Bling That Sings

BEAUTY AND POETRY |||||||||||||||| POETS WEARING MACTAGGART

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Cynthia Arrieu-King teaches at Stockton University and lives in the multiverse. Her collaborative book of poems with Hillary Gravendyk will come out from 1913 Press in early 2016.  She is making a Tibetan snow lion costume and boiling potatoes.

Cynthia is wearing the Mactaggart one-of-a-kind beaded collar for strengthened armor-like beauty. 

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LA VOIX DU SANG

The master is laconic, but his paintings talk. Rather, Loulou the Pomeranian corrects himself, the master was laconic. Now especially that Magritte has gone, Loulou walks back and forth before the pictures, listening to them whisper, missing his dead master. He wishes for more songs upon their upright piano, more pretty evenly matched games of chess.

Blood will tell. The voice of blood. This image confesses a tree with a cylindrical cupboard for a trunk, containing a white globe and a house with a lamp lit in every room. The illumination makes Loulou feel less gloomy. Georgette is still here, and they still have their house.

Loulou pricks his ears toward the call of blood, and hears the years to come coming: their old apartment in Jette will become a house-museum, stuffed – like this tree – with beautiful stuff. Loulou himself – or the last Loulou Georgette possesses when she dies, too, some twenty years hence – will also be stuffed, his dog-body filled with taxidermical stuffing. He will rest unmoving, white fur puffed, atop an empty bed.

The master’s eyes are closed forever, never again to peer at the peerless blue of his paintings’ skies, never again to hear the sound of small bells, his beloved grelots. Loulou remembers how, when he was a puppy, he thought the clappers inside the spheres must be the bells’ hearts, and how when he artlessly admitted this, Georgette and the master had laughed and laughed – not at, but with him – and ruffled the fur at the scruff of his neck.

Gaston Bachelard said, “Miniature is one of the refuges of greatness.” Naturally, Lou-Lou is biased, but he is inclined to agree: concentration and potency. The house-museum will be a small one, naturally, but somehow it will suggest enigmatic measurements. Each night, curtains will hide what is of no earthly use.

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait. Co-editor of The Selected Writings of René Magritte, forthcoming from Alma Books next year, she is also the author of seven books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, including, most recently, the novel O, Democracy! (2014) and the novel in poems Robinson Alone (2012). With Elisa Gabbert, she is the author of the poetry collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008) and the chapbook The Kind of Beauty That Has Nowhere to Go (Hyacinth Girl, 2013). She lives in Chicago with her husband, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches at DePaul. 

Kathleen Rooney is wearing a mactaggart vintage Joan of Arc pendant with customized chain affixed with beads and a mactaggart brass chain mill studded ring.

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from L'HEURE BLEUE, OR THE JUDY POEMS

A walk helps a little, a pause

where I am moving

and other things stay the same,

or have less distinguishing detail.

The sky in this mood is more

supple. Not quality of life,

but quality of suffering.

Just to say “I suffer” helps.

A dog rubs its heavy black body

against my thigh,

thrusts its head between my legs.

I hate this automatic shame.

I hate when dogs look like people.

A woman calls to the dog

and apologizes.

I have no name to call back.

::::::::::::::::::::::

I could know him, and like him,

without understanding,

like liner notes to a jazz album.

But liking doesn’t lead to love.

You switch to a different axis.

A self-indulgent misery

is best, a cathartic performance

I perform myself.

I read that happy people have

an inaccurate sense of time. The descent

as slow falling. The dead

don’t get any more dead.

When remembering him,

I’m never lonely.

Elisa Gabbert is the author of The Self Unstable and The French Exit. Her next book, L'Heure Bleue, or The Judy Poems, will be out next year from Black Ocean. 

These poems originally appeared in Phoebe.

Elisa Gabbert is wearing the mactaggart weighted brass with turquoise patina u-lock on mixed vintage brass chain 

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WHY I AM NOT A PAINTER

Almost full-frontal female parapet decorates

Familiar strata, a necklace performing

Opposite actions, edge motif loosening

Unbinding the identity of the scene

A marshy landscape confronted by

The opposite of an audience

An ally, a skeleton of a witch’s kitchen

A grotesque representation of love & collateral

Motion, a pile of books topped with a skull

A surface set in letters captioning the belly

Blotchy eros, full-bleed translation, women

On top, visible in bed’s apparent absence

That space with red absorbed poses

City views polarized strangely

The surrounding hills so accurate

I went to the highest place I could to redraw it

To recast the models of self-portraits

I adhered power to these portraits

An indentation to the upper lip

Took refuge in the understanding of a white shirt

A finger set against a dark background

Within an oval frame of chronological gestures

Copies with no location

This is the history of nowhere

So unaffected by what is going on

MISTRANSLATION CCI

or MEMORIAL DAY

Beneath my reactions

Are stronger reactions

Erroneous boyfriend,

A plague on both our houses

I cut my losses

Stop going along for the ride—

Helvetica subtitles & bad music from the ’90s

I should know better

Whiskey rosé piña colada michelada

It had everything to do with freedom—

You’ve gotta give for what you take

I’m waving my fuck you flag at you

Slowly, I’m eating this hotdog sonorously

All by myself

Ali Power is the author of A Poem for Record Keepers forthcoming from Argos Books (Spring 2016) and is the editor of New York School Painters & Poets: Neon in Daylight (Rizzoli, October 2014).

Ali Power is wearing the golden body armor, the brass skull necklace and a 3 spear pink quartz necklace on long leather cord, she’s passionate in her mactaggart jewelry and laughs aloud for all to see.

[mactaggart]

Without

It is dangerous to love anyone

to love

to create people you will die for

dawn pinks its way through the dark morning

poems call out through the computer’s invisible speakers

about rainforests, about “natural”

what a concept

I was abed alone

except in social media apps

where we half exist

our made up lives held up against our made up lives

if you were the only one

this would be something

you can go to a place where they will pay you to work

and what you care deeply about will not matter

this is a schism, a job description

she will scare you into a type of listening

or you will die

or anyway you will die

maybe listening you will hear this

the long hot line of the poem invading you

we will say you look tired when what we mean

is how can you still be living

I want to say there is a brilliance

& I have been so long underground

here in my grief as if losing was an invitation

these are all the ways we walk about in the world

watch as I break against everything, invisible

nothing to lose then this: You have to wake up

and take your life or it takes you

if you never consequent your actions

then a type of wording silences, say you this

so I’ll tell the pretties what they want to hear

glamour the water falling, glamour the night’s cover

what you can explain away does not equal an explanation

Affair

trespass not a scene you or she could understand

& in that way, what we agreed was just sex

I took so I could write about it

exchange deleted, but I keep

a hoarding of language my clutch

hunger once as he would say a need to control

& somewhat close to truth

but aren’t we pulled along

face like a blank slate even when he says

I want you              I wonder

what does that mean            let’s not

discuss what we can’t disclose

I like to think about the view from outside

where drawn a circle we did in private undertones

prosper, I have known the knot of marriage

how slippery it is to be given to another

switched place this dagger     what we do is let

other people bound our troubled parts

look baby,       this lifetime is a drizzling

time is no matter        we dig in      unable to quit

this madness pretending the world

holds our desire

Megan Burns is the publisher at Trembling Pillow press and runs the Blood Jet Poetry Reading Series in New Orleans. Her third book Commitment was just released from Lavender Ink.

Megan Burns is wearing a Unicorn Buckle mactaggart necklace and her doll is holding a mulit-chains mactaggart piece 

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Earth Goddess and Sky God

You haven't formed me.  I'm a monster still.

Then give me your body.  Give it to me in rain.

Look up and fill me.  I am too dark to stain.

You haven't  held me. I hold apart my will

Spread dryness through me.  I have a night to fill

in high heat-speckled waves, apart from where

I will come down.  I have nothing to share

with breath.  I will give it back.  There is one to kill,

one to renew, and one to persuade to weep.

My night holds everything except for sleep.

A BLESSING ON THE POETS

Patient earth-digger, impatient fire-maker,

Hungry word-taker and roving sound-lover,

Sharer and saver, muser and acher,

You who are open to hide or uncover,

Time-keeper and –hater, wake-sleeper, sleep-waker;

May language’s language, the silence that lies

Under each word, move you over and over,

Turning you, wondering, back to surprise.

HOMEBIRTH

Home is a birthplace since you came to me,

pouring yourself down through me like a soul,

calling the cosmos imperiously

into me so it could reach to unroll

out from the womb where the wild rushes start

in a quick, steady heartbeat not from my own heart.

This is my body, which you made to break,

which gave you to make you, till you bear its mark,

which held you till you found your body to take,

(open at home on my bed in the dark).

photos by: Meredith Kennedy

*** The poems are published in Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan UP, 2013)  

Annie Finch is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in anthologies including The Norton Anthology of World Poetry and The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. She has also published twelve books on poetic form and craft, most recently A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 2012) and Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Everymans Library, 2015).  She is the founder and director of poetcraftcircles.com and hopes Mactaggart fans will come check it out.

Annie Finch is wearing the Queens Decision necklace with matching lime green chain dangly mactaggart earrings. 

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animal human machine

  i abandoned human

moved outside my body brushed

my eyelashes better to see

you see me

and we got along fine

both of us having that amnesia

that lets us bring things into the body

take them out

and move them around the house

 i watched movement witnessed transaction

at 3:03 a shadow cut the building in half

at 3:10 the sun went in

the building stood whole again

or so I thought

when I see a thing

i make it real

  a woman naturally eclipsing a street lamp

a woman naturally smoking in the hallway

a woman naturally standing at a table counting money

a woman naturally wrestling bacteria with her own hands

a woman naturally in a room petting all the stuffed animals

a woman naturally organizing bags of flour on a shelf

a woman naturally removing splinters from her thigh with a tweezer

a woman naturally tyrannizing a room of windows

a woman naturally at the bottom of a river

a woman naturally in a sunroom confessing to all the plants

  a small white room

on the ground floor

pillows stacked like cats

here and there color

a dog barking

the bed and a dust ruffle

the dresser and its weight

the clapboard dusty

the bed a pair of wire framed glasses

a dumb light bed

built for one

as if we’re expected to die

in our sleep wearing shoes

in the bed masturbating

the room is a giant aperture

the mattress is very expensive

a large dog and the small of my neck

a water soluble paradox

the rooms are connected

the damage is muzzled

dreams are not accidental

a pencil cactus

slanting rectangles of paper

they come built into the rooms

I walk across the room toward the door

I knock into a piece of furniture

I don’t want to be sentimental

but I walk across the room

and objects move out of my way

  the dog had me by the neck

the man was shirtless

the kitchen floor was cracked

the man was blond and bearded

the dog was toothed

the door opened from the inside

the motion was not a magician but a man

not (a) disappearance but (b) invisibility

the writing on the wall was in Greek

the nails on the wall held nothing visible

a crash of motorcycles projected miniature

the kitchen floor was cracked

the man had me by the neck

the miniature was not so miniature up close

the magician was shirtless

the dog cracked

the crash opened from the inside

the motion was not a magician but a floor

the writing on the wall was bearded

  Alex Cuff teaches public high school, studies herbal medicine and edits No, Dear magazine. She lives in Brooklyn.

Alex is sporting a 4 Mixed Texture Vintage Chainz mactaggart piece.

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Dara Cerv lives and writes in Jamaica Plain, MA. Recent poetry appears or is forthcoming in Jellyfish, The Volta, apt, and Whiskey Island. Her first chapbook will be published by Sixth Finch in 2015.

Dara Cerv is wearing a classically long ceramic beaded piece with interspersed dangles, the top right picture shows her wearing the grey dagger earrings, and below that, the window ring in sterling silver, with a sterling silver hammered ring stack, and the horse ring in copper with the oxidized figure, and below this you will find Dara wearing a California beach rock necklace on a wavy bar chain. 

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Angela Veronica Wong is the author of the full-length poetry collection how to survive a hotel fire (Coconut Books) and the chapbook Dear Johnny, In Your Last Letter, which won a Poetry Society of America New York Fellowship. Her poetry has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry (with Amy Lawless; Scribner) and is forthcoming in Please Excuse This Poem (Viking). Her fiction is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly. She is on the internet at www.angelaveronicawong.com.

Angela Veronica Wong is sporting a slick body chain with tiers of colored chain, a rare mactaggart find. 

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Gina Myers is the author of two full-length poetry collections, A Model Year (Coconut Books, 2009) and Hold It Down (Coconut Books, 2013), as well as numerous chapbooks. Originally from Saginaw, MI, she now lives in Philadelphia where she assembles books for Lame House Press and works as the Senior Editor of Coconut Magazine.

Gina Myers is sporting a classic mactaggart piece called Chain Days: Brass & Steel Tiers

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erica lewis lives in San Francisco where she is a fine arts publicist. Her work has appeared in various anthologies and journals, most recently  Apartment, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Boog City, Bombay Gin, clinic and Coconut, among others. Books include the precipice of jupiter (Queue Books) and camera obscura (BlazeVox Books), both collaborations with artist Mark Stephen Finein, and the solo project murmur in the inventory (Shearsman Books, 2013). Two new chap projects are forthcoming in 2015. She is currently at work completing her box set trilogy. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

erica lewis is wearing the boldest of mixed brass chainz, and sterling silver body armor in top left pic, below her dog is sporting a classic mactaggart button necklace and she's wearing a green arrow, to the far right she's wearing a vintage belt buckle necklace.

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Jennifer Nelson's first book of poems, Aim at the Centaur Stealing Your Wife, is forthcoming with ugly duckling presse in Fall 2015. She is an art historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Michigan Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is currently working on a book about the history of measurement and relativism in early modern northern Europe, and teaching about ekphrasis.

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Jessica Smith, Founding Editor of Foursquare and name magazines, serves as the Librarian for Indian Springs School, where she curates the Indian Springs School Visiting Writers Series. A native of Birmingham, Alabama, she received her B.A. in English and Comparative Literature: Language Theory, M.A. in Comparative Literature, and M.L.S. from SUNY Buffalo, where she participated in the Poetics Program. She is the author of numerous chapbooks including mnemotechnics (above/ground 2013) and two full-length books of poetry, Organic Furniture Cellar (Outside Voices 2006) and Life-List (Chax Press 2015).

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Alina Gregorian, while Reciting the Flagpole, wears a necklace of a ship that has literally been set aflame; she rides with the crew on deck, and can be seen as a survivor “by way of natural selection.”

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Alina Gregorian is the author of Flying Bark, a forthcoming chapbook from Monk Books, and an, as yet, untitled chapbook from Diez. Her poems have appeared in Sink Review, Boston Review, GlitterPony, and other journals. She curates a video poetry series at the Huffington Post, co-curates Triptych Readings, and co-edits the collaboration journal Bridge. She teaches creative writing at Rutgers University, and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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Andrea Rexilius is wearing Necklace of A Thousand Colors and interacting with Winter issue of Fence "to remind herself to take up less space."

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Andrea Rexilius is the author of Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine, 2012) and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation(Rescue Press, 2011). For three years she was an editor of the Denver Quarterly. She has worked with elementary and high school students as a program coordinator and poetry instructor for Writers in the Schools, America Scores, and After School Matters, and has taught literature and creative writing at Regis University and University of Denver. She currently teaches BA & MFA courses at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where she also coordinates the JKS Summer Writing Program. She is a member of the Poets’ Theater group, GASP (Girls Assembling Something Perpetual). With Eric Baus, she co-edits Marcel Press.