New Year

The days are not the same though

they feel that way. It is how I seem:

see-through, like a gun can trace

a line, a way to see. Seam from eye

to wheel, to a thread that frays

and turns to ink. Edge of a hole

where a paw marks the edge

of our map. A chart of stars

for a fur bird to make a course

through blue, black -- all the hues

we love to lack. Our lack is a fence

the same shade as grass. As glass

finds an eye, the mass of fur we track

comes blue and soft to us, in scraps.

poetry and divination demonstration

I make a found poem/forecast using a parts of speech die and a book:




I am experimenting with the form of the "how to" video. This is my first one. It has problems. 1.) it is blurry 2.)it is upside down 3.) I didn't list the step where you write the words out *in the order in which they appear in the poem* 4.) most of the video is upside down.

BUT

I'm thinking of making one of these each week as a "poetry forecast" sort of thing. I'm going to try and re-shoot the vid tonight.

Here is a transcript of the poem (and yes, I really used bibliomancy and cleromancy to make this poem/forecast).

from Barbara Guest's "Green Revolution"

Being
listening
sounding
appear
is
bringing
appears
approaching
relinquishing
going
telling
whispering
is
indicating
might be
go
go
It's
I'm
looking
looking
it's
isn't

Aurora, Organizer

of the orange tree, I am yellow

I am fond of the looking willow
the long gray clouds spread out

like skirts: scissor's eyes and so forth --
the flesh of silver rainbows in the air.

If I were to reach for it gently, I'd have
died twice in the reaching. Anyways, it is

us in the underneath aftershock sucking
pink and pretending everything is ours.

~*~Coming Soon from Hex Presse~*~

******Cleromancy Poetry Game******

******six word dice for poetry, divination, and play******

*Six dice; each side of each die has a different word (for a total of 36 words)
*Words for cleromancy #1 are sourced from the poetry of Emily Dickinson
*Each die comes from a different poem.
*Cleromancy #1 comes from poems #339 ("I tend my flowers for thee--"), #479 ("She dealt her pretty words like Blades-- "), #1775 ("The earth has many keys."), #500 ("Within my Garden, rides a Bird"), #311 ("It sifts from Leaden Sieves--"), and #632 ("The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --").
*Comes in a Hexagon shaped box
*Dice and box are pyrographed and inked by hand
*Roll the dice to make poems or divinations


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Games will be available through the Hex Presse Etsy shop soon!
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There will be MORE cleromancy poetry games from Hex Presse. Each game will be sourced from "woman-authored texts"** and contemporary poets will be invited to "curate" the dice. Cleromancy #2 and #3 are curated by Jessica Smith and sourced from the work of Christina Rossetti.
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Cleromancy is a form of divination using sortilege, casting lots or casting bones in which an outcome is determined by random means, such as the rolling of a dice.

Words on dice can be used to make make poems. Here are some examples of visual poems made with word dice.

**open to interpretation :)

______

x-posted to WOMB blog and Hex Presse blog

Foxglove (blood for oil)

As if it's made for loving: hollows
and veils, speckled
frolic over thin skin. I'm all
for moving. The wells dry
up and we're stranded
here, contractions obligating
rhythm, but the labor
disappears. Borders
dredged by bastards, our
hands swelling. If you
insist, I'll pick, but everyone
will know we're scared.

night heron

who moves slow as a spun
spool, record-grove
needle stylus singing
through, red eye-
glass the compass
and the bone-body-needle
threading back
over gravel, plastics
to return not
out of love, but hunger

Materials as/for poems

letters, words, imprints, text, type, marks, ink, paper, language, utterance, signs, scissors, glue, paint, wasp's nests, glitter, pages, stamps, printers, pins, needles, ephemera (esp maps, children's books, nature guides, old science textbooks, women's mags from mid-century, sewing patters, diagrams of any sort, missalettes), pastels, plastic animals, bird song, chimes, twitter, honey, strings, clay, plaster, doll house furniture, leaves and flowers, sand, shells, bones, fabric, rocks and pebbles, yarn, spools of thread, markers, crayons, chalk, nuts and bolts, clock parts (gears and faces), animal prints, tire tracks, fishing lures, bells, architecture, whistles, darts and arrows, syringes, test tubes, microscopes and binoculars, looms, spindles, sewing machines, small engine parts, paper shredders, garden tools, compass, protractors, stencils, ashes, ice, snow, seeds, film, buttons, bobbins, dress forms, nets, foil, glass, books, plastic, board games, illuminations, puzzles, kaleidoscopes, funnels, vitamins, pills, make-up, pantyhose, magnets, targets, soap, windows, lanterns, colored pencils, bird cages, model airplanes, fossils, electricity, computers, typewriters, cameras, voice recorders, braille, fire/flames, sparks, ovens, utensils, tape, ribbons and adornments, light bulbs, bandages, video, html, clips, wires, telephones, morse code, suncatchers, sonar, uv light, water and hydroponics, salt, memory, medicine, the body, dreams, diaries, discs, rings, metals, zippers, faucets, notes, tones, glyphs, graphics, eyelets, nails, oil, carriages, wheels, irons, x-rays, mirrors...

passage 2

vex and bury

BellumLetters # 30

Synthetic Animals

I lied. We went into the woods.
But when did we come out? And into
light that was like the light
of an amusement park, themes
of many colors charming the wheel?
Facades of arrow-hoofs under a dome
of expired wires, glitter-pins
amid plastic coxcombs, gills flared, fur
mapped in imaginary lines. Menagerie
replicating thrills, feigning capture.
Glisten-grill like a pair of jaws unlocked.

BellumLetters # 29

MUST IT BE TURNED ON?

REGIMEN

You Are NOT allowed to do
anything unless it is new.
You think this is a rib-flick
joint, a root burrow?
Everywhere's a desert
these days. You may braid your
hair, you may make a ladder, you
may make a trail, a house, a wheel.
But its the fattening that matters.
A lap for greased palms. We love
those who frighten us the best.

BellumLetters # 27

Renaissance

Amid genuflecting spheres, bands
of nylon filled with sand, knotted
to become disembodied pairs, headless
limbs spread as though to scissor
the white air or swim-kick
the dry light, shredded tiers
of warped atria, of wrapped hollows
and corners shaped by where
and how a body wants to move.
My pen moves like a needle
in the wrist, ink-flick of a vein about
to bloom, about to loosen, about to lose.

BellumLetters # 26

SOME TYPES OF FEARFUL SYMMETRY

It's true: we're all for making blame
disappear. But when it comes
to linking, those choke-chains
tear at skins and walls as if pinned
with eyelash glass and hollow
marrow tubes. The organs tune
their keys, devour clues. The scum
rules under the gun, under un-
believable yellows and blues, sour
as soap rubbed in fur. Aorta, a cannon
inferred, spare spears in the swallow
___________________(in tombs).

BellumLetters #25

SYRINX

Syringe of singing, see-saw sealer
seeking a find. No note for the taking.

Take-toc-tic, the slit lip the sleek throat
whittled to a line that hollows and pours.

Clean beam of the tuning. Little red wheel
mining the air, fountain of bloom near water

spills, trilling. Sweet throat of the nipped
whistle plumed with beading -- rubber band

thrumming -- threshold beating with chime.

BellumLetters # 24

COINCIDENCE OF WANTS

little captions scattered

___________________feed and seed

(I see where what was buried blooms)

you are nothing to me

________

one could burrow, worm through
one could move, under stylus of worm, glue

the undersigned (the underused)

_________

persona or mask? I could not do (Plath)

__________

they bathed the recluse in ashes
not made by a body, but by oiled feathers
made as leather, a leaking hurt
threaded through


_______

pull it

we can use it

BellumLetters # 23

Victory Blue

BellumLetters # 22

INTO THE WOODS

You were all for leaving; no beauty
contests or pageant queens. The trees
were full of secrets, undisturbed
save for several endangered species.
I wanted to bring my trowel
in a basket, hopeful that digging
might relieve the strain and static
of clinging phone lines. The roof
of the barn smoked, begging for rain.
I raked rows for sowing, dirt
blackened from where you hung
the doe. New greens from these
hewn veins remind us, tasting of coal.