With a series of cameras, Muybridge caught chickens frightened by torpedoes, the simple pecking, the blurred stone thrown and explosion of feathers and wing, the lifting of bodies on muscle and fear as they scattered out of frame, the clicking of their beaks, suspended. This was not the stuff of wager, but study of locomotion. […]
Poetry 86
David Levine: This World is a Source of Uncomfortable Strangers
I want to hold security the way this house holds water. I can deal with you. I can deal with three eggs, scrambled, in the morning. Nobody leans on our roots. Everything goes deep into the ground. Being here’s made me too sick to leave.
David Levine: Kitchen Positional
I am filling my home with familiar strangers. One day, you asked me about fossils. You were an orange peel in a pile of ash. I’ve lost my willingness to stand and bend.
Elizabeth Langemak: Snowed In
Saturday morning, and our block is birched. Turned in white wrapping, we are blank and the street is still unscratched. Between the weight of loaded shovels and the skin of ice on cars it is easy to suppose we might unpeel this bark and find just more unpeeling at its heart. But here […]
Christopher Kondrich: from Canto Fermo
in which we are a pre-dream My piano is trying to communicate with me, Tim said. But I have isolated myself from my surroundings, and not in the way that is conducive to inspiration. I’ve tried a few methods to gain access, but have only distanced myself further. When I play, I […]
Eric Higgins: Culture Crimes
We put up a clinic. I’d been a salesgirl, cosmetics. I couldn’t point out the place on a map. We went through our church. I believe in being positive. I thought, Sprained ankles and headaches. In the first hour, a man with no pants and bloated privates carted himself in. He had to use a […]