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Columbia College Chicago Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago Columbia Poetry Review Publications Spring 4-1-2009 Columbia Poetry Review Columbia College Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cpr 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, "Columbia Poetry Review" (2009). Columbia Poetry Review. 22. https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cpr/22 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 Columbia Poetry Review by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 2 2> 7 25274 82069 6 $10.00 USA / $13.00 CANA DA columbiapoetryreviR M no. 22 columbiapoetryreview no. 22 Spring 2009 Columbia~ COLLEGE CHICAGO Columbia Poetry Review is published in the spring of each year by the English Department of Columbia College Chicago, 600 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60605. Submissions Our reading period extends from August 1 to November 30. Please send up to 5 pages of poetry during our reading period to the above address. We do not accept e-mail submissions. We respond by February. Please supply a SASE for reply only. Submissions will not be returned. Purchase Information Single copies are available for $10.00, and for $13.00 outside the U.S. Please send personal checks or money orders made out to Columbia Poetry Review to the above address. Website Information To see a catalog of back issues visit Columbia Poetry Review’s website at http://english.colum.edu/cpr. Acknowledgements Special thanks to Kenneth Daley, Chair of the English Department; Deborah H. Holdstein, Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Steven Kapelke, Provost; and Dr. Warrick Carter, President of Columbia College. Cover art: Untitled (Blocks). Wayne Smith, 2008. Mixed media, 14” x 13.25” Design by Jehan Abon, Columbia College Chicago Creative & Printing Services ISSN: 1930-4900 Copyright © 2009 by Columbia College Chicago All rights revert to authors upon publication Printed in the U.S.A. Managing Editor Cora Jacobs Editors Thom DeRoma Tyler Flynn Dorholt Richard Dugan Andy Koszewski Meghan M. Lee Meg Reilly Andrew Terhune Editorial Board Carl Aagesen Joe Bly Zach Green Helen Kiernan Dolly Lemke Kyle Miner Nate Olison Steve Smaczniak Abi Stokes Chris Williams Faculty Advisors Becca Klaver David Trinidad contents Rachel Zucker Poem . 1 Joel Dailey Jot It Down Fancy . 4 Jen McClanaghan A Human Question . 5 Dorothea Lasky Little more than a player . 6 Own Life . 7 Eric Baus Blue on Blue . 8 Sarah Jedd ‘Aphrodite’ the headless horse-girl. 9 Timothy Donnelly Fun for the Shut-In . 10 Buck Downs my secret job . 12 repairs on a running engine . 13 Bobby C. Rogers How I’m Telling It . .14 Maureen Seaton Proclivities 2 . .16 Brandi Homan Things Have Been Said: Vol. I . 17 Lara Glenum from Maximum Gaga Pelvis Impersonator . 19 Family Planning . 20 Brian Turner Jundee Ameriki . 21 Brandon Downing Florence . 22 Stevie Curl Mr. Gomme Does Not, I Think, Use This Word . .23 Dolly Lemke I never went to that movie at 12:45 . 24 L.K. Leu What is Compulsory . .25 Tomaž Šalamun To Go Insane from Happiness . 26 Rebecca Lehmann To Feed and Water Ourselves and Others . 27 Chris Martin from Disequilibrium . 28 Thomas Cook Love . .30 Jennifer L. Knox Gotta Light . 31 Jen Watman (an offering) . .32 Jim Daniels Upon Hearing of the Death of Arty “Ears” Osinski . 33 Jess Rose His Happy Jail Pants . 35 Catherine Theis My First Valentine . .37 Heads or Tails . 38 Joshua Beckman “Wild mysteries abound . .” . .39 Sandra Simonds Your Own Winnebago . 40 Dear Treatment, . .41 Emilie B. Lindemann Panty Poems . .42 Becca Klaver No Country for Young Ladies . 43 Brandon Downing Hiawatha . .44 Thomas Heise from The Journal of X . 46 Evie Shockley celestial . .51 Beckian Fritz Goldberg L’Art Brut . .52 Maureen C. Ewing With Her Voice in My Head . .53 Susan M. Firer Dear Dr. Limnologist, . 54 Oni Buchanan The Wild Rabbit . 55 Selection . 57 Abi Stokes The Blackbird’s Song . .58 Noah Eli Gordon A Poem To Be Folded into the Shape of a Slipper . 60 Gillian Conoley from The Plot Genie . 61 Joanne Kyger Bottoms Up . .65 Sorting . .66 Donald Revell “A line of hills” . .68 Christian Hawkey [petition for an alien relative] . .69 Tisha Nemeth-Loomis Diving for Wine Vases . 70 Bruce Weigl Meditation After Prayer . .71 Julia Cohen The History of a Lake Never Drowns . .72 David Gibbs Nearly Forgetting the Anniversary of Your Leaving . .73 Bin Ramke Treatment Options . 74 David Berman Postcard to Becca Klaver . 76 Joe Wenderoth Three poems . .77 Seth Oelbaum target . 78 Gregory Kiewiet Clasp . 81 Rosmarie Waldrop Three poems . .82 Hafizah Geter The Kitchen: Towards an Arrangement . .83 Mark Terrill A Poem for Monosodium Glutamate . .86 Geoffrey Forsyth Progress . 87 Ben Doller FAQ: . .88 [bayonet] . 89 Johannes Göransson from Entrance to a Colonial Pageant in Which We All Begin to Intricate . 91 Brandon Downing Things Snakes Do Not Do . .94 John Murillo Enter the Dragon . .96 Dawn Lonsinger Incommensurable . .98 Gregory Orr from How Beautiful the Beloved . .99 Tao Lin sometimes i feel like another person is ‘insane’ . .102 i feel good after drinking a little beer or a lot of coffee . .103 Aaron Flanagan Under Hypnosis by Government’s Orders, a Sniper Recollects Fragments of the Repressed . .104 Jane Mead Mowing and Aftermath . 110 Kristin Abraham Of Course . 111 Joshua Marie Wilkinson from A Saint Among the Stragglers’ Beds . 112 Timothy Liu The Famous Poet . 113 Contributors . .117 columbiapoetryreview no. 22 Rachel Poem Zucker The other day Matt Rohrer said, the next time you feel yourself going dark in a poem, just don’t, and see what happens. That was when Matt, Deborah Landau, Catherine Barnett and I were chatting, on our way to somewhere and something else. In her office, a few minutes earlier, Deborah had asked, are you happy? And I said, um, yes, actually, and Deborah: well, I’m not— all I do is work and work. And the phone rang every thirty seconds and between calls Deborah said, I asked Catherine if she was happy and Catherine said, life isn’t about happiness it’s about helping other people. I shrugged, not knowing how to respond to such a fine idea. So, what makes you happy? Deborah asked, in an accusatory way, and I said, I guess, the baby, really, because he makes me stop working? And Deborah looked sad and just then her husband called and Deborah said, Mark, I’ve got Rachel Zucker here, she’s happy, I’ll have to call you back. And then we left her office and went downstairs to the salon where a few weeks before 1 we’d read poems for the Not for Mothers Only anthology and I especially liked Julie Carr’s poem about crying while driving while listening to the radio report news of the war while her kids fought in the back seat while she remembered her mother crying while driving, listening to news about the war. There were a lot of poems that night about crying, about the war, about fighting, about rage, anger and work. Afterwards Katy Lederer came up to me and said, ‘I don’t believe in happiness’—you’re such a bitch for using that line, now no one else can. Deborah and I walked through that now-sedated space which felt smaller and shabby without Anne Waldman and all those women and poems and suddenly there was Catherine in a splash of sunlight at the foot of a flight of stairs talking to Matt Rohrer on his way to a room or rooms I’ve never seen. And that’s when Deborah told Matt that I was happy and that Catherine thought life wasn’t about happiness and Deborah laughed a little and flipped her hair (she is quite glamorous) and said, but Matt, are you happy? Well, Matt said he had a bit of a cold but otherwise was and that’s when he said, next time you feel yourself going dark in a poem, just don’t, and see what happens. And then, because it was Julian’s sixth birthday, Deborah went 2 to bring him cupcakes at school and Catherine and I went to talk to graduate students who teach poetry to children in hospitals and shelters and other unhappy places and Matt went up the stairs to the room or rooms I’ve never seen. That was last week and now I’m here, in bed, turning toward something I haven’t felt for a long while. A few minutes ago I held our baby up to the bright window and sang the song I always sing before he takes his nap. He whined and struggled the way toddlers do, wanting to move on to something else, something next, and his infancy is almost over. He is crying himself to sleep now and I will not say how full of sorrow I feel, but will turn instead to that day, only a week ago, when I was the happiest poet in the room, including Matt Rohrer. 3 Dailey Jot It Down Fancy Joel We thought I saw a Waffle House There is no substitute & there will never be a better time Suffering from a stubborn case of ‘Evacuation Hair Syndrome’ you almost hit me verbally Very light mayonnaise Sumbitch close but no serial killer Surprisingly affordable loves a good joke scuba diving declawed gerbil yelp Made in China where else The WD-40 co-dependency support group meets Godzilla Man up Even the Intelligence Community is interested in Yeats, especially The Later Poems Metaphored (or whored) clear down the Yangtze Fuel efficient professionally cleaned let’s leave Bob (you know Bob) out of this 4 Jen M C A Human Question Clanaghan Summer’s accordion breathed life into the world’s little party.