the INLAID EAR

by Joakim Drescher Paul used to say—like if I suggested going up to the G sharp and ending the song there—never returning to D— he’d crash the cymbal and cry, “Bad thinking— let’s try it!” One advantage of our band aligning itself with Dadaism was how experiments tended to stick around, fermenting into pearlescent, ginger liquor that could thrill or sicken audiences. My squeezebox case is closed these days, and my creative output picked into friendly, nit-free execution. It’s been years since I grabbed a trout and whacked it against piano keys in passions of Art. The cleaning staff hasn’t minded, it seems, the less explosive expression of my most dissonant, fishy notions.

Ill Woke up a few inches above the sheets. My bones were poking out of every pore. The blankets hovered on my sharpest points. I warned my waking wife, “Don’t roll over. I’m pokey again.” “What? Ow. Okay. It’s going to be all right.” She rose fast to pour lotion into my hands. This I patted on, leaving globs suspended from the hair- thin needles covering me. She chattered to make it all seem normal. “I think that’s a good reason to call in sick,” she said. “Would you do it?” I asked. “Okay. You go to the garden. I’ll call Guy.” The sky bled pinks and golds as I stopped and let my toes’ tender skin greet the cold, bare soil. My core felt warm though frost stood in the garden rows, and I was naked as a winter rose. I'm totally honored to include work by the renowned sculptor Cybele Rowe. Check out her art at cybelerowe.com .

O: A black hole in a ruddy glow. The moon went incognito. The earth followed suit. We reeled below like drunken twentysomething werewolves in snow. Two men gone bloody under the penumbra. When clans of carnivores meet their brethren, we howl concertos— hunt and howl long Os in transcendent, blood-bound harmonies. Sleek-furred, open-nostrilled, taut-muscled, Josho and I twined our vulpine, astronomical supplications for connective joy—for mirrors, partners, orbits— we caterwauled our throats raw for women. When the frozen white light returned, we panted our prayers, so blessed by earth-moon union. by Chamisa Kellogg . Yeah, Chamisa! This is a great example of an illustration that changes the poem. For me, it wasn't a poem about werewolves, though the memory I wrote about certainly had that flavor and worked with the imagery of lycanthropy. At the same time, other poems in the book refer to vampires, Frankenstein's monster, The Pale Man from Pa...

Imagine The Three Stooges’ Larry Fine, the curly haired one, as a loveable gentleman with enthusiastic eyes. Even when I was a kid and babbling, he’d look at me like the shiniest dime. I can see the mensch now, unshakeable in the fertile bedrock of family line— and his seven kids, equally stable, so that when I talked, they paid attention; and when I grew I recognized the signs of traditional Jewish compassion, the transplant’s sensed duty to share the bread. Pre-nuclear family American head of a larger household, wherein heads put together put meals on the table— food for the city, haven for the child. Whatever I said, Uncle Mickey smiled. Veronica De Jesus does amazing portraits. If you're in SF, check out Dog Eared Books on Valencia at 20th St.

Indeed, we found rat turds in the kitchen. Mickey and Minnie hosted a soiree. We killed ten in May; they were back by June while the Mars Café sold a hundred trays of fries each day, cleansed in canola oil. Just down from Journey Into Inner Space was our rat hole, a door nobody saw. We cussed in under-park tunnels, made days magic for marks as un-mustachioed, supporting-cast. We’d sneak oral and waltz to get paid, shuck the shit-suits and go home. Some artist in the sixties drew them all shooting up, fighting, pimping and whoring. I Xeroxed it and papered my wall. We would get baked and hysterical: Daisies spread for Goofies, Donalds counted the bills, Plutos lifted their legs in wet salute. "Mask" by Arthur Gonzalez

  The library     for Marna Scooter Cascadia and John Fox John and I ordered two slices and a raspberry soda each. We ate and took turns reciting snips and strophes within easy reach, chuckling, focusing or sighing to fit the words, until our speech joined together at Innisfree. We chanted that secluded beach into being. John beamishly coaxed in Yeats’ cat, Minnaloushe, who puzzled the moon, far and wee— and so we came upon Cummings hiccupping that typography over our paper plates and crumbs. We stood up. It was time to teach of what had passed and what would come, how poems make a honeycomb.

One Way to Ask , as the title implies, is a lot about questioning, wondering, querying. In fact, I developed the form of the poems, called queron , with the idea of querying as a key element. This poem, "One way" serves as the opening poem. It sets the tone for the book. It has to be good because it's the hook. I am really struggling to get this tone right. I don't want it too hard to understand, but I don't want to make it pat and give the reader the wrong impression that my poems are direct as stand-up comedy. I want to talk about questioning without using the word question. I want to make the reader's mind slip without making the reader frustrated at me. This one is still shifting and settling, sometimes line by line, sometimes word by word. For all I know, the comments you leave right here might oust this poem as the opener before the book lands into print. But for now, "One way" leads the way into my book, with art by the amazing Lauren Elde...

The library     for Marna Scooter Cascadia and John Fox John and I ordered two slices and a raspberry soda each. We ate and took turns reciting snips and strophes within easy reach, chuckling, focusing or sighing to fit the words, until our speech joined together at Innisfree. We chanted that secluded beach into being. John beamishly coaxed in Yeats’ cat, Minnaloushe, who puzzled the moon, far and wee— and so we came upon Cummings hiccupping that typography over our paper plates and crumbs. We stood up. It was time to teach of what had passed and what would come, how poems make a honeycomb.

The process of poetry happens as I walk to the carpool stop, as a move between meetings at work (and sometimes in the meetings), as I make coffee in the morning and as I shampoo my sparse crop at night. How do I help words unleash their power under poetic reading? Which words do I choose? When do I speak in plain details, when do I ask my readers to make intuitive leaps, when do I swirl into an abstraction of rainbow oil slick? Search me. With Chuckie Alston's wonderful illustration are two versions of the same poem, "Road Not Taken," written, you've probably already surmised, with a nod to Robert Frost. Which version do you prefer and why? I would love to have your input. I know which one I'm leaning toward, and I wonder if you'll lean the same way. Many lines are the same between versions, but the endings are toned quite differently. I'd sure appreciate a quick comment about your preference, either in the comments section below or on the Facebook ...

Hold that time While, the movie’s a slog to me, if my seven-year-old daughter were a U.S. year, she would be 1947. Summer. “Meet me in St. Louis, Louis…” She is transported on Garland’s Technicolor eyes to a time cradled tenderly in the arms of a later time. They used film as a salve and an opiate. Maybe she won’t find out how glum Judy became. The plot’s struggles, in retrospect, are quick to dim. When we watch the “Making of…” reel, it opens with clips of bombers. Instead we steer on Google to The Fair and Liza Minnelli. Judy Garland by Shraya Rajbhandary

By Kato Jaworski An unlikely story Could I dismantle my stake in progress? Delete a few of the novelty apps from my iPhone? Stop using GPS? Postpone texting while I’m on the crapper? Can I leave the net, go mobilephoneless? Can I store a dead laptop in burlap? Without my computer, will there be lunch? I’ll work at home, schedule a midday nap. I’ll free the old well and muck out the sludge. I will be thirsty. I will be a mess. Where can I walk when the Honda won’t budge? Can I rest long nights in February? I’ll make my own music on wires and jugs. I’ll stitch my own wounds, meet pain’s ecstasies, and make a storied storehouse of my lap. In summer only I’d eat ripe cherries, and hang The Apple back upon The Tree.

By Katina Huston Meditation The smooth stones blessed in Quan Yin’s radius, shaded by the rambling ficus, give way to the pale paisleys of my bed sheets, mussed in slow rising to the views of a day. Soon the traffic of the busiest blocks filters tidally through my maculae and into my mouth, parted as I saw on the serene Buddha faces arrayed everywhere I went in Ayutthaya. Where I sit like this is all one locus, where my thoughts’ weight and quantity withdraw becoming as light and few as the skies I’ve known. All seats are found in the same straw. All breath is drawn from one well. As it slows I count the cycles lifting away. Here the meat of a being that sees and moves recalls the unity it itself proves.

Whose idea?     “We send the monkey out to Planet X in the Horsehead Nebula—     the planet that looks like it’s coming and going at the same time—     so monkey can collect soil samples and watch the stars being born.”         —Dan Carbone Records (that no one will ever review) reflect that you were assembled and set onto an unexplored planet, into a vast, indifferent deepness. Your settings are dialed more toward “to be,” less toward “to do.” There’s a cay between seeing and seeking, but you cross it without noticing how a distant, deeper glint got you thinking: there may be something you’re supposed to know, a new mission to be revealed to you. But what it was that flashed is never shown. When you arrive where you thought you would take the source, undifferentiated glow surrounds you. If you feel, then it’s an ache. You have to stop again. You have to think. Your current programming may be a fluke. With only y...

Welcoming the new normal     late September, 2008 Who left the money for the breeze to squander? Grant turns into pulp in the gutter. The rosemary bush wears Benjamin like a cap. “It’s an ill wind,” say the neighbors, but the sun still lights up our crap, all the doodads we’ve said thanks for now tagged and arranged on our tarps. But no one’s selling wrapped foods or wool blankets, so nobody trades in currency, only rumors. At least we have fresh rosemary to make our spaghetti gourmet. Gift-giving traditions may be impeached this year—but you don’t shop for what I want most. Luckily my favorite gift from you is free. By Tom Franco

Thanatopsis Since we don’t know the minute or the hour, when should we begin our soliloquy? It wouldn’t do to speak up too soon or, worse, start late and run out of energy before the coil of our wisdom finds air. Our speech grows solemn with priority as though this were our moment in the play. This statement—and this—take such gravity; but every scene and every act gives way to the next. The waitress comes. We order breakfast. I give my line, a throwaway: “Eggs over medium, sourdough toast.” Most words need no timbrous tenor. Each day we had will have gone by unlike the next. After the service, we’ll saying something twee. Then it will be dinnertime. Time to rest. Time to let the silence express it best.

Your most basic process that you may still control when all other choices get taken from you, pulled off like skin or voice, is picking up the morsel, putting it in your mouth. Chew, chew, chew and swallow. You are hungry. Outside of that fact, your actions are yours. Maybe. Without that freedom, what are you? A can with two snout holes gasping for some human prayer of peace within hell. We trust our wills to be sacred, but check YouTube. Art by print maker, activist Doug Minkler. See more of his work .

Now hear how musicians transcend maya (or the illusions of self we each have). Orchestras synthesize trembling mana, and honey rises from the nascent hive. Harmony is the honey of many. To fuse in unison so as to live— then to lose oneself—that’s life’s best honey. Your strings ooze into the communal line of woven sweet. Then the whole great world hones its taste on this one music. It’s zany how the swarm of cells inside a bee’s bones, and the million details that make a home— plus all your memories dumped from boxes— don’t make a mess. A clear lyric has come— chaos looping and closing in a link, that fits into a geometric comb in the sweet, cellular, symphonic womb. Wow. Dianne Romaine HEY, RHYME FANS: Check out my experimental rhyme scheme based on " Word Golf ."

More Millionaire at http://www.maakies.com/ How can I save the pieces when more pieces keep falling off? Times like these, I’m a sea- eaten clipper in a squall. Hatten down the batches! Please, sea, see me to safe landfall. Ropes and rivets rattle, drop off to dissolve on the calm floor. Why shouldn’t this whole ship of self descend into peace? Then all my pieces could sleep where they rest, in one black bed where slow, deep monsters would keep me together, finally rid of this wearing need to sail… Yet when the ocean goes dead, I don’t look down, but ahead.

Happy Birthday to Me! And here's one of my funniest poems, illustrated by the very funny Reza. Get some chuckles today at his site Poorly Drawn Lines . And read below. In case the poetry thing doesn’t work out for me, you’ll be relieved to know I have skills. I build bookshelves, dressers, closets, cabinets, and other furniture from prefab pieces. I am a craftsman of only the finest particle boards and composites. I have tools, the complete set: a hammer, and not one but two screwdrivers. I’ve also amassed some screws and several Allen wrenches (now safely kept behind the dryer. If I need them, I’ll get a magnet and string.) I can read Swedish charts more or less, and I can construct a brand new night stand in fewer than four goddamn-fuck-its. If I start at sunrise, by midafternoon I’ll have one new shelf and a few new BandAids. Engineered furnishing. It’s a train: fast, smooth and streamlined. And I’m the engineer—choo-choo!

Even after watching him smack face first into countless trees over endless days, the ape named Ape had still not fully guessed the depths of his friend George’s naiveté— not until George’s “Doggie,” Shep traversed the ancestral passage to the graveyard of elephants. George continued calling for Shep at dusk and setting out huge plates of chow insisting he would be hungry when he came home. George’s mate Ursula and Ape both tried to explain what dying was, but George would open a breadfruit and shout, “Here, Shep!” Ape was awed at the Living Saint of Primal Innocence; and he left to live with his ape tribe. He was afraid of seeing George laid on his own deathbed. Meanwhile, George still lives, calling his dog, Shep.