A Subsidy....   Electra's Great-granddaughters   Goodness, Inc.    Makeup    Soda Fountain    Stirring Aunt Libby....   21 Club    x/y 

A subsidy for not planting feed corn 

Again he wandered the course of remains kept out for private viewing.
Well trained, though by no one he remembers,
perhaps more by being inclined to not knock things down,
nor even smear the light dust softening his grandfather’s framed likeness,
one speck of which, magnified enough, carbon dated, would reveal
what part of the second rib of a small extinct omnivore (which once
trailed a receding glacier that had raked this whole county,
eons before fenced lines drew a farm’s argued borders),
the very mammal from which cows and horses evolved,
in fact, the ancestor of all tamed animals, at a time
when they (though then one) fended for themselves (self),
and fended meanly, long before merely turning round with a shout
would halt their playful stampede, but back when they kept coming,
full-bore, with one great animal heart that was not yet torn
off into so many nobodies, into so many merely live stocks,
named and numbered, their lives only their lives and
whatever ran faster, but were fit for that,
no part of greater economies. He took
care not to knock about. One has room
along the sides of things, along with things paid not to be,
diverse and thus still joined, of one great heart, faintly beating.
He heard that heart, as he sometimes heard within his own
the beats of his brothers’ never born, each full beat
of no mean spirit, a war beat to roam and eat and sleep
and catch out new flesh for one next feeding.

Copyright © by Don Moss

Electra's Great-granddaughters

The consciousness-raising...is evoking a qualitatively new understanding. ...

                                 Mary Daly

"Ellen, I wasn't ill enough as a child,
Seldom stumbled enough to fall as if
Thrown down or unattended by some god."

"He's talking to mom again, Beth called,"
Bringing to attention her idle siblings,
Long motherless in this great inner house.

But even after Beth called, they'd mumbled
Irritation, wrested from their stupor,
A sort of remission from ideas afloat.

Since birth, they'd netted no more than sighs

From great orations, were orbiting moons
Awaiting a morning, a doctor/lawyer/

Rosicrucian. But cauldron stirring,
Too, was lost for them; their hands closed, repulsed
By handling frogs, felt used if asked to sear

Lamb to send sweat smoke to please the heavens. 
No Gods means No Goddesses, and they damned
Logic for that, Aristotle and Bertrand

Russell, who'd had three wives and outlived them
All, damned all those lessons they'd gotten A's on,
And Beth, whose administration they coveted.

But now they were by his bed and weighing
Reaffirmation. "Say," the middle one said,
"That you know how much we love you," (words

That would still the dead). Defying physics,
The father blinked, and Beth lifted her arms
In resuscitation, with the full power

Of a leading child. Expelling air,
He said, "Luck, Ellen, flew away with you,"
The beat of which each younger girl resisted,

As it pried up one side of her face.
"Dumb fortune," he said, "is far better than..."
And thought, but found nothing that would compare.

Knowing their mood and nodding to him,
Beth said, "he's not finishing our sentence,"
Which freed others to be their collective self.

"It is the father mom'd a1ways marveled
Over," one combed, chorused by looks and umm's.
"Bless his poor heart for staying...on."

"Amen, amen," each girl quickly chanted,
For a second accepting that there was never,
No, enough of him, to have and to hold.

Copyright © by Don Moss

Goodness, Inc.

There’s goodness in preparation, clipping
the soul of strings that shalt-not away
its perfect punch, line and sinker; its head
sinking, as floor upon floor of perspicuity
crushes Counterculture Coffee, whose head at last
is loosed of something worth a slip of paper.

Hello, in there! Who’s alive and who’s an evil?
In there! Does this upset your life of style?
Feel the bristle of this face,
whose 8:00 shadow does not flee
when it takes flight.
                            You’ve not finished
your baccalaureate, but what cum laud
this would right—the honor, the action,
and mostly nothing to pretend.

Copyright © by Don Moss

Makeup

How long it took to stay away,
To find the unforgotten  
Fractured signal sent and sent.

More is made to make matter of
To make worthy of, than to make
The most of what was not made up.

But dost thou know who makes thee,
Whose fits sit up and in and ride thee
Down as thy own hot rejoicing?

A fit to wind and wind about
And fling out from, through all of nothing
Which had changed the least, turning in

And getting up, love yet saved,
And love war spent, spending,
Spending to make up so much more

For nights without one empty seat,
And acts and acts before curtain call.
Our understudies understanding

And more, as unknowing as we
Our lines their lines. And when I awoke
And there once he was until you

Came to and quickly stubbed this self
Absorption. What richness there
And poor behavior! How silent

And warm your arm about my shoulder.
How like a wake these tailed moments
Of release. Through flesh bone rings through.

Copyright Ó by Don Moss

Soda Fountain 

That Mall bridal shop has lost its lease:
Signage reads: If It's Here It's Remaindered!  
I wonder if real shoulders will ever fill
The gown sun-baked pale yellow.
Perhaps it's of acetate, which
I've heard reacts to gamma rays.
Nearby, the Woolworth's soda jerk
Once spun drinks to twice their volume,
And the extra (plus(?) in French) was set
Beside the straw-topped glass, bright canister
Frosting white for all three flavors.  
That was when downtown really bustled,  
Ladies shopping and all those big black cars.
The windows recorded that like a fixed-lens Kodak,
The countless consultations, the refittings,
The mother's mother's failing to give an inch
(For the bridesmaids contrasting color).
Transactions were entered in Indigo ink. It goes
Without saying that renters and their private  
Ceremonies seldom saw the Basilica.
One was to store what was never again worn,
Nor the cake's small top layer
Maneuvering the messy melting ice,
I give way to a flower delivery man,
His chin steadying a large, shrink-wrapped box,  
Which so confined his point of view he drops,
And with no time to shout, through an uncovered manhole.
The box, somewhat square, hits the hole and covers it up.  
Frantically looking for help, I notice a named street,  
I'd always thought an alley, right before me
Between numbered avenues and streets.

Copyright Ó by Don Moss

Stirring Aunt Libby from her 91st Year

"Do you know who brought you out?" she asked.
Too slowly, I said, "Out from...where? what?"
"From Nowhere, Dear," said Libby, "to forming
your very first whole, coherent thoughts?"

Her only mistake was calling you Pat,
which I wondered over but let pass
without comment. Libby can not be trusted
to forget, nor I to give thanks enough.  

Copyright Ó by Don Moss  

                X once told me that love had protected him
                 against worldliness: ...ambitions, advancements
                ...had made him into a social catastrophe,
                to his delight.- Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

21 Club

Attending St. Michael's six o'clock bells
For Mass and start of winter’s longest night,
Fog, heralded in whole notes, tumbled in
In kingly cotton balls that dabbed air gray,
Then caught on cottages and palms to pack
Against itself in mulls of indigo.

A couple rushes across two stalled avenues,
Outpacing arrested traffic, then funnels
Onto a dune-protecting over-walk,
Depositing them on high, loose grit,
Their steps miring in the mire of steps before.

As they inch out to tide-firmed sand, a shell-
Cap of luminous anti-light unclouds
About them, dims, then seeks a focus point.
R. wonders, "What second-shift sky clinician
Has sought us out for isolation,
For inspection, from all the world's buzzing

Citizenry? This light is lab enough
Cold enough for kingdom come's condo                                             
Committee to judge whether we merit
An invitation to the grand ball, where
The Martian dances charmingly with Marie

Antoinette, their antennae combining, and..."
But 0. can't stand it, "What are you thinkmg?
Up there there'll be no room for aliens.
Astounded, R. drawls, "Why not, since down here
They read ones mind?"
                   "No, you murmured Martian,
And counting St. Michael comes to four."

"Won't that be three," R. figures, "the church less
The third planet out, leaves a trinity?"

But flush quiet, crawling wavelet shadows
Saved them from faulty numerology,
Forcing a faith that more active wave-work,

Would keep itself distant in the fog,
As sound reported sounds more remote,
Which prompted R. to think "Where are my senses?
Where is Proust's Combray perception?
     ...air...illuminated...by myriads
     of protozoa which we cannot see...

     secret system of life, invisible,
     superabundant and profoundly moral,
     which their atmosphere holds in solution...
Acrid vapor of the Master's incontinence
Of detail, his eruption of scents, each

Vying for adverb on adjective
To chisel a taxonomy of air."
R. breathes in, bit the meter reads: 'No data,'
‘No data.’
               The man had somewhere once read
     That specimens love most what is absent,
     And cling in emptiness to what that holds

     And do not know it? The woman, we observe,
     Aware that the man was off somewhere
     In his metaphysics, said, "What is that?
     To which he replied, "Was I thinking again?
     Quite aware that he didn't know where he was...

For both to hear, R. says, "Actually, ending
A half-thought,"
                     0: "But professing or asking?"
R: "The subject was love, wasn't it?"
0: "So, then, for now, is that yes, or no,
Or echoes in this laboratory? You know,
Many people would never have been

In love if they hadn't heard it talked about."
R: "Look who's quoting La Rochefoucauld,
But is love a concept, or more a flu:
A stranger sneezes, and in two-week's time,
Candy and flowers fill the buffet,

And he's there singing sonnets refitted
From the Portuguese?"
                                0: "Or his ennui?"
R: "No, actually sung in several keys."

      The man here references the squalls of gulls,
      Snapping crackers from their rigid hands.
      How they laughed applause for such greediness,

     Thrilled that as the hovering birds lifted them
     To cheap tricks of prestidigitation,
     For which two dozen beaks bid them insults,
     Each took and took, and for their giving gave
     The lasting fan of all those beating wings.

Copyright Ó by Don Moss

x/y  

i.

Turn the page and fantasize:
Forever it's you mon cher
   Ah, only and only...tu.
With close eyes they ape, "Ah, aye.

ii.

In the book, one grips the stage,
That is, a cleared strip of bar,  
And bites out, "No, no you must..."
"Must what, for why?" she rages.

"Must, Must," ten drinkers censure.  
The one who grips grips harder.
"Her bared hips swirl," ignoring  
His clutching, his century.

Copyright Ó by Don Moss   

DAVE NELSON  Dave was a UPG regular since mid-1996 through 2001. He is a native Minnesotan and member of the local Playwrights Center. He has a very good play THE DREAMS OF A PHILOSOPHER, A Farce In Three Acts waiting to be produced. Dave has written in a number of forms and styles but seems to have a penchant for the sonnet, as well as a bent for the philosophical. He may best be described as the UPG's Beautiful Dreamer.

Bugaboo Bugaloo....   I Don't Hate....    It seemed too obvious....    The Wild, Wild....

Bugaboo Bugaloo of the Bagabos  

Ideas of the Hairy Ainus or
the Bagabos of Mindanao-oh
like the poor bastards we put down for fools,
amused by their absurdly sloping chins,
their noses crooked in comical contortion,
eyes that bug out or skew about their sockets,
so you just can't keep a straight face, but smirk,
suppress a snicker that escapes in splutters,
snort-downright chortle-pointing at the rubes-
rolling with uncontrollable hilarity
-only to look up after hours of laughter
to see the clowns are laughing too; in fact
that they surround us like Tibetan Yogis
in levitation to a chant of chuckling.

Copyright © by Dave Nelson

I Don't Hate Roger Rolligen

You know how oddly this all came about?
There was the broken window,  
the delicate frame (with paint peeling),
the dusty light inside.
Were it possible to be sure, I would not have been,  
but Roger Rolligen has a distinctive silhouette,
and I could not believe he had his fingers on-yes-
on the Heffenweisser Bodhisattva.
And that wisp of blonde hair  
just near enough the window not to be seen.

When I consider how closely I came  
to walking in and saying, "Surprise, I'm home,"
though the Runninghams hadn't seen me in years
(and though, what with the change in weight and facial hair,
would hardly have known me anyway),  
what a good joke that would have been:
Roger? and...Juliette?
What exactly are you doing in the Runningham's bedroom,
and them...dead?
And the Heffenweisser Bodhisattva!
Good heavens, what are you doing?

You see, I would have dreaded the
"Isn't that kinda obvious, Deacon?"
the way he says it so airily
you figure you've just called Shakespeare 'The Bard of Cleveland'
or something.
And then what do you do?
Take a monkey wrench and try disconnecting the plumbing-
by conking him on the head?
Then, just because she's your ex-wife, it looks suspicious.

But maybe it would have been totally different.
You know, Roger Rolligen wasn't all that given
to bouts of manslaughter.
Once or twice, maybe. Or probably never.
What if, when I wasn't looking,  
he had made great friends with the Runninghams,  
and when some villain broke in
and swiped the Heffenweisser Bodhisattva,  
had charged off on an indefatigable spree  
of Rounding up the Hoodlum
and now, just happened to be basking in their gratitude
at the very moment it would be least gracious  
to bash his skull in?

You wouldn't think, after all these years,
the memory of his silhouette would linger so,
but there's something Roger Rolligen never knew:  
I cheated him at cards once
and snickered about it to myself for days afterwards.

Copyright Ó by Dave Nelson

It seemed too obvious to question, but -  
well, you know what those hanging buts imply.  
Like the phrase 'your ass hanging in the wind,'
it was t little obvious at that,
and yet -- well, let me set the scene for you.
There was a carnival in town that day,
and the great carousel was all lit up
and playing music like a marching band
with women on the undulating horses
and children laughing and a fireworks show
almost exploding from its rolling top
and -- well, you had to take a helium
balloon or two and drift into the sky -  
it was quite obvious until they popped.

Copyright Ó by Dave Nelson

The Wild, Wild Ungk-de-Skude

He had a gun.  
(I think he had taken it from the mantelpiece
where it had lodged since the Revolutionary War.)  
The way was obvious,
but there was, unfortunately, a wire or two in the way.

-But it wasn't in this manner that the Ungk-de-Skude was tamed.
No, the custodian of the wire told us these were only stage tricks.  
His brother, however, was concerned
now the marionette wouldn't dance.
Coonskin hats, eagle feathers...
"The Struggle", as they so grandiosely titled it,
was monomaniacal.
Like a tug of war, wires were being pulled all over,
and the blinds kept going up and down.

Is this why light was whirling around the room like a police cherry?

I was confused at the amber of the lights:  
the equivocal nature of optics,  
mixed with the general illusion obtaining in the theater  
led me to swing from a chandelier
-which had the regrettable effect of drawing the curtain open  
half an hour before its scheduled time,  
when the argument between the lovers had not developed,
and they were still in a lascivious act of union.

I cannot think the powder had gotten damp,
but for some reason the struggle was inhibited,
and without a shot being fired, the Ungk-de-Skude  
shrank like a shadow into the comers,
and the tittering was silenced in the seats.

And so the story goes.  
I don't regret anything, particularly, but...  
well, the vision may be slightly skewed.

Copyright Ó by Dave Nelson

ROBERT NEWKIRK  Robert has been a world traveler in times past- but in late 1998 he hit the Twin Cities & the UPG. He was the UPG's formalist, as well Voice for the Emotion in verse.

Arse Poetica

Arse Poetica

Your first drafts scrawled
While getting drunk,
Typed up on days 
The free-flow's stuck.

Slave twenty years,
Cop small press luck,
Some gilded leaves
In pails of muck.

But there's no feast
When fortune's struck-
Though published you
Can't sell the stuff.

Cheer up, don't say
Your calling sucks-
Once poets die
Life ain't so tough.

Copyright Ó by Robert Newkirk

ANDY PATTERSON  Andy graced the UPG since mid-late 1999 through 2001. He writes mostly dramatic 1st person monologues- laced with pathos and humor; no oddity since he is also an aspiring standup comedian. He has won a number of contests in that field- but we prefer he remain the UPG's champion of the disaffected (did someone say psychotic?).

If     Please

If

Jimmy,
Wake from your sleep.
Tell your dad
How much you love him.
And how you'll be a baker
Or a painter
And how when you grow up
You'll live next door to him.

Jimmy,
I often dream of you.
You're usually lost
Within a forest.

But last night I dreamt
You were in your handsome
Blue suit.
With your mother's
Beautiful eyes
You looked at me and said,

  It's okay, Dad.

But now you rest deep
Beneath a bed of dandelions
And I'm just on old man
Drifting on a lake
In a rowboat

Forgive me,
Jimmy.

Copyright Ó by Andy Patterson

Please

If even I am a stranger
A prince
Or a glass
Treasure-box of sadness
For you
For me

Arikka, Arikka,

Where are you now?
Standing on a tall
Kenyan savannah?
A Russian steppe
A Shanghai dance floor
A Japanese
Wish.

Send me feathered wings
And I'll become an albatross
Traverse the pale
Carnation sky

Far away
For you.

Copyright Ó by Andy Patterson 

JASON SANFORD I 1st encountered Jason in 2000 while organizing a poetry forum with Art Durkee & Laura Winton. Jason was to provide a fictionist's POV on poetry. About a year later Jason started attending the UPG to use poetry to hone his wordplay. He showed a willingness to experiment with technique that few 'real' poets do. Jason's websitea: www.jasonsanford.com & www.storysouth.com.

mee-maw's split....    Mobile Bay   Processes   The Oxford Book....

mee-maw’s split            down nails

mee-maw’s nails         raise middle ridges
buckle seamed            granite horizontal,
gash limestone             valleys, ravines—damned
to pose as deep flow rivers for yuppie canoes.
But mee-maw denies implications:
“Nails just do that with age.”

mee-maw gives          care to her calcium knots,
giants stowed             onto cracked knuckles,
phalange quivers         metacarpal pebbles
and the wedding ring she can’t wear
dangling off necklaced-looped shoulders.
“I sure do miss that man.”

Instead mee-maw      remembers you at six
slipping tiles               squeekin’ door,
her squatting toilet      in nightgown drapes,
modesty not in the matter of you
flushing that toilet while she still sat.
“Yeah, hon, it splashes my behind too.”

But mee-maw’s         eight-inch thick of arms
from milkin’s              choppin’s and farmin
quick one pops          through chickens’ necks
ain’t got no place for late years’ thinnings.
Through her waitings and fractures and antibiotics:
“Lord, there ain’t nothin left to me.”

When videotaped     mee-maw in flannel gown
surrendered by         grandkids and great grands,
startles, stares           to broadcast image,
not giving smiles but still knowing:
“Is that me? God help.
Guess we all just gotta claim it.”

Copyright © by Jason Sanford

Mobile Bay

2 bits don’t slide
3 ways past Stanton
but his comings up behind
finds superheated air trapped
between twin glass door entrancements,
so he wipes gulf fisherman boots—
mackerel guts, eggs, scales—
skid marks the rug and knows
you don’t catch this kind of reek
unless its suddenness jumps to bile.

off season, no fishes, just backhoe dangles,
dredging shipping lanes for eight-love-fest barges
bound the intercoastal, bored captains who wave salute,
pissed tourists in bass boats settin’ out in six-foot swells.

Stanton finds the slick cheese
smell of slap-washed thighs
and her sweet waddle walk
taking him to rarely visited,
arched tenement circles
where everyone he’s known
well enough to keep—
but not enough to name—
shank their way past him.

scooped half a spanish galleon outa bay mud, lucked
to seeing wood beams collapse for air,
no questions for pontificated arches and dead spans
as the engineer screamed to keep dredging.

Red sky nights
but Stanton can’t delight
unless his eggs bubble burn
off the skillet
and their droughts smash
gales through shrimp-netted pups,
and all for him, being—bolted
to the sixes—the only catch
off snapping gill lines.

galleon sterns and mud splashes and the 'neer
being captain being dredged being barge
says dump it all 'cause no galleon’s got times
on his scheduling looks or cares. besides…

Ups a ways, Stanton says. Ups a ways
are the only finds we oughta be keepin’.

Copyright © by Jason Sanford

Processes

Woman processed at Tuol Sleng Detention Center
finds her way to my morning paper,
ending STAT unmoving
as instant-cereal bleeds—milked, spooned off—
silver her halftone dribbles from black into
shades of ten-second mugs, death
off to simple point and click sentences—
           the guards…out frame, head…shadow-bulbing wall,
           flashed eyes…just an infinite hair—
looking beyond until she’s silted ten thousand photo
things of more befores than insides
until the ends of academics rescue her for exhibit
           (and in exhibit reaching art
           and in art Caesar’s bust)
before across my entertainment section—
column two, above fold—
her eyes snap to see if
any from right unto death
tell all we need, knowing
that our own reasons state the same as
crunching frosted flake twines, setting
orange juice glasses
over war crimes exhibit A, and
her face relaxing away solemn
to half-body comings about the world
until halfway here it's reminding of
the same eyes as my girlfriend
who, despite repeated promises the night before,
I will not call this morning.

Copyright © by Jason Sanford

The Oxford Book of English Verse

Henry, from Nancy.
            to Christmas. 1926.
            browned ink. limned paper.

            bought. Smart & Mookerdum.
            booksellers. Rangoon.

by Nancy, for Henry.
            for British in Burma.
            no knowing. to come.
            between. all war.

            Henry finds. only dates:
            Wordsworth: 1770 - 1850
            Tennyson: 1809 - 1892

Henry reads. them all.

to Nancy, off Henry.
            the book. returns.
            death railroad. down Kwai.
            Major Dunn. delivers.

            “a good chap. held fast.
            to ends. Henry did.”

           Henry: 1901 - 1943

so Nancy, no Henry.
            well versed. rests down.
            dog-eared.
            those times.
            that won’t book.
            their becoming.

still a while, far away.
for Nancy. anyway.

           Nancy: 1904 - 2001

Copyright © by Jason Sanford

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