http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:panika&section=today deviantART RSS for by:panika en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:33:23 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17881768/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17881768/ Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:23:19 PDT dismantling (remix)

work to good
use, good to
use, used
to, use
too

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17865634/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17865634/ Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:11:42 PDT the oak: sticky under my palm

leave the formality of sneezing, the endless
trains unlocking themselves
from stations. you pick
the country, I'll pay
the bar bill with a wink
winding through the saloon
like the prettiest girl in the room.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17850050/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17850050/ Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:30:30 PDT o say say playmate (coda)

here is your trampoline sidewalk: stand on
point to the end of the rainbow,

ballerina / the wrong end
of a rock: your arch / ugly builds

between your packing
taped toes-- broken, gummy;

red & ripe as apple / the wrong
tip of my tongue: your

heel / here is the dolly to
cart you (through the cellar door)

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17832417/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17832417/ Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:02:47 PDT
the illusion of angelization (your fragmentary voice)

trips on the recording, yips / the answering
machine barks, too / welcome (your message)
turned to pixels, to the static of weeds-- dandelions
(begging) / I pick one from your chest, its white
bulb blushing into tether (late to begin)

~

a broken thermometer-- your mouth (open)
to concrete, to rock salt /mercury leak-- the tap,
tap tap / a nimbus of steam belts the tile
(into pocket sized) pieces / peal it back, rouging
fingernails on its buckle & wash

~

we rouge the water's edge with our toes:
this should mean wading; this should mean
not blood / breach the link of sand and not: this
should not mean seep / bursts (blisters on) your
tongue / when I try to speak of it (I sink)

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17816106/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17816106/ Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:07:44 PDT A is for appendix
B is for bowel
C is for catharsis
but this is no HOWL

12 (right on time):
tastes as good as the north (pint in bed)

no kings in the kitchen
the stars, the stars spit like camels

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17780980/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17780980/ Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:27:38 PDT
]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17765812/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17765812/ Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:04:41 PDT towards water / languid wants share / bones

groan in response to one another, a who
goes there? singing marrow to marrow

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17746091/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17746091/ Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:54:32 PDT coos to the expand & contract of wood / bent to pick lint from the seams (of carpet): you find grovel / live with the swallow, put the egg back together / stippled with shrapnel: nails & rust imbedded in your knee caps; stuck in your teeth, your ribs; piercing your belly button / bones calcify in the refrigerator, toes stud themselves into thresh / stretch (like a piano, let me play) your ivory spine

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17731268/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17731268/ Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:42:54 PDT a melody / some relic of truth,

of dire-- the iron (in your blood)
stream / the lip of simpathy: not
your mouth / take the world (in

through your) sole: a rusty
nail piercing your heel

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17715236/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17715236/ Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:25:59 PDT I am not your talisman

contemplate your wrists masquerading
as promise. you can't steal your
tentacles through the horizontal blinds of my ribcage.
contemplate your wrists. mask this raid
as spit. before this spectacle starts:
squeeze my triggered spine. don't
contemplate. your wrists masquerade
as promise. you can't steal what you are.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17700704/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17700704/ Sat, 05 Apr 2008 14:38:34 PDT
instead (remix)

he barks for steak, for just
desserts, for her wet face

she wanted his lap to be
a pillow, but found a tent

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17685465/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17685465/ Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:24:15 PDT [link]. on that site, my friends and I have been writing poems to each other and responding. this started about a week before napowrimo started, but it's good fodder for the challenge.



Dear Matthew and Marty, the live
oaks are flocking my car in lime,
pollen falls down their bell
bottom trunks on to the drive
way; the clouds hang, beer
full over the belt of the horizon.
And even with the dust and sneeze,
even with the flood and hail,
I'm glad to be here, I'm glad
to be home. Wish you could
be here too, Panika

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17668872/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/17668872/ Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:44:45 PDT little Samson, cut your hair
the big war's a comin'
and we need you there

poem two:
rain snaps the tent flap: that sound
of rip / a man that smells of mold unzips
his rib cage (she wants) / to breathe

in his skin, to curl into his chest: one
(wet pillow deserves a) dry bed / his
heart: unmoored / chain (it to the tent

stake, let it bark at) the storm / watch
for lightening, count for thunder:
one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi

today's poem:
kiss the door frame twice

your soap scum lips
will rub off like tub stain

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/16520749/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/16520749/ Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:40:16 PST [link] ) that it was a good time to do so. after all, it can only get better from here.

1) I graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with an MFA in creative writing poetry. that will make this year a time to re-work the thesis for book competitions. I have one specifically in mind. anyone care to guess?

2) I got two publishing credits under my belt. for those of you who miss the poems that have been relegated to the storage center on this account:
you can see "tragedy of being" at [link]
you can see "bruised stars" and "the only substance abuse problem I have is you" at [link] (though, I need to get in touch with Guy and let him know that he f-ed up the itals.

3) I received boo-koo honors on here! thanks to all the support. I received the honor of a DD not once, but twice for "Michal speaks to God for the first time" and "born to erupt" (aka "Mt. Rainier sings lullaby to Seattle"). AND I won the Mimesis mythic poetry competition for "Michal speaks to God for the first time". both of these pieces are now in storage due to the strict rules some lit mags and web zines have for publication. thanks for all the support. I'll try to put up some new writing in the coming weeks.

4) I've moved back to Austin and continue to work hard trying to find a job in my field (any pointers?). I keep sending off to magazines. I'm working on some poetry/music, visual poetry and a/v poetry projects. I'll update you guys as things keep happening.

good luck to everyone. I hope to see some great stuff in oh-eight.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/16245483/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/16245483/ Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:07:50 PST
woot!

that is all.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15519867/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15519867/ Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:58:02 PST
graduation date: Dec. 21
graduation ceremony: Dec. 14

yeah, it sounds weird, but this will be the first time I've ever walked for a graduation. didn't do it in high school. didn't do it for undergrad. I figure that since I have to stick around for the last week of classes that I should walk.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15366645/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15366645/ Sun, 04 Nov 2007 18:06:03 PST Agamemnon. there's nothing like killing the icon of everything I hate about humanity. but I never realized how much like Bush he was:

CHORUS
Clytemnestra has spoken. A clever
interpreter finds the true meaning
of a woman's words. But tell us what has happened
to our fleet. Is Menelaus, our King's
brother, alive and returning with Helen?

HERALD
We lost sight of King Menelaus and his ship.

CHORUS
Where is the rest of the fleet?

HERALD
We have lost the fleet.

CHORUS
Where is the army? Where are our sons?

HERALD
No man can tell you, only the sun,
the all-seeing and giver of life,
knows where they are. I wished to give my city
a single day of rejoice in the ruin
of Troy and Agamemnon's preservation..
All night the sea kept rising, wave
over black wave. Rain from Thrace
rattled through our rigging, oars snapped,
hulls splintered, we wallowed sidewise,
our bronze beaks rammed our own ships,
as we spun in the hand of an angry shepherd.
Then the sun came up. We could see
the blue Aegean blossom with bodies,
oars, timbers, figureheads--
a whole dead army on the sea.
Our ship kept floating. We lived.
Some god, no mortal, had handled our helm,
and saved us from the big sea, and led us
through the crooked, covered rocks of the channels.
We stared at the watery white sky,
and wept for our friends. If any were still
alive, they thought of us as dead.
I think of them as dead.

CHORUS
What happened to Helen who caused the war?

HERALD
I don't know.

[Exit HERALD]

* * * * * * * * * * *

ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION, PAY ATTENTION

Matthea's new book, Modern Life is excellent. I do not just say this because I'm her student. I say this because I read it in one sitting.

book: [link]

some of the poems: [link]

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15348857/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15348857/ Sat, 03 Nov 2007 16:10:55 PDT Agamemnon. there's nothing like killing the icon of everything I hate about humanity. but I never realized how much like Bush he was:

CHORUS
Clytemnestra has spoken. A clever
interpreter finds the true meaning
of a woman's words. But tell us what has happened
to our fleet. Is Menelaus, our King's
brother, alive and returning with Helen?

HERALD
We lost sight of King Menelaus and his ship.

CHORUS
Where is the rest of the fleet?

HERALD
We have lost the fleet.

CHORUS
Where is the army? Where are our sons?

HERALD
No man can tell you, only the sun,
the all-seeing and giver of life,
knows where they are. I wished to give my city
a single day of rejoice in the ruin
of Troy and Agamemnon's preservation..
All night the sea kept rising, wave
over black wave. Rain from Thrace
rattled through our rigging, oars snapped,
hulls splintered, we wallowed sidewise,
our bronze beaks rammed our own ships,
as we spun in the hand of an angry shepherd.
Then the sun came up. We could see
the blue Aegean blossom with bodies,
oars, timbers, figureheads--
a whole dead army on the sea.
Our ship kept floating. We lived.
Some god, no mortal, had handled our helm,
and saved us from the big sea, and led us
through the crooked, covered rocks of the channels.
We stared at the watery white sky,
and wept for our friends. If any were still
alive, they thought of us as dead.
I think of them as dead.

CHORUS
What happened to Helen who caused the war?

HERALD
I don't know.

[Exit HERALD]

* * * * * * * * * * *

ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION, PAY ATTENTION

Matthea's new book, Modern Life is excellent. I do not just say this because I'm her student. I say this because I read it in one sitting.

book: [link]

some of the poems: [link]

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15284395/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15284395/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:58:28 PDT
]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15229059/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/15229059/ Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:32:42 PDT
oops... forgot to change this... sorry ]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14998529/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14998529/ Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:50:23 PDT Alex Lemon's book Mosquito, winner of the 2006 Tin House New Voice contest is a triumph... though I still don't quite understand how section 2 moves the book along, maybe that's just my failing... they're beautiful poems nontheless.
But what was most striking to me about the book was the introduction written by Mark Doty. Of course, it's Mark Doty and wouldn't anyone want an introduction by him. However, the thing that was wonderful about it was that it was something that addressed everyone-- not just Alex's writing, not just poets in general-- everyone, calling into play the ways that we use language and the ways that we don't.
Here's a little piece of that:

"Physical pain," Elaine Scarry writes in The Body in Pain, her brilliant examination of the intersection of suffering, language, and power, "does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned."
How does pain erase speech? First, of course, because the one doing the hurting is too englobed in the experience of hurt to make any words: hit your thumb with a hammer and it's as if the bone-deep intensity of that experience hijacks all energy from the mind; nothing can be seen or felt but the throbbing, blinding "this-ness" of that experience. As if there were nothing in the world but ache.
Throbbing, blinding, ache: the relative paucity of the words themselves point to the second reason why pain eludes the saying. We don't have the vocabulary for it. English, which has an endless supply of terms for, say, getting drunk, offers the barest scraps to help us name the way we're ailing. Pain can be throbbing, stabbing, shooting, piercing, or burning, and that's about it. Is this because intoxication is primarily a social experience, whereas pain is the opposite, always experienced alone? Words exist for the realm of the shared. Our poverty of terms for pain may indicate that we've given up on creating a lexicon, understanding that the solitary, suffering subject remains solitary. When we are wordless, we tend to be world-less as well. What cannot be conveyed about the self and the body lodges stubbornly in either silence or "sounds and cries."
But poetry is unlike other language, and its difference from daily speech lies in part in its relationship to those wordless utterances. Poetry bases itself in the sheer expressive power of vowel and consonant; rhythmic, bodily sound-making; moan and exhalation; the outcry that shades into song. Stanley Kunitz says that his poems begin in sound, and "sense has to fight its way in." The music that lies beneath speech is a vehicle of feeling.
Perhaps it's this grounding in the physicality of language that gives poetry its courage to wrestle with the difficult, if not downright impossible, work of getting the barely sayable onto the page. Poetry's power exists in exact proportion to this attempt; the harder it tries to do what can't be done, the more beautiful and engaging its failure. Or perhaps better to say that its failure--the inability of words to be commensurate with the power of experience--begins to come out the other side, and somehow or other, through some feat of linguistic legerdemain, a poem is made that does what speech shouldn't be able to do. A miraculous poem approximates the character of subjectivity, how it is to be in the world.
~
Style, that amalgam of the found and the made, the improvised and the adapted, can be the meeting ground between self and world. A means of self-presentation is forged, and in doing so the contents of individual experience can be signaled, given shape. The pain of others--just like their joy or pleasure or wit or desire--can remain entirely invisible to us unless it is given utterance, but plainspoken language generally fails to carry much of a depth charge. Not long ago, at a university in the north of England, a reader asked me if I couldn't just come out and say things; did I need the appurtenances of metaphor, the fancy dress of linguistic performance? No matter that to state how I'm feeling or thinking might take me a sentence or three, and not necessitate the several books of poetry and prose that she had neatly stacked on the desk in front of her, their pages marked with colored Post-it notes.
No, the crucial thing was that I couldn't say "it," because when named directly, abstractly, "it" vanishes. The subjective world can't... ]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14647190/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14647190/ Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:05:58 PDT
]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14513687/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14513687/ Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:17:16 PDT
Dear Mrs. Bush,

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents--all of us who need the pleasure, and the inner and outer news, it delivers.

And the concept of a community of readers and writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women's prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students--long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom, become our teachers.

When you have witnessed someone nonspeaking and almost nonmoving spell out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing. When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely nonspeaking and nonmoving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-expression, accuracy, honesty and wit--and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story and song.

So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country--with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain--did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism--the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

Sincerely,
SHARON OLDS

but, does Laura Bush really read Sharon Olds? I mean, I don't think of Sharon's brand of so sexually centered writing as really tickling Laura's feathers, if you know what I mean. I think of what Laura Bush may like to read poetry-wise and I don't think of something as brash and up front as Sharon Olds. ]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14302996/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14302996/ Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:57:12 PDT
[link]

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14286273/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14286273/ Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:30:47 PDT
[link]

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14168020/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14168020/ Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:38:43 PDT
the name marked through and through as if swung at by licks of fire-- the can-can dancer lifts her petti-coats, the iron man blushes, the milk spills and there are no kittens to lap it up. fever blisters show like iron on the man's lip, there are muddled cries from the petti-coats as if they were the cries of kittens, the fire spins like a can-can dancer, like a spoonful of names swirling in a bowl of milk.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14032074/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/14032074/ Sun, 05 Aug 2007 17:24:29 PDT



Dinna' Pig
by Matthea Harvey

Members of the Family rarely spoke to each other, but when they did, they studied each other’s throats. The youngest grabbed a pitchfork for protection long before she learned to walk and when she did learn to walk she didn’t put the pitchfork down. Pa found the pig in a stall at market breathing heavily behind a sheet of corrugated tin. He felt something welling up inside him—love—and spat it onto the tin where it glistened like a chrysalis. That didn’t get rid of the feeling so he brought the pig home. Ma gave Dinna’ Pig his name so that no-one would forget where that pig was headed. She liked to call a spade a spade, hence her children: Mistake, Mistake 2 and Goddamnit. Dinna’ Pig wasn’t particularly loveable; he didn’t run to the side of his pen oinking sweetly when he saw a family member. He wasn’t clean or smart. He sat in his shit and liked it. Goddamnit thought she’d once seen him nose his own reflection in her shiny rubber boot, but she couldn’t be sure. In any other farmyard, love would have slid off Dinna’ Pig’s oily hair, seeped from his watery eyes, bounced off the coil of his tail and landed on something fluffier. But the Family couldn’t help itself—their love was stirred into the grey slop he was fed daily, got in under his trotters, shone in the handle of the shovel they used to shovel his shit. Late one night Mistake rammed some love up Dinna’ Pig’s puckered little asshole. Goddamnit, who’d been clutching her pitchfork in sleep, suddenly hurled it across the room. She was having a beautiful dream. It was Sunday dinner and she was the only one at the table cramming handfuls of love into her enormous mouth.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13858262/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13858262/ Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:26:19 PDT Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100
for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees
Local 100, working at the Windows on the World restaurant,
who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center

Alabanza. Prais the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook's yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dail clicked
even before the dail on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.

Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy's music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.

Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.

After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after the night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in the darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook's soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God's beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13816009/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13816009/ Sat, 21 Jul 2007 02:03:52 PDT Bill Moyer's Journal tonight. that guy rocks my socks.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13810682/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13810682/ Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:48:19 PDT a water-wiggle, onto the end of the green hose,

that made it & me go softly berserk
twisting across the summer lawn
as if the air itself were valium.



she could wisper the word burn

and I'd turn to ash"
~Nick Flynn, from "Trickology" in Some Ether

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13763786/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13763786/ Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:17:01 PDT
]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13736993/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13736993/ Sat, 14 Jul 2007 20:11:57 PDT You'll still be able to access poems that I consider to be "unfinished", but when I do feel that they are of publishable quality, they, too will disappear. But there will always be new poems to post. And I will be leaving many of my older poems that I don't intend on doing anything to up.
Wish me luck. I'll keep you updated on these endevours.
Your,
PMCD

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13653493/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13653493/ Sun, 08 Jul 2007 01:08:56 PDT Codename: Cassandra is out. I feel like that group of poems was put in there to force me to work on them. and I wasn't. so they're on the back burner again. but I do have some stunning new developments in Break Blow Burn & Make Me New. oh, and I'll find a way soon to upload what the erasure looks like at the moment soon.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13539674/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13539674/ Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:27:52 PDT Earthmoving Malediction
by Heather McHugh

Bulldoze the bed where we made love,
bulldoze the goddamn room.
Let rubble be our evidence
and wreck our home.

I can't give touching up
by inches, can't give beating
up by heart. So set the comforter
on fire, and turn the dirt

to some advantage - palaces of pigweed,
treasuries of turd. The fist
will vindicate the hand,
and tooth and nail

refuse to burn, and I
must not look back, as Mrs. Lot
was named for such a little -
something in a cemetery,

or a man. Bulldoze the coupled
ploys away, the cute exclusives
in the social mall. We dwell

on earth, where beds
are brown, where swoops
are fell. Bulldoze

the pearly gates:
if paradise comes down
there is no hell.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13411696/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13411696/ Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:17:28 PDT
WRONG. You are going to see A Mighty Heart, it was incredible.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13340767/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13340767/ Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:47:09 PDT
]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13007966/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/13007966/ Sat, 19 May 2007 01:07:00 PDT
]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12804948/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12804948/ Tue, 01 May 2007 15:21:59 PDT
"Waste Land Limericks"
by Wendy Cope

I.
In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyants distress me,
Commuters depress me--
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

II.
She sat on a mighty fine chair,
Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
She asks many questions,
I make few suggestions--
Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair!

III.
The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
Tiresias fancies a peep--
A typist is laid,
A record is played--
Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

IV.
A Phoenician called Phlebas forgot
About birds and his business--the lot.
Which is no surprise,
Since he met his demise
And was left in the ocean to rot.

V.
No water. Dry rocks and dry throats.
Then thunder, a shower of quotes!
From The Sanskrit to Dante.
Da. Damyata. Shantih.
I hope you'll make sense of the notes.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12636924/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12636924/ Tue, 17 Apr 2007 19:35:15 PDT And I remember when the SWAT team were going through my high school so that they had a map of where all of the emergency exits were and wehre all of the main gas ducts were.

Now, I'm no criminologist or anything, but one would think that they would do the same for our country's colleges and universities at the same time. Or does no one remember the UT Tower Sniper?

And then this: Cho Seung-Hui, a "writer"? [link]

He was writing teen angst plays at 23. I wouldn't rush to call him a theatrical genius. Just because he's an English major taking a course in play writing, doesn't mean that that was what he wanted to be in life. There are plenty of people who major in English because they don't know what else to do at the moment. And there are a lot of those people who take a writing class or two to fill their electives category out.

And is "macabre" [link] (scroll down to the subline "Twisted, macabre violence") really the best word to describe his writing? Pot-shotty and out of touch with reality could be interpreted as a joke or a student who simply doesn't care about the class.

Let us hope that this does not reflect badly on the writing community in general.

Of course, a FOX news anchor last night seemed to think that she could intuit that the whole massacre was done by terrorists and even argued with another news anchor about it. So any kind of free association could happen.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12568272/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12568272/ Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:45:52 PDT
it's not like I put up an out-dated copy, it's like, the text for "under my fingernails (remix)" was in there instead.

to make matters worse, my finger doesn't seem to like pushing the X key.

what will I do with myself?

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12546506/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12546506/ Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:10:32 PDT
if you hadn't noticed already, I'm mildly bi-polar. nothing that requires medication, certainly; but I do post in large bunches. as one of your said "nuclear destruction", like it was a good thing. so I'm sorry for that.

honestly, I should have been emailing new poems and edited poems to my thesis advisor, but I may have some burst of manic tomorrow... as long as I remember to clean the bathroom and wash off the front porch. heck, I may even make dinner for my roommie and myself tomorrow too.

but for your viewing pleasure, I have cleaned up my deviations. at least the poetry. as much as I wanted to, I did not erase everything that was pre-juvenalia (because, in theory at least, what I'm writing right now is actually my juvenalia), but I did get rid of everything that had no poetic value whatsoever. a few, I relegated to scraps if I did feel that they had value, but did not actually "count" as poems, no matter how inexperienced I was. so there, you still have some poems that show that I too am fallable. that I used to write cliched, arbitrarily broken poems.

there are actually a few that I may go back and steal lines from. I found at least one poem that should have been a pantoum (though I didn't know what one was at the time) and a couple that should have been sonnets (though at the time I thought it was just a rhyme scheme).

I hope that you all enjoy the new poems with the old ones and the edits.

yours,
P

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12541434/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12541434/ Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:28:02 PDT
]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12416372/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12416372/ Sun, 01 Apr 2007 12:45:46 PDT
if you do not invest something in the literary conversation and having knowledge therein, then I will tell you that you are not a poet.

deal with it.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12377178/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12377178/ Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:58:27 PDT
[hint: the answer will decide if you get to come in on your own mouth trumpet solo or if you are set on fire with the rest of the heathens]

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12348132/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12348132/ Tue, 27 Mar 2007 10:09:32 PDT
if only the man wasn't gay.

anyhow, here's part 7 of "Little Beast" in his award winning book Crush:

What would you like? I'd like my money's worth.
Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this--
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood
on the first four knuckles.
We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorry
about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12015148/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/12015148/ Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:55:34 PST The Invisible Circus. Oh my god. Oh my god.

And I hear that the movie, though not word for word accurate, is a pretty good likeness of the book.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/11646541/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/11646541/ Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:32:19 PST
For now, I can't see straight. Losing her and Ann Richards in the same year is devistating.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/11635444/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/11635444/ Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:24:13 PST
This is the last section of "Elsewhere, things tend" from The End Of The Alphabet:

Similar also,

each gesture offering a hand to the atmosphere, like a wave,
until it's realized the one I'm waving to can't see me anymore.
Or is it my back turned? Me who leaves?
If I remind myself all of us weep, wake, whisper
in the same dark, and the sudden footfall or the longer silence
separates us beyond each locked door, I am returned
only to my own. And am reluctant to complain as it
exaggerated is the high water, as if it didn't swallow thousands,
these fossils, this bone, as if between us are not many
extremes: the tasste of blood in our mouths though the blows
are seldom physical. What I wish to communicate is that
it can be too late: this life offering sorrow as voice, leaving
nothing to shadow. I want to say, a life can take a life away.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/11106903/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/11106903/ Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:34:01 PST jubilat. [link]

from The Dottery

by Kirsten Kaschock

You aren't mammarian. Can't have. What a dotter needs is the thin gruel you've vanquished from your good-for-nothings. We don't care how small you've grown. How raked the stage when you were a white factory. How you rolled from room to room as on a cart. What tubes. A dotter needs full blowns. What are you thinking--trusting in chemistry? The molecules will seer her from the inside, like glass. You must do what's natural, though pain sends you to dice her against a wall. Pain is natural. Pain is good. Good is natural. Voilá. We knew the proof. We knew we knew it. Just as we know if you won't flooze, get blousy, well, then, you've ruined her. Them all. That's why we mustn't let you get your hands on one. They aren't natural, your hands. They taste gray, like latex, even from a distance. Hoofish. Mannish. Mannequine. Not animal enough.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/11052174/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/11052174/ Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:49:36 PST
It's bad because I'm not coming back to these classes. I need a break, yes. But I want to come back next semester to Matthea's class and certain aspects (at least certain people) from Nurkse's class, including Nurkse himself. It's so sad.

Yes I'm coming back, not sure when though. I'm pretty sure I'm in Lux. He comes up every few weeks and we do a three day intensive workshop. I think it's like four hours a day for three days or something. I'm excited about this prospect. Plus, I wouldn't really have to come back until the beginning of February. Not that I intend on staying away that long, but things happen, you know.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/10981609/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/10981609/ Thu, 07 Dec 2006 09:07:17 PST I had eaten sweet bread at my cousin's wedding once, but did not remember the heart-shaped thymi of bovine as being so small. It must be veal sweet bread, I thought. Only later did I find out that the adult thymus is a shrunken version of its adolescent cohorts.

I had seen the ad winking at me from the back of an issue of EroticaUSA, "Never be broken-hearted again." My intention was to go in simply for a preliminary session, just to find out exactly how a person would survive without such a necessary organ. I had a friend who gave up a kidney once to his brother. And people consistantly lived without tonsils, appendi and wisdom teeth. But the heart seemed like such an unreplaceable organ and just to prove its worth, we went hand in hand down to the clinic.

Just a taste. I thought as I forked off the tip of one of the larger pieces. As the glandular material bobbed in my mouth it slithered into my chest giving me a pleasant feeling, but also parched. I downed three dixie cups worth of Chardonnay before feeling my heart attempting to tug me away from the table. But I was lost in a frenzy of texture. First shoving a sweet bread whole into my mouth and then stuffing around it with cheese and olives. I'd wash it all down with the blush and bit down on a cracker. I was in the middle of sweeping the crumbs from the runway of my chin for another go at the table when my name was called.
It was a woman with generous breasts. That's about all I noticed of her, a scar dribbled between those pillows of mammary. She noticed my noticing and clasping her hand over the mark as if in horror of my gorging, "Oh, it's from the surgery."
She led me to a pink room with dim lighting. "The doctor will see you in here." I thought, How unfamiliar to the medical green lead paint and flourescent lights, how pleasant. After the door was shut, I started my exploration of the doctor's office. In my experience, it always takes painfully long for the doctor to show up, leaving the patient to examine drawer contents, steal q-tips (who remembers to buy q-tips anyhow?) and swing instruments in a mockery of the profession, acting as a disc-jockey of medical supplies, a sports announcer at the race between the tongue depresser and the little hammer they use to hit your knee.

Just as I reached my hand into the candy jar of cough drops, the door opened. The doctor shuffled in with his head down, though he had no clip board. "All done?" he asked as if scolding a child. He was an animated mid-life crisis, a breakdown waiting to happen. He had on a long doctor's coat over his half suit that looked more like a catering uniform with his red bow tie and sneakers. Atop his shiny skull he sported a green visor retisent of poker games and post offices. He sat down with a huff and I mimicked. Then he stood, scratching his head, "I believe you're in my chair." Throughout the interview we would switch chairs a total of 3 times.
First he explained that they didn't remove the heart, exactly, but the thymus. He then claimed that everyone wants to loose their heart, it causes too many problems, but what they really want are fewer hormones.
We switched chairs.
The thymus gland, in his professional opinion, served no purpose other than emotional upheaval after puberty. "If only we could find a way to get rid of them before teen angst without our species turning into a race of midgits, we'd be set! Is that my chair you're sitting in?"
We switched chairs.
When we sat back down this time he stared at my chest, which, though covered by a t-shirt and sweater, was beginning to feel a bit cold. I think I'd left my heart in the waiting room, but not my sense of fear. "And the best part," he said, meditating on the new Porche he must have seen floating under my sternum, "is what we do to keep people coming back to get rid of pituitary, thyroid and adrenal glands: we recycle the unwanted glands for our waiting room tables. Human sweet breads are the most tender."

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/10933660/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/10933660/ Sun, 03 Dec 2006 07:43:37 PST
2) boys who make me wait suck. look at me: I'm adorable!

3) I was supposed to print up a bunch of stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday at SLC, but I managed to leave the little crown bag that I use as a purse at Bar 13 during LouderARTS (for those interested, especially those in NYC: [link]). though I had transferred my subway card, money, ID and other such matters to my jacket pockets, I did not do so with my school ID. I need that thing to print. I want to get the surface edit of the last chapter of my erasure done now! (for the erasure, see entries in my blog: [link]). I want that thing and the new edits of my poems for the thesis in my hot little hands now. screw you sweet, sweet liquor.

4) I'm going home to Austin in 2 weeks. it's the final countdown.

5) I missed Anna in Sloho (the grad house at Sarah Lawrence) the other day. so my workshop request form and my thesis advisor request form are going to be late. not a huge tragedy. Matthea is going to be my advisor and that's that. we decided like two months ago.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/10922714/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/10922714/ Sat, 02 Dec 2006 08:38:56 PST






but really...
when I win,
doesn't everyone
win, too?

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/10869474/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/10869474/ Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:12:48 PST
1) I graduated from University of Alaska Fairbanks with a BA in English (focus= poetry; minor= psychology). Woo Hoo! I did it in three years.

2) Got a chance to study with A E Stallings in Greece. It was fantastic and I'd like to move there one day.

3) Started my MFA in creative writing (poetry) at Sarah Lawrence College fall of 05. Took the spring semester off because a) I was going insane and b) because I deserved a break goddammit. And spent the time off in Austin, TX (one of my two lovely home towns).

I am now back in school at SLC. My thesis advisor will be Matthea Harvey (who I have for workshop this semester). She's fantastic.

I'm trying to post the poems that I'm hoping will make it into my all too ambitious thesis. I may have prose as well, but lets get the poetry in first. I want to post some of my erasure of Heart of Darkness but I don't know how to format it properly. So for all interested parties who have been wondering what part of the world I fell off of: [link]
That is one of the reasons you haven't seen me lately: because I just post everything to my livejournal.

nice to see you too.

]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/3730415/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/3730415/ Tue, 02 Nov 2004 02:35:50 PST ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/2008321/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/2008321/ Sun, 14 Mar 2004 02:19:52 PST ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/1177291/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/1177291/ Thu, 18 Sep 2003 17:59:40 PDT ~panika ]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/682471/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/682471/ Fri, 02 May 2003 19:10:44 PDT
To any of you BNV kids: I love you and enjoy!

muah
~panika ]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/548460/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/548460/ Mon, 17 Mar 2003 07:32:42 PST But you are
always sorry
(for the wrong
reasons). ]]> ~panika http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/542910/ http://panika.deviantart.com/journal/542910/ Fri, 14 Mar 2003 02:48:59 PST YOU

there–
on the couch

how can I be afraid of things
that I can't even grasp long enough to describe?

who are you to tell me what I know?
and who are you to bring things back like that?

who are you to walk out so easily?
and who am I to let you go?

-signed-
chartreuse tongued and begging for an answer ]]> ~panika