redmilkroe

I saw an exhibition (called Sleeping By The Mississippi) of Alec Soth's while 
driving from Boston to New Orleans and writing these poems. See a bunch more 
at http://alecsoth.com/photography/.







Soon After Easter 



Here in New Jersey
I ate a chocolate
I found in a dead log


One of many dead logs
Weighing down the acreage
That was appraised for me like a credential
By my host
Who revealed himself over dinner


To be a republican


It was inside a green plastic egg
Still not found on Thursday
Disappointing to the parent
That had overestimated its own kid
And that valued
Diligence and industry


(Afraid I imagined
The kid
Was still looking)


And if it had known
A disappointment to the kid too
The yolk it was meant to have
Was coconut flavored milk chocolate
By Lindt
Wrapped in reflective silver and blue
Itself egglike


I ate it after several minutes
Of having it in my pocket
Wondering what might hatch

















PULLING GREASE



we search shorn badlands for what’s there
and find
it’s not great work


we spread the word of a very different gospel
one that is twisted in the middle
but frustratingly won’t
fail to find itself in the end
like a möbius


it starts as a profession
of dark love for dark things
the animals and air
there


then into yet another purple sky
thin impersonation
of the night it brags about
seeing just beyond the horizon


there are the two of them
advisers of a different way
exceptional strategists and
navigators-without-fail
from each to the other


like hysterical documentarians one lurks
near the terminal where night casually waits
like a Japanese teen for his bus to arrive
as if day were Boston
and he wants to get to New York


and follows him on
fearlessly he
boards the animal tube


no one else notices him
sit among them
and pull in their grease


it’s obvious he’s worrying
about his performance
having both been glory
and been unremarkable
before


he’s just some guy
really
with a job bigger than he
thought he could do
and now doing it
he realizes anyone could
if they’d just shut up
about who they were


being one of the guys in a city
lost among the lost coins and
slack herds mushing forward
overcome with false purpose
he manages to feel apart from them
an individual
like many others
are naturally able
and to know himself as just a man a
ponderous onerous little idiot
who types and erases curse words
to exercise two powers










Haiku 44


Two people who walk
Home into complete silence
Strangely just blow up

Jamie was recently accepted to a highly prestigious graduate poetry program. I am truly happy for him and grateful that we have gotten to feature his work on this site over the past year and a half.

While that’s all well and good, I cannot help but be reminded of a story I once heard on This American Life (ep. 573 “Status Update”). In it, Neil Drumming laments the partial loss of his longtime friend Ta-Nehisi Coates to the licentious world of paid academic appearances and book signings. I also feel at a loss and left out, like I’m ready for the bright lights and superstardom that inevitably accompany those very few and very fortunate inductees into the fold of Modern American Poetry – so where’s my golden ticket? I want to be recognized on the streets, to have my lyric lines quoted back to me in unison by the screaming masses or to be gawked at in silence by fans floored that I retain enough humility to take the subway. I want to be on the late night shows, to sell out the stadiums, to drown in the excesses of grotesque wealth, to be swallowed up by the frenzy that hounds each of our beloved Bards as they walk along among us.

But it was never meant to be me. It was always him.

Poems by Jamie Thomson 

Hello. It’s been some time.

The site is now accessible without the “.wordpress.”

I pay dollars for this so don’t type it in the old way – then where would we be?

Chris Mars, drummer for the replacements, paints these portraits.

Update
by Rob Rice

No I’m still around
Reading different books
But not writing much

I did see a red pen
Smashed up in the street
I think it had been run over

At Stop and Shop
One cashier said, “I didn’t have a headache until earlier”
To which her bagger said, “It’s so hot. I didn’t think they’d let me bag all day”

The doops and beeps were general
Each exactly one aisle quieter or louder than another
All the way down

Stripes of beeps and doops and the clicking
Of expert hands entering whatever number
Means banana here

I began to understand the hypnosis.
On the sliding automatic exit doors there was a taped paper sign
That read, “NOW HIRING SHIFTS”

It was over and over
Crushed when
Letting people leave

I wondered why it was on the internal,
Moving and not the safe for signs,
Stationary part of the door

But, truth be told,
As I watched it cycle,
I unfocused my eyes

And it seemed very natural.

Ever 1 
by Rob Rice

I stake time
at the gymnasium
among the open-ended
smells and the comrades
baring gore their fins their
shoulders. I get to swish down
urinals left full of piss full of protein.

I converse in pulls, grunting I fake it, reluctant to
agree: people like us because they feel bad for us or
people don’t like us because they feel bad for
themselves.

I put in an application to have my head opened sagittally,
hoping to helplessly scream out narration while they’re uncoiling the ridges,
that canned tongue. Exasperated I admit, “Yes – we’re born – but for
the most part our organs remain in a kind of womb.”

Dine in tonight, moongoers, sing health at me until I live.
Bodies breathing well look like trips underwater, organized,
but with everything scandalously dilated on fresh air, a done flush,
forehead a mess and chest a red huff.

Pores
eating up humid rooms their sheets newly wrestled into good rope.
Cardiac nodes gulp and click like static,
crimson; our gamey crotches
where all the muscle’s bound.

Great class in the flat stretch of grass yard, drama that daring one
tree. Don’t worry, we’ll not score you to collect sap in pails.

Nomatterwhat
feast weeks end in real sorrow, us all blinded white
eyes welling up with cholesterol.

Epitaph
by Rob Rice

I dig the ground
Searching for water
But find pipes