Human-Centered World

1.

Critical                 |thinking
Among the you:ung

Held       |after
(.07) knife| attack:

“Boredom is what I least deserve
“Or desire” (he will be careful
Not to say the word ‘decapitation’ again!) “Re-
“Volt of the provinces of a lighter-than-air body,

“Which body
“Eats itself, or
“Grasps a microphone
“For eternity.”

2.

Yr. fist of|mirrors.
Shaaaken (at the) sun

Fingers unfolding
Sky, skull, (.07) egg.

3.

Who do you think you are?

Rat & finch
People just
Watched. Per-

Cussor, as in
River-smooth &
Waiting

(Pound-Note)

In the bag. Eh what?

Wife takes
The picture (almost

Medical textbook, droll)

Audience asks
“Wait a minute?

“Handshake?” If that’s
Looking enough for you

Then ding-a-ling

(breathy
Pause-

Shaped
Thinking)

Come on.

4.

A dog’s, [snap fingers] grebe’s, [snap fingers] carp’s, [snap fingers]
Aromas| dominate [drum on the table]
This passage.

5.

Clarification of thought
By walking

The amputee doing
Calisthenics in his doorway

--“Do you have your ticket?”
--“I have the wing of a crow.”

6.

(.04) concepts of| Self
Strike 1 out of 100,000
A slow | progressive
Degenerative (.06) realization

Mu:tilation | causes | cer:tainty
What breakthrough
W,i,l,l,a,l,l,o,w,n,e,w,h,o,p,e,f,u,l,e,v,i,d,e,n,c,e,
To move within plastic

Tu:bing strung up
Between emerald
Drones in the sky

7.

Juvenile bands of girls
Chew be:tel leaves
To paaacify the naaations

Lounge wildly
On their backs

Or twe:ze each other
With delicate instruments

& if she is loved
By a vulgar man
With a gallant career

Close the capillaries
By constant pressure

8.

High hill
Of my
Old age/
Endlessly
Distracted
Molecules
“drilling
Down”
To the
Individual
Gradation
Of grays
“but that’s
Orchestration”
Trundle
Along
The Boggard
Path

Yet I need
An aesthetic
Immune
To art films
& engine houses

Fragments
Of a realm
Beyond my
Reach

mercurial &
sustained
provocations:

a Sassanian bowl, perhaps
a gryphon’s claw, perhaps
a Roman stone
bathtub

9

The way to win is not by (tricks of) number
the Goth gas stand attendant sd. again: Frickin’
shave the splinters from yr. fockin’ eyes
gone gone gone beyond great Shiva
these pointless operational recursions.
Babes then ran wondering
“Missiles?” “Teeth?”
My husband jumped up screaming
at the 3-D screen:

“Who were the first Americans?”
Look in a drop of blood and see a beast.

 

10.

Beneath the wild
ferns by the bubble-
scummed creek,
John Keats opens
his webs of empty
flesh so the tap-
roots of the willows
find him, and
stones and clumps
of sticky dirt tumble
through him and
where light once
collided within the
tender lobes of
neural tissue, all
grows cold and clean
and clear.

We’d failed to video-
tape our luminous
dog, and even the
snapshots we’d taken
were focused
on a human-
centered world,
allowing John Keats
his spot skewed
off to the extreme
right or left of center.
now even the photographs
in their tooled leather albums
have begun to fade.

 

 

Wave 3.5c
After Oulipo

November, 2010

Jesse Glass

Jesse Glass lives in Tokyo with his wife and two young chidren, where he teaches American literature and history at Meikai (Bright Sea) University. His books include LOST POET: FOUR PLAYS BY JESSE GLASS (BlazeVOX Books, 2010), Gaha Noas Zorge (New Sins Press, 2009), and THE PASSION OF PHINEAS GAGE & SELECTED POEMS (Ahadada Books/West House Books, 2006).

Praised by Geraldine Monk, Jerome Rothenberg, Michael Heller, William Bronk, and other major voices of contemporary experimental poetry, Glass is an internationally acclaimed performer of his own work and features prominently at PennSound, Ubu Web, and in dozens of other anthologies and magazines devoted to "the sweet science."