cloudy Days, Still Nights” is the first book of mine to be published and it’s my first full length collection of poetry.
I’m a big dreamer and I have ADHD and my girlfriend will tell you I’ve got a romantic’s heart. A good portion of my writing is love poetry and I’ve always dreamed of selling everything one day, quitting my job, buying an RV or hopping on a plane and traveling around the country or the world or maybe one day in space.
I taught the poetry unit in my high school’s creative writing class this year and I started student teaching at an elementary school. It made me realize that I love kids and poetry is what I’m passionate about. I really just want to help people with my life.
I love basketball and I was the starting point guard for my high school. Ever since I was very young, playing basketball has always been the greatest stress reliever for me and along with writing, it’s always been how I let out my emotions.
I’m a little weird when it comes to technology. I’ve grown up with everyone around me being really involved in their phones and I’ve kind of always hated how it’s influenced our culture. I love the connectedness of technology, but I think that it’s important to recognize how it’s affecting us and how increasingly hard it’s becoming to look up from our screens.

Visit Austin's Website

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Special Post - When Art Crosses the Line - Jim Carrey's Portrait Uproar

3/19/2018

WHEN ART CROSSES THE LINE

This portrait, painted by Jim Carrey, (presumably of White House Spokesperson Sarah Sanders) is going viral after catching a wave of criticism from media and voters on the conservative side of the aisle.

What are your thoughts on this portrait? Does it cross the line? How do we treat art that pushes the boundaries? What is 'too far'? Is this one an example?

What about Kathy Griffin's over the top photoshop of the President?

What should society do with art deemed to cross the line? Ban it? Keep it away from the eyes of children? What is to be done with artists that give offense?

Art for Your Viewing Pleasure

3/19/2018

Special Guest Post - #Poetry by Agnes Bookbinder

3/18/2018

small bird, sing your excitement
the sun is coming!
& the day begins!
& night cannot help
but smile.

VISIT AGNES BOOKBINDER'S WEBSITE

INDIE Music - Greg Roch - Story of Us

3/18/2018

NEW MUSIC
GREG ROCH
STORY OF US

Featuring Alaina Roch on back up vocals

Special guest music feature.

I've been a fan of Greg Roch's music for a long time and have eagerly awaited new music. Today I'm pleased to share with you his latest song, Story of Us, which features Alaina Roch on background vocals.

Click the cover image below to listen to the song on Spotify.

Visit Greg's website HERE

Car Crash Columnists - #Poetry by Gabriel Ricard

3/18/2018

CAR CRASH COLUMNISTS
POETRY BY
GABRIEL RICARD

A SELECTION FROM HIS UPCOMING POETRY COLLECTION FROM MORAN PRESS
LOVE AND QUARTERS

Car Crash Columnists

She’s selling sanctuary as always,
and I’m walking through the fish market
at seven o’clock in the morning.

And I’m almost 40,
and I’m still the child who thinks
that this is where the forces of evil get together
to discuss sainthood, swap baby pictures,
and complain about the metro line.

I’d rather be uncomfortable,
sore, sweating in the winter,
dreaming of the way the California spring
feels on the skin of a younger man,
and too cautious around the people
who are determined to follow me into the future.

I’d rather have my dance card punched,
scratched, and amused by all of those things,
than stay in the house with those people.

The wife was a friend of my brother’s girlfriend,
and we often met for drinks by accident
at around four a.m. most days.

We were restless for different reasons,
and I guess that was all I needed
to make her someone I could trust enough
to stay with,
until I’m pretty sure I can show my worry lines
and other facial tics in town again.

It wasn’t like the old days.
I’m no longer very good at meeting surprises,
or people who look like people
I knew the last time I was in the hospital.

I’ve lost a lot of enthusiasm for all of the times
I’ve had to find ways to get up the courage to leave,
or maintain the courage necessary when they throw me out.

I’m getting up early,
bothering the stupid skylines that live
in the moisture of weather like this.

I’m working on excuses to leave.
I’m thinking of Greyhounds that pass through
the kind of towns that are drowning
in failed wine museums.

I’m sorry I don’t speak to my father anymore.

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