This month we feature new work from the five finalists of Omnidawn’s 2016 Poetry Chapbook contest:
최 Lindsay – PHI/L/AMENT
Patrick Kindig – Boy
Tessa Micaela Landreau-Grasmuck – we are scanning in refusal to settle on the whole image
Mary Molinary – Nucleic Song
Ethan Plaue – Zea Mays
from PLAIT
AFTER ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS
최 Lindsay
( { (a song of lamentation, a tune to whisper), (grief, in), (a
( )), (in a, [ )), (in, ( )), (lamentation, in ((a) )), (to place meat, in a (jug)), (( ), (jug)) } )
{ (wine, flowers, revelry), (to place in a wooden bowl, which epic poets are to), (drink water from, while lyric poets may enjoy), (wine, and perhaps also), (flowers and revelry, without regard for), (carnage, or with heightened pleasure due to), (carnage
{ a particular vagueness), (entailed in kumquats, a precursor), (to grief, eggs) (in the nest, of grief), (which must also be placed, in a wooden bowl) (to sun, like flower) (water, wine collected from a wooden), (floor, glass in its truest), (shadow, not a cup), (nor a vase, nor), (a jug, but a lung and), (sorrow, a bouquet), (or palate of particular monochrome colors, heart steak), (pearl onion, more air
{ more mores), (to relinquish dance, fall prey), (to love, in the forgetting), (that all liquid must be fetched in a wooden bowl, from a river), (into which one can never step twice, and find the same), (river, or sameness, though), (in the forgetting, I have fetched), (body), (in a bowl, from the very stream), (I have often peered, for divination, though), (I have, become), (uncertain), (if it is the same, (river) if it), (ever has been, lined with birches if
{ the body I have brought back if), (it is a body, if it), (become the same body, if the song), (I have whispered to the, (river) if), (it is indeed a (song), if the wooden), (bowl I have fetched, for), (love, or grief), (or lamentation, is the bowl that will fulfill this act), (of love, if it is), (an act of love to braid song, braid body), (braid river, range) }
*
최 Lindsay is a diasporic Korean poet and a student at UC Berkeley, where they study literature and philosophy, and work as the managing editor of Berkeley Poetry Review. They also work to establish safe housing for students of color in Berkeley. They have poems published or forthcoming in HOLD: A Journal, The Felt, and Apogee‘s print and online publications, and can be found on Twitter @chwelinji..
Candle, Lit
Patrick Kindig
He cradles the light like a child. As if
he were playing the theramin and
he were himself a theramin. His hands
lifting. The air too. Of course
he feels warmly toward it, imagines
a thumbnail passing through himself. A breath
setting him atremble. The boy imagines
his body otherwise, his body a man’s
parlor trick. Knows flame
to be a primal form of fascination,
his skin already hot and un-
predictable. Then his mouth lowered
as if to drink. Then his lips parting,
parted. Then the room emptied
of light, of the boy’s face. And the dark
expanding like a river in winter.
*
Patrick Kindig is a dual MFA/PhD candidate at Indiana University. He is the author of the micro-chapbook Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press 2016), and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Willow Springs, CutBank, Bombay Gin, and other journals.
too many people talking to feel alone
Tessa Micaela Landreau-Grasmuck
we borrow bodies loved and not loved and we twist trying our best
beasts in the way of today we worry about what has no shape
as the invention of future how wild the protections of
regrettable circumstance where we became used to this
an outspread wingspan you mean we expect you to feel
for us to feel into us to be beside us in the beds when we wake
fragmented night-bodies and say you want to borrow
hold until we decide we love you all the way through is / that it
what of cell death and too hot to go up any longer
wait for arrangements not ours to wait for don’t you dare
don’t borrow any more salt for wounded moons you have only
what you’ve given us you never made or asked for wraps
around take us along see that we don’t look in mirrors or wash
dirt more than let our moons / get tangled in what we let them
see for me please see for me you are a warm one with a futured
specter see for us the swinging is more than the edge /
as everyday many things will happen chapels of chimes other notes
we don’t know them so it is fair enough to say it isn’t real
we’ve given for once for a while we go the wrong way against the signs
with the kites another year without / you it’s true we don’t want
another year of missing here is all we can’t imagine
heating all the way to the top with formulas for enough
characterize the sideline directly and angled as in you’ve been taken
from us who love like we love or want to not sure any of us
get to with such small pockets of ample
we knock on alley doors in coats of armor saying your name
love does not fend off what happened to magical thinking / bullets
are the words when you don’t know how to fall quietly
try and break the surface too much water to disturb
we still think of earlier earth in bowls by proximity
wildness tamed out of us you still gather fireflies
and ladybugs and other inconspicuous delights we prefer kites
sitting around the table suggesting insatiable suggesting
grasp with more work around you place your still-life
on the water and send it along / you return clawing
do not say quiet the rain run out to it
you are already inside us with unforgiveable restlessness
you borrow a body / for a spectered night or two
*
Tessa Micaela is a poet, student midwife, community herbalist, and quiet firecracker. Tessa belongs to the editorial collective for HOLD: a journal, and is the author of there are boxes and there is wanting (Trembling Pillow Press, 2016) and the chapbook Crude Matter (ypolita press, 2016). Other writing has appeared in Make/shift, Dusie, Open House, Sink Review, Calamity and various other jars and corners. Tessa lives in Central Vermont, by way of Philadelphia and Oakland.
Riddle of Ursula, Fatima, & I
Mary Molinary
long as fingers
long as the fingers of Fatima
Fatima sings of longer
days slowly of
shorter days quickly she
also sings
Ursula makes whilst Fatima sings
Ursula makes a pair of gold-finches
appear in her sentences
One is bright yellow with a black
face tufts of slight
surprise the other she
makes more green less black both
Perch on dry-drooping late summer Fatima sings a song of gold-
sunflowers eat upside down finches & days growing
shorter Fatima holds
her last notes long as shadows
Ursula holds her stylus at the ready
& I not present
for the makings of Ursula or
the singings of Fatima
I’m busy there are
termites in the bulwarks
I am busy
*
Mary Molinary currently resides in Tucson, though her subjectivity is nomadic. In lieu of a fleshier bio, she offers this from Albert Einstein: “The economic anarchy of a capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil…This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil.” (“Why Socialism?”, 1949, The Monthly Review)
from THINGS IN FLIGHT
Ethan Plaue
All this time
became since out of
we’ve
can be so it makes so
what attended to attending
would about it
Fifteen
days
instant
after the appeared
were those that first
publically first after
later that
Time zone
four legs what do they
leave the ground not live
ladies and gentlemen
Dec. 7
All-sound
explicitly for or quick
at its subject
to the study
ballistics
will it be between
if immediate with contact
dance
Wares assembled
mechanical
bodily gestures
pay
replay special little dens
Ethan Plaue’s poems are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly and VOLT.