Columbia College Chicago Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago Court Green Publications 3-1-2013 Court Green: Dossier: Sex Columbia College Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/courtgreen Part of the Poetry Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Columbia College Chicago, "Court Green: Dossier: Sex" (2013). Court Green. 10. https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/courtgreen/10 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago. It has been accepted for inclusion in Court Green by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Read good poetry!” —William Carlos Williams COURT GREEN 10 COURT 10 EDITORS Tony Trigilio and David Trinidad MANAGING EDITOR Cora Jacobs SENIOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jessica Dyer EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS S’Marie Clay, Abby Hagler, Jordan Hill, and Eugene Sampson Court Green is published annually in association with Columbia College Chicago, Department of English. Our thanks to Ken Daley, Chair, Department of English; Deborah H. Holdstein, Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Louise Love, Interim Provost; and Dr. Warrick Carter, President of Columbia College Chicago. Our submission period is March 1-June 30 of each year. Please send no more than five pages of poetry. We will respond by August 31. Each issue features a dossier on a particular theme; a call for work for the dossier for Court Green 11 is at the back of this issue. Submissions should be sent to the editors at Court Green, Columbia College Chicago, Department of English, 600 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605. Work received outside of this submission period will not be read. Email submissions are not accepted. Please supply a SASE for reply only; submissions will not be returned. Three-year subscriptions are available for $25. Single issues are available for $10. Acknowledgments for this issue can be found on page 246. Court Green is distributed by Ingram Periodicals and Media Solutions. Copyright © 2013 by Columbia College Chicago. ISSN 1548-5242. Magazine design by Jehan Abon, Columbia College Chicago Creative Services. Printed in the U.S.A. CONT NTS POEMS Mary Ruefle 8 Ars Poetica & Other Poems Kathleen Ossip 11 Three True Stories Anselm Berrigan 13 Two Poems Harryette Mullen 16 from Tanka Diary James Shea 18 Moscow & Other Poems Jerome Sala 22 The Celebrities & The Invention of Natural Silence Alice George 24 Mission Bruce Covey 26 Robot Wars Judith Taylor 28 Stepford & Grecian Yearn Raul Alvarez 30 Some Kinds of Intimacy Aaron DeLee 32 Transplant: Kudzu Liz Countryman 33 Masculine Wind & My Upset Versus Your Upset Sonja James 36 Onslaught Jan Beatty 37 My Mother Was a Dress & Other Poems Maureen Seaton 44 Billboards of Illinois Richard Fox 45 Cake Richard Meier 47 Three Poems Jason Mitchell 50 to the left of zero Leif Haven 52 Concept Album Karyna McGlynn 54 The Death of Small Woodland Creatures Michael Klein 55 Two Poems Eric Burger 57 Some Things Dante Forgot to Tell Us About Hell Jeanne Marie Beaumont 58 Dream of X & Other Poems Kate Sontag 61 Black Pants Kenyatta Rogers 62 Y Matthew Thorburn 63 Two Poems Jack Anderson 67 On a Photograph of Tim Dlugos Terence Winch 69 Ain’t No Cure Ethel Rackin 70 So far I have this pen & Other Poems Elaine Equi 74 Blue Jay Way & Other Poems Robert Hershon 78 Powder Christie Ann Reynolds 79 Anti-Revenge Poem Jason Schneiderman 80 My Rich Friend & Other Poems Daniel Coudriet 84 Making Hay 85 ED SMITH: MEMOIRS OF A THRILL-SEEKER A Selection of Ed Smith’s Poems Edited by Bruce Hainley DOSSIER: SEX Amy Gerstler 122 Before Sex Jack Anderson 123 The Song That Signifies Sex Jeffery Conway 124 Where the Mood Struck Me Susan Wheeler 127 Postcard Collage Jeff Tigchelaar 128 Premature Ejaculation Randall Mann 129 Flagging & Other Poems CM Burroughs 133 Clitoris & Adore the Human Christie Ann Reynolds 136 “There were rocks in the back of my high school” Sophia Dahlin 137 Natch Denise Duhamel 138 Sex & Other Poems Leif Haven 144 March R. Zamora Linmark 145 Two for Tim Phillip B. Williams 149 Quiet, I Come Alive Albert Goldbarth 150 A Partial List of Unacknowledged Sex Gillian McCain 154 Lifetime on Demand & Untitled Anne Sexton 157 The Fury of Cocks Sarah Crossland 158 Blowjobs Kacee Belcher 161 From the Men’s Room Angela Veronica Wong 162 Two Poems Michael Robins 164 Organ Music in Beverly Hills & Other Poems Kimiko Hahn 167 Two Poems Margot Pappas 169 Baker in His Soft Black Boots & The World of Girls Nora Hickey 171 First Crush: Jane Austen Robert Siek 172 Front Seat to Carpet Steve Henry 174 At the First Appontment Scott Keeney 175 Madison Carlike in Bed Gordon Massman 176 Four Poems Christine Heppermann 180 Local Girl Makes Good Craig Cotter 181 Curtis Stephen Gibson 183 Goat Lois Marie Harrod 184 How Did Dinosaurs Have Sex? Stacey Waite 186 The Clownfish George Kalamaras 188 Three Poems Sandra Kohler 191 At the Core Denise Levertov 196 A Psalm Praising the Hair of Man’s Body RJ Gibson 197 You Could Learn A Lot & Profile Pictures Kathleen Rooney 200 Handsome Strangers & Elisa Gabbert Jeffery Berg 202 Manager of the Gap & Other Poems Kate Angus 205 I Was Given a Tiny Dragon Kate Sontag 206 Cherry Tomatoes by Moonlight Sandy Berrigan 207 Bring on the Rain Maureen Seaton 208 Muscley maids make me a garden . Christopher Davis 210 Fertility Emma Bolden 213 The Other Woman & Somewhere She’s Holding in Silence Ron Koertge 215 Sex Education & Other Poems Chad Sweeney 219 Jill & Return to My Hometown Karyna McGlynn 221 California King & The Story of the Palace Terence Winch 224 Out-of-Town Visitor Guillermo Filice Castro 225 Little Door Allen Ginsberg 229 Song CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PO MS 8 Mary Ruefle Ars Poetica You go through the past and there is a wall, and some steps down; you come into a lane and go until there is no more lane, but only a path, and then you come to a field that must have been a garden once with a house or something. It was only an old place where nobody lived. I said, whose was it, but he didn’t know, and I said, why didn’t somebody live there, but he didn’t know that either, he said it was art. He said I am tired of pointing out to the dandelions how beautiful this world is— so our hair walked around the garden and saw things growing and was confused and sobbed. It was only an old place where nobody lived. Some butterflies flitting around— memories with nothing to do. We thought we might carry one back. Look, he said, nothing remains of anybody, everything is aimless here. We wanted to follow a flying squirrel to the home of time, but everything exploded into fuzz. We knew whose it was. 9 Saga Everything that ever happened to me is just hanging—crushed and sparkling—in the air, waiting to happen to you. Everything that ever happened to me happened to somebody else first. I would give you an example but they are all invisible. Or off gallivanting around the globe. Not here when I need them now that I need them if I ever did which I doubt. Being particular has its problems. In particular there is a rift through everything. There is a rift running the length of Iceland and so a rift runs through every family and between families a feud. It’s called a saga. Rifts and sagas fill the air, and beautiful old women sing of them, so the air is filled with music and the smell of berries and apples and shouting when a gun goes off and crying in closed rooms. Faces, who needs them? Eating the blood of oranges I in my alcove could use one. Abbas and ammas come out of your huts, travel half-way around the world, inspect my secret bank account of joy! My face is a jar of honey you can look through, you can see everything is muted, so terribly muted, who could ever speak of it, sealed and held up for all? 10 Spider The spider can barely walk, his legs are so scared— he’s got to get from the bar of soap to the uppermost shower stall tile that is his home, and he has suffered a betrayal so great he’s lost in his own neighborhood, crawling on his hands and knees so-to-speak, in and out of the shadows of other tiles he’s passed before but barely recognizes, given his state of shock and disbelief. Spiders don’t hear very well—he can’t hear the rain as it falls and cools his flaming legs, the distant screams of another’s crisis mean nothing to him, he can’t hear his own heartbeat, an alarm casting his skeleton straight into hell, his blood ignited by the bellows of loss. If the gods implore him to hold his saliva, he doesn’t hear them, he goes on crawling toward the one safe spot, which has become, in his mind, the destination of his life and this night rolled into one, a wet bag at the bottom of which, were it to fall, would lie his demise— too awful to discuss. 11 Kathleen Ossip Three True Stories 1. Uncle Bob, my mother’s brother, was my godfather. My mother has told me that when he was young, he was funny and creative: for example, he slipped coal into her stocking one Christmas Eve; he conceived of a “zapper” that would shut a TV off when the commercials came on (years before the invention of remote controls); he had an elaborate theory about how LBJ was responsible for JFK’s murder.