ululations

Barbar-ga-gauche

2014-11-26T10:32:00.002-05:00

To dance around in the kitchen to a song sung in harmony by two men in the 1950s while two cats look at you, after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To pick up a cat while you are sitting on the toilet and peeing after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To hold your hair over your closed mouth in such a way as to cause your index and middle finger to press on your nose while you are thinking after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To overthink pronouns such as the “accusative you” as you are composing a work of “literature” after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To reach back to scratch an itchy spot just under your bra strap after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To notice that it is too hot in the apartment after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To fantasize about getting a puppy that is a mix of Pomeranian and Husky, a breed called a Pomsky, and then naming it Gnome, after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To spray ginger citron aromatherapy spray on mufflers that have languished in the basement over the warm months in a cheap suitcase that had an awful plasticky smell after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To go to sleep after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To think about what you are going to put in the wild rice pilaf – apples or cranberries – after Burundi is barbaric.

To think about when you are going to make your next trip out to Queens to visit spa castle after the massacres of Mayan peoples is barbaric.

To buy hair barrettes made of cunning crystal beads and to eat this amazing rice bowl wth slivered takuwan, maguro, and ikura in Shinjuku after the Holodomor is barbaric.

To endlessly permutate Adorno’s probably tossed-off aphorism in a repetitive literary piece when you are averse to obvious repetition in writing after Auschwitz is barbaric.

To try to rouse the rabble, preach to the choir, and otherwise use poetry rhetorically after the Nanking massacre is barbaric.

To think about how you should put the floating candles in the fishbowl for a centerpiece after the Armenian gencocide is barbaric.

To write conceptual “engaged” works that won’t make any significant difference in the world although it might make you feel better, after the persecution of Falun Gong, is barbaric.

To ignore street people who need things like socks and sandwiches and beds, after the Assyrian genocide, is barbaric.

To deliberate over the sort of cocktail you might order, if you actually drank cocktails, after the unrest in Ferguson is barbaric.

To get up and brush one’s teeth with special anise toothpaste from the health food store after the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities is barbaric.

It is barbaric and vulgar.

To fondle the cheap necklaces at Forever 21 hoping that one doesn’t look too cheap and will give you the sense of decoration you are desperate for in a hideous world that has experienced the Ustashe genocides of Serbs, Jews,Roma and Croats is primitive and contemptible.

To stay in a zen temple overnight and eat with the monks in the morning as they chant their sutras and serve their food into three little bowls while bowing to accept food has the veneer of civilization but in fact after the Japanese War crimes of world war II is savage.

To write poems against type, to abandon grace and decoration and a wandering imagination is a lomd of betrayal is therefore positively atavistic.

To neglect the home keys and type lomd when you mean kind after any sort of genocide or massacre is idiotic and therefore barbaric.

COPS

2014-11-13T16:04:00.001-05:00

The cops come in on twinkletoe,

in dickies and bad hats, their sidecars

limply idling. They slink sidewise with lowly

simpers, the cops and their bagel foreheads

and snowy disasters, plump in starchy

regalia and loosely waddling. There are

all breeds of cops: shaggy and muffy cops,

bright sleek mean cops, cops with weasels

down below, and cops of normal squalor.

The only cops I like are wrinkly cops, all

done up in tight panties. Then there are

the hulky burrito cops, the filigree mango

cops, the cops that love the words “sin” and

”sin.” They police a city with needles, say

rawwr and grr and cannot keep things

down. These are the cops who finger

nozzles muttering “rue” and “rue” and

“rue.” They are real lulus in wiry tutus.

Green bald cops. Murky annihilation cops.

Liminal space cops in the gap between

the jeweled dust and the other jeweled

dust. There are striped and spotted cops,

idly scribbling marginalia on the snow.

Overcome by a wave cops, the cops struggle

through the cops and find more cops

inside their pyramidal beards.

my 10/26 Zinc Bar Reading video

2014-11-08T17:34:00.000-05:00

Here is my reading from the Zinc Bar on October 26. I was moody because very few people were there and the poems I read were about nothingness and sexual violation.

Become a poet, and you will regret it.

2014-11-08T14:56:00.002-05:00

Become a poet, and you will regret it.
Do not become a poet, and you will regret it.
The clubs, the cliques, the clans, the coteries,
The narcissists, the dons, the climbers, and the bullies --
All this you miss if you another passion seek,
This caravan of literary freaks.
Some are alcoholics, and the very best poets,
But they secrete themselves to drink in little huts.
Some proclaim themselves the very latest thing
And posture in museums in their bling.
Some aim to do good, or foment revolution
While others shrug their shoulders, and join an institution.
If all these options leave you feeling numb
You're better off an ordinary bum.

If you’re determined to be avant-garde

2014-11-08T14:55:00.002-05:00

If you’re determined to be avant-garde,
Don’t hesitate! It really isn’t hard:
Erase a few words here, or add some new
Or cut them up and stick them back with glue!
Since summer’s lease hath all too short a date,
No need to work too much: appropriate!
You’ll find a little niche to call your own –
A magazine, a press, a group, a throne…
And when you’re sitting up there, like a fool
Some whippersnap will say, “now make it NEW,”
And all your dreams of glory will be spoiled
As well as will your precious little world…
And when you’re on your deathbed you will cry:
“I really wasn’t avant garde, was I?”

Ariel Goldberg & Charity Coleman live talk show

2014-11-08T13:53:00.000-05:00

Ariel Goldberg and Charity Coleman doing their live talk show at Berl's Poetry Bookshop last night. Gee, they were swell.

I told Charity later that they reminded me of:

2014-10-25T11:44:00.001-04:00

ບາງຄັ້ງຂ້າພະເຈົ້າຊອກຫາໂຕເອງ wondering ສິ່ງທີ່ຊ່ອງດໍາລົງຊີວິດຂອງທ່ານເບິ່ງຄື. ມັນເປັນກະທັດຮັດຫຼືບໍ່? ມັນເປັນຄືອາກາດແລະ modernist? ມັນເປັນ "goofy"? ທ່ານບໍ່ເຫັນດີເຫັນພາຍໃນປະເທດ? ບໍ່ຫຼາຍຂອງການບ້ານຂອງໃຜ? ຜູ້ທີ່ຈະຈ່າຍສໍາລັບ stuff? ຂ້າພະເຈົ້າຈື່ເຄື່ອງນຸ່ງຂອງຕົນໄດ້ bunched ສະເຫມີໄປໃນ closet ໄດ້, ມີເອກະສານນັກກະວີທີ່ຕາຍແລ້ວຂອງ, ແລະ rack ຂອງສາຍພົວພັນແລະ vest ລາວບໍ່ເຄີຍນຸ່ງ. ຢູ່ໃນຫ້ອງຂອງທ່ານ, ຂ້າພະເຈົ້າຈື່ໄດ້ວ່າເຫັນຢູ່ໃນຮູບ, ທີ່ມີແກ້ວບາງທີອາດຂອງນ້ໍາຫອມ, ເຄື່ອງສໍາອາງຫຼືໄດ້. ທ່ານຍັງມີວ່າ, dresser ປົກຄຸມດ້ວຍນ້ໍາຫອມ, ເຄື່ອງສໍາອາງຫຼືບໍ່? ແມ່ນພວກເຂົາເຈົ້າອົງການຈັດຕັ້ງຫຼືບົດ? ຂ້າພະເຈົ້າຈິນຕະນາການທ່ານເປັນບົດທີ່ສຸດ. ພຣະອົງໄດ້ເບິ່ງຄືວ່າຕ້ອງການທີ່ "ບົດ" ຫຼັງຈາກຖ່ານກ້ອນຂອງຂ້າພະເຈົ້າ eccentricity. ພວກເຈົ້າມີຄວາມຕື່ນເຕັ້ນ terribly, ໃນເບື້ອງຕົ້ນ, ກ່ຽວກັບການຈັດກອງປະຊຸມຜູ້ຊາຍພຽງເລັກນ້ອຍນີ້ plump ການຝຶກອົບຮົມ, ຜູ້ຊາຍພຽງເລັກນ້ອຍນີ້ plump ຜູ້ທີ່ໄດ້ພັນລະຍາບໍ? ທ່ານມີກໍ່ພຽງແຕ່ເນື້ອໃນທັງຫມົດທີ່ມີສະຖານະການນີ້? ຂ້າພະເຈົ້າຫວັງວ່າຍັງບໍ່ມີບໍ່ແມ່ນມື້ໃນເວລາທີ່ທ່ານບໍ່ຄິດວ່າຂ້າພະເຈົ້າບໍ່ໄດ້.

2014-10-22T16:28:00.000-04:00

ໃນເວລາທີ່ ທ່ານນັ່ງຢູ່ ໃນທົ່ວຈາກ ອື່ນໆແຕ່ລະຄົນ ຢູ່ໃນ ຄາບອາຫານ ນັ້ນ,

ບໍ່ ໄດ້ ເບິ່ງທ່ານ ຫຼືເຮັດ ຕາຂອງຕົນ ໄປ ໄປຂ້າງ ໃດ? ທ່ານ ເວົ້າ ກ່ຽວກັບຫຍັງ ? ພຣະອົງບໍ່ໄດ້ ,

ມ້ວນ ເຂົ້າໄປໃນບານ ໄດ້ອີກຂ້າງຫນຶ່ງ ຂອງຕຽງນອນໄດ້ ? ພຣະອົງບໍ່ໄດ້ ນອນຢູ່ໃນ ປະເພດຂອງ clench ບໍ? ພຣະອົງ

ໄດ້ຮັບການ ສະນັ້ນ ການມີສ່ວນຮ່ວມ ໃນ ຜົນປະໂຫຍດ ຂອງຕົນ, ປົກກະຕິແລ້ວ ກ່ຽວຂ້ອງກັບການ

pursuit endless ຂອງບາງ ລາຍການ ວັດທະນະທໍາ ໃຫມ່ , ທີ່ ທ່ານບໍ່ສາມາດ ທີ່ຈະ ຕິດຕໍ່ສື່ສານ ກັບທ່ານ?

ທ່ານ ມີຄວາມຮູ້ສຶກ ຮັກ ?

I saw them

2014-09-22T14:39:00.002-04:00

I saw them and this is what they looked like to me.

Bitter, bitter, bitter feeling.

Japan photos

2014-07-12T23:44:00.001-04:00

Here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nada_gordon/sets/72157645627475884/

Yokai

2014-06-16T20:03:00.001-04:00

I have been drawing yokai.

OVER MY HEAD

2014-05-20T10:37:00.002-04:00

Pairing odd combinations of

images -- many of them

not even fresh

or original -- is not

poetry, but gamesmanship,

verbal solitaire. Poetry

is not about scratching

your head, but feeding it.

This I am fairly comfortable with:

I have a good background in

dialectics; I understand

polarizations, juxtapositions,

pastiche techniques, quotational devices, etc.

in music....What I don't understand is this:

why those words

rather than others? Why

are these two images juxtaposed, rather

than two others? What criteria

could possibly be articulated

to differentiate "good"

language poetry from

"bad" language poetry?

I have no idea

what's wrong with me

these days. I seem

to have strayed far,

far from the path

where poetry is concerned.

There is a laziness to these poems,

a fake rigor -- short sparse lines

that imply lyric tension, but feel

like no more than cocktail coaster

jottings. Lots of vague

pseudo-connections,

hocus-pocus, imagistic

smoke and mirrors

-- and to what end?

How could a listener tell by ear

whether it's Stockhausen's

latest masterpiece

or some configuration

of monkeys at a piano?

How would I know

whether what I am looking at

is a masterpiece of language poetry

or unrelated sentences

spliced together on a page,

between which I am supposed

to invent connections

and deep meanings?

I can be a bit of a snob, you see;

I have a strong appreciation

for poetry of many sorts,

and consider myself

to have fairly well developed taste

in modern music, art,

and literature.

Well good luck to those

who like this book.

It made me feel disjointed,

even a bit

empty. I don't get it.

All my poems start

with a feeling, not a

word. They are part

of my life and in that way

give me a feeling

of wholeness- each

in its own way.

When you get thoughts

or feelings like this

from pure nonsense,

then it's GOOD pure

nonsense, fun pure

nonsense, admirable pure

nonsense. Of course

you might be kidding

yourself, like a child

playing with blocks

and pretending she's

raising a tower to the sky –

but is that a terrible or

unhappy child? Should we

take her blocks away?

Or ... is it saying

we go into a noisy club,

and they've got some sparkles

blowing in an updraft,

and that's exciting; the particles

look so nervous and afraid?

And nervous and afraid is part

of the fun of going out to raves

and things like that? Or is she

pointing out that glitz, trendy

decoration, is not just decoration,

but also something crazy, scary

and scared? Does she mean

ordinary dust particles, caught

in an updraft, catch the light

and shine like glitzy ornaments,

one identical seeming particle

next to another? Or is the section

nonsense pure and simple

just as I said to begin with?

10.

You can find ideas like these

in various idealistic philosophers,

but not in so short a space,

and not put forward so gently.

Because language poetry

is constantly interrupted by

nonsense, you don't have to believe

anything in it, and so you're in a

special place, where the theories

you feel don't make sense

can still show whatever magic

they may have in them –

and all without hurting anybody.

Idealistic ideas like these

dominated the nineteenth century,

and did a lot of harm.

11.

But after awhile, just as Sudoku

gets more difficult, this felt

like more work than I was willing

to invest. I just don't have that

in me, to understand

what these mean. I am too

simple for these

complexities.

12.

Language poetry is poetry

that allows itself to include

nonsense, passages that don't

mean anything coherent or

paraphrasable. This goes back to

"hey nonny" in the old Elizabethan

songs, and comes right up to rock

band names like Jefferson Airplane

or The Grateful Dead. It happens,

by accident or on purpose,

in very beloved modern poets

like Dylan Thomas. Still, some people

are against it on principle. Those people

can't be talked to, but they're politically active,

hence some of the one- and two-star reviews.

Let them go.

13.

this seems like so much bool shit: ?

am i wrong? read this crap- non referentiality-

seems right wing- ayn rynd?

14.

critics are to art

as are pidgeons to statues-

i finbd armantout's poetry- like ashbery's-

counter productive?

15.

I'm fine with stream-of-consciousness

writing, but that doesn't describe it

either. Quite simply, I was lost.

16.

Language poets were once

a cultural rebellion against Post-

Modern poets, but have now

become more mainstream,

and of them, she's known

as the best. The essay explained

how her poems are often cryptic

with double meanings and turns

that are meant to wake up

the reader, to shock them

out of numb

reality.

17.

I've experienced the pathos

myself, I agree it's inexplicable,

and I'm glad someone else saw it

and wrote a poem

about it.

(composed of the remarks of commenters on the Amazon page for Rae Armantrout’s Versed)

My summer vacation plans

2014-05-14T13:56:00.002-04:00

I'm going to Japan soon.

I will start in Tokyo for a couple of days, then go to Osaka for one night:

I will stay at this hotel:

Then I will go to the famous temple complex, Koya-san, for one night. I have never been there; people always tell me how magnificent it is. I will stay in this temple:

Here is another photo of Koya-san:

Then I will spend three days exploring the highlights of the Kumano-Kodo pilgrimage trail. It is a World Heritage site.

I will visit two little hot springs along the Kumano-Kodo. Here is one, Yunomine:

Then I will spend one night in a little ryokan in Kyoto in the heart of Gion:

Then I will stay here at this beautiful house for a month.

I cannot wait. I love Japan so.

A Nearly Baroque Wall Fountain, Just $35.99!

2014-05-11T15:58:00.001-04:00

Under the Fonz's gown
Too slick for the beard of the moaning pharaoh, whose bleat
A moron has begun to eat,
Meat butter primps its cocktail and lays down.

Ass-spattered bosses, freaks
On the edge of a vacant spill, chill
With the passive bird below. Its trill
Is heady in the trollop's skin, and squeaks

A quim or memory tent
Of a faux marriage and its familiar noose
Crappy with all its loose
Collapsing falters, its Elmo-less descent

Like Chatterly's hairspray.
The cocksure dog beholds this spell with fleas
Touching, around his saggy cheese
The goatish indolence of labia

His faux ness all the while
Gleams fro-ward, mightily, into a clammy mash
Of cauterized darkling flesh
In a dull ecstasy, his spider-guile

Bent on the man-whore
And his tinfoil fool, to whom Ripple-drinkers come
And go in rectal salaam
More addling to the moonlit slime, and more

Indefensible in thought
Than pleasure's chaos. Yet since this
Is pressured flesh on Adderall
Mustn't it be sort of crumpled? Are we not

More ignobly depressed
In the fake mountains that Modernity built
Before it teetered? The lame guilt
Snuggles softly into a hornet nest

In the act of jiving, until
The fairy swish of laughter is rehearsed
With headlines bored enough to burst
A three-eyed cavorting head, that trills

So crazedly, its foamy gauze
Defacing, with a flattened shimmy, the whiny
Blue-red version of itself, divinely
Nattering on and on about its phony laws

As drear as adipose
So I becomes a lowlife and the band
Exudes a muchness ― a damp clam
Toward which all mollusks droop... their pantyhose

2014-04-11T07:31:00.000-04:00

kids in my ear water watching

and he wanted a packing house saline

pretty little space invader prayers

2014-04-10T22:30:00.000-04:00

they think I'm complaining
explaining his little seeds

There's a kind of thing we need to shape
and then it dissolves backward

and a finite child so child.

these grammar schools

transit can turn into a little bit
of a defiant tulip

banana singers fish farming
beginning a banana butter

feelings
reason
reason

Rescheduled: DIA reading with Bruce Andrews! March 31

2014-03-23T10:17:00.001-04:00

Bruce Andrews and Nada Gordon

Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Monday, March 31, 2014, 6:30 pm add to my calendar

Bruce Andrews and Nada Gordon

Event Information

Monday, March 31, 2014, 6:30 pm
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York City
$6 general admission; $3 Dia members, students, and seniors

Advance ticket purchases recommended. Tickets are also available for purchase at the door, subject to availability.
Publications by poets in the series can be found on diabooks.org.

READING FEB. 3 with BRUCE ANDREWS @ DIA FOUNDATION CHELSEA!

2014-01-30T16:28:00.000-05:00

I'll be reading at DIA Foundation on Monday with Bruce Andrews. Please come!

Squirm Pill

2014-01-25T14:00:00.000-05:00

Now as I was pugilistic under the middlebrows

Above a minty mouth as slappy as a mondegreen

Where right above the dingleberry

Crime let me flail in rhymes

Moldy in the Fay Wray exercise

And horny among dragons I was winced at by caps and gowns

And once below the slime I hardly had the knees of bees

Frail with laziness, snarling

down the quiver of the pinball fight

And as I was Oprah Winfrey, shameless in tangled yarns

About the papillons and clinging as the harm was form

In the crumb that was somewhat lonely

Mimes let me bray and find

Gordon in the smurfy antifreeze

and feeling mopey I was mutton and birdman, the elves’

sanctity corn, the loxes’ lonely trills snarking clear and bold

And Black Sabbath sang lowly

In the Pebbles of the Bam-Bam dreams

All the dugongs they were sunning, it was grumbly, the shlemiel

flying with grouse, the moons in the kidney, it was there

and swaying, mumbling and muttering

like frying sassafrass

and politely under the pimple jars

I rolled the sleepy towels while staring at marmalade.

All the blue lanyards, messy and unstable, the gotchas

vying with their pricks, and the chortlers

crashing into the quarks

A tremulous shake, and the bomb, like a quandary might

with the new, dumb lack, or querulous soldier, it was all

timing, it was rad and amazing.

The guys chatttered again

And the musky hounds began to bray

So it must have been after the jerk of that limber knight

In the words’ silly place, the spellbound nurses walking warm

And shimmying, unstable,

Into the bleary haze

And wandered among toxins and peasants with the famous

under readymade crowds and snappy as the art was wrong

as an unborn over and over.

I ran my sleepless maze

My fishes spaced out the Mabuhay

And nothing I cared, in my Bayou shades, that time mellows

In all his rueful burning, such blue and such boring songs

before the kitties mean and scolding

swallow him out of space

Nothing I cared, in the lamb lip haze, that time would take me

to the marshmallow sangfroid with a sparrow of a man

to a tune that is anodyzing

Nor that riding a Jeep

I should hear him shout to the Seinfelds

and quake to the charm forever bled from the violet band.

Oh as I was young and sleazy like a new adzuki bean.

Time held me like a lion

Though I came in my mane, like a dweeb.

New Energy to the World of Words

2014-01-13T21:03:00.002-05:00

A helium balloon is soft and the soft is always expanding

into a repulsive little scab in a pattern of a mood swing

and he likes to look at me! he likes to look at me!

Women have a way of breathing new life into older white men

poised for imagery on a trip wire, always expanding verses

into steamy sapphic spectacles with lady parts their bros

in prose are afraid to touch. The IQs of agonized fleas are

flying pills, dominated by the difference between restraint

and restraints in the city’s changing literary balloon.

This consumer frenzy rose design performs orgasms,

weight gain, rashes, and diarrhea caught on film

at the poetry brothel and has an MFA in flashdancing.

Authentically dainty wordsmiths in the house of art fly off shelves
and he likes to look at me! I’d like to start flossing menstruations.

part 2 of A POEM THAT SWELLS UP

2014-01-03T11:27:00.002-05:00

I’m serious, I’m going to Paris.

I’m serious, I’m going to drain the brains of other cultures.

Seriously trying to donate a deer tick.

Guess I ask these beans?

My boyfriend is delicious.

My boyfriend whom I am in the page.

A message from thermal clarinets:

Newborn babies were realy something.

Desire for a minute ago

I watched a jar of fenugreek in the pee

Up up and BEAUTY

my wool over the miso in his countenance

I watched two episodes of beng a semicolon

I watched a black rayon kneelength pencil skirt, deep hopelessness

I’m serious, I’m going to the tomatoes to have poetry

in a wound incarnadine slightly musky and animalic

Big old honking vacuums of hair

in a secondlanguage environment

The worst song in my dreams five minutes ago

Wool over jammed mouths – loudish

Moaning a little trying to stay in the cisterns

Rubbing velvet princes

And sighing like a baboon in a sham farce

As a kind of vegan rabbi I can buy baby artichokes in my poems

Giant eel birds stand on the eardrum

Tonight’s bedroom and the suffering of animals

And humans concoct the unexplainable.

This loom of the hero is a feathery feeling

I watched the cats stuck to the curry.

They were supposed to stop yowling.

I watched two episodes of each penis

and both snails were busily ingesting this

Shocking pink suit, red thing, I am out

Purity? Wholeness? Wait.

A POEM THAT SWELLS UP

2013-12-28T18:54:00.001-05:00

Marta, I just don’t sufficiently explain the void

I know it is chilling to be

A piece of memory stuck to NYC

The hair fetishist guy feels like barking in English

Those guys from Paris turn into a midget

I wouldn’t be this torch or a squash or vegan shaman

mais je retourne a vacant queasy feeling

The older people are sparrows in the a cappella group

Please don’t have a morbid curiosity about the honk toy

or rustling gold tongues hung on the balcony to dry

You’ve probably been seen drawing exaggerated genitalia on the death of life.

I don’t really have to know your coded glom! Your grim lushes are there.

I found a more grotesque asthma I guess

I watched a Hasidic man become a pen and notebook

I watched the sacredness of a Vogue magazine in 1972

I watched black drawstring bags with quickeyed love

I watched a second language environment with George Herbert

I watched a restive sleep

I watched a couple flarfing to lyrics – the hippies loving this

Maybe on the street yelling and crying

Saw Dorian Gray fishes and muzzles snatching with

green false eyelashes and gold paint, backchanneling fine print red mind

Got any waters of Lethe to use on those kids?

Those most amazing eel birds of reading anything?

This hair in a Spartan little commercial context

This hair in their place; my lap’s a commercial contest

This hair in my friends in the lack of F train

Is hair an extension of the quote you didn’t read?

Is hair an extension technology?

Buddha left his wife in the states I don’t care

Is hair an extension of forbidden things?

Is hair an undergrad i.e. not with enormous breasts.

Are you coming to be?

So…one should buy stuff

The honk toy, its thick sensuous lips

like grand temples on the rocky road to vibrancy

So much agape, and deep red velvet paintings

like exaggerated genitalia on the death of life

A voice in a cheap everywhere, pagodas of course

pagodas of everywhere, OMG OMG I learned from benzos

Was that yaki saba I just married? Cried softly…

Getting my own voice sounds like staging a jar

Pages 175 to 295 are a blue-colored butterfly gland

all night in my radical dollhouse

The nightmares of extermination you didn’t really need

I’m running around shtetls in babushkas

I’ve got kosher in my feet, cajole myself to kvetch

I turn into a midget with a great love of announcing things

Guess I’ll just give someone a lost yarmulke

against triteness, but don’t have a morbid curiosity about it

This torch I wouldn’t be

That seems unhealthy to the internet

The cats go to Spa Castle

Nemo’s thyroid tested because I ate it

The cats watch Gone with the Wind

and the problematic Teahouse of the Beasts Boy again

Nemo is seriously complicating the morning

Seriously I am I a poem that swells up

Spock is going to stay in my scream and would moan

I finally found my identity anymore

Waiting for the most important muscle pain

Even if we are line drawings

In bouffant silver wigs

I watched a coconut flake

Writing an impassioned persuasive paragraph on rouge

but I do want to try and speak from another planet

Weaving in his garden Nada uses words

to sufficiently explain the many fevers

Hopefully it is fun to wake up

Anyone want to make fun to wake up

Woke up, watch out!

Sha SHIN, flash of light

Marta, I just don’t sufficiently explain the void

I know it is chilling to be.

Wait for the hortatory feeling

I’m serious, I’m going to emit us.

new video!

2013-12-01T23:05:00.001-05:00

otohime from Nada Gordon on Vimeo.

HAPPY MANXGIVING

2013-11-28T11:48:00.001-05:00

Are we really cats if we don’t

have tails? We are if we are Manxes.

Scrissags! Scrawls! Sleetchy old scrapers!

Hibernators! Castletown snots!

Big slugs, all sitting on our

shillings with our little crab wives

snurly and high. Cranberries dripping

down our chins Ayr ain t'ayns niau,

Casherick dy row dt'ennym. Have stained

our pilgrim suits! The expression for swallow is

_gollan ny geayee_: the fork of the wind.

We ate too much Manxgiving day

But we don't give a hoot. We’re creepers, clicks,

clinkers, clukes, crooils, reezaghs, shliawns, slebbies, sleetches!

Us cats can actually be drawn with a series of circles!

We slurp a pile of dressing, gobble down turkey thighs,

Dy jig dty reeriaght. Dt'aigney dy row jeant er y thalloo,

We dribble messy cranberries onto the bleihs, blebs, dawds,

flids, gapings, glashans, gogaws, gorms, hessians, kinawns,

loobans, ommidhans, slampies, sthahls, wallopers. We devour

some pumpkin pie. myr t'ayns niau.Cur dooin nyn arran

jiu as gagh laa, as leih dooin nyn loghtyn! We have very round heads

and rounded cheeks which gives us a jowly appearance;

Within us on this special day/ It's thankful hearts that beat,

so thankful for all the peevish people, especially small scolding women:

borraghs, coughties, crabbies, cretchies, corodanks,

gob-mooars, gonnags, grangans, grinnders, grouws, huffies,

mhinyags, pootchaghs, scrissies, scrowls, smullaghs,

spiddaghs, targes. We’re thankful for all the things that we

enjoy/ But mainly for the eats. For we are high in the hindquarters!

with back legs much longer than the forelegs! thus causing

our rumps to be higher than our shoulders!

Happy Manxgiving!

a non-pre-/pro-scriptive uncomprehensive list of some qualities I like in poems

2013-09-10T13:30:00.002-04:00

a lot of nouns

syntactic complexity or strangeness

a combination of the borrowed and the personal

some sense that I am getting to know the poet through the poem, even as persona, or through even the coldest strategies (also a "personal" statement)

signs of struggle

simultaneously reaching historically backward and inventively forward

humor that isn't merely smartass

mystery or puzzlement that isn't just precious "vagueness"

a combination of innocence (the writer not knowing something) and experience (the writer knowing something

I have no problem with strategies and procedures but I want the poems to overcome those strategies and procedures rather than existing for the sake of them

no dogma. fuck dogma

rhythmic, syntactical, lexical attention to forward motion, speed, slowness, stillness, loops, and backtracking

who am I to say what is gratuitous and what is not? but I don't like it when I have a feeling that something is gratuitous: a political sentiment, say, or a pop culture reference, or a kind of empty "poetic" floatiness

a poem like a suckling duckling.

a cat suckling a duckling.

~~ululations~~

Barbar-ga-gauche

COPS

my 10/26 Zinc Bar Reading video

Become a poet, and you will regret it.

If you’re determined to be avant-garde

Ariel Goldberg & Charity Coleman live talk show

I saw them

Japan photos

Yokai

OVER MY HEAD

My summer vacation plans

A Nearly Baroque Wall Fountain, Just $35.99!

Rescheduled: DIA reading with Bruce Andrews! March 31

Bruce Andrews and Nada Gordon

Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Monday, March 31, 2014, 6:30 pm add to my calendar

Event Information

READING FEB. 3 with BRUCE ANDREWS @ DIA FOUNDATION CHELSEA!

Squirm Pill

New Energy to the World of Words

part 2 of A POEM THAT SWELLS UP

A POEM THAT SWELLS UP

new video!

HAPPY MANXGIVING

a non-pre-/pro-scriptive uncomprehensive list of some qualities I like in poems

ululations