Five Poems
from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 1
from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 2
from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 3
from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 4
from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 5
In a Torrent Virgin Plain
1.
To see you naked Kansas
winter lawn mowing
withholding from the Shaman King
episode lists
how to cook a rapist
in a northwest church
Fresno of electric blue
headlands oceans
dried up just like that
to be witnessed in the privates
of my country
distinguishing the language
the very simple language
dismantling
the natural in others
and that she has chosen
the book originally to have been called
A Completely Different Person
new values sort of unhappily inhabiting aesthetics
generated from the emergence of terrorism
to console and redeem
secondly
outlier repair
hosiery Sherwood Anderson
paxil frat fuck
the Left cannot talk
Kansas your ancestor was out in the woods hunting
when one of them redneck grabs his logic
then I would laugh every time I heard
nearly every Mennonite
canard:
Kansas—
stupid fucking rednecks—
they do not believe in science (which is evolution)—
then they in Kansas is everything hick—
how many dogs do you got under the porch?
they tend to be slick, sophisticated, and free
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
phyla are body plans
the rivers of Kansas will be safe from the godless
after six months of dormancy
they prefer to be known as physicists
of course they fall
where anti-God
where apes
where the flat
done froze our brains
I did not then measure
up to my stature
and the man who for you put aside chaff
and water
you confused with an invertebrate
and food for many animals
or a killer
eating part of his own head
I had a set opinion
we should be the one who is dead
blood was drawn from the femoral vein
and placed in deadly washes
blood from animals from several landscapes
blood from deer and elk in Wisconsin
blood from captive industries
blood from farmers selling grain
Silence is the law of the luckless
though for these treads
the rest are suffered well
We are Bleeding
only much much more so
in Kansas a great deal
that it does not require the added sweetness
that it turns out wheat farina
that these are temporary shifts in the wheat market
that a wheat producer will move with each breeze
plump plump blue sky reel big fish blue sky
a conceit
of the un-lame
new arsenal stadium beast of the earth
little children in the carts remembered
the blind should see and the sick be
required to tie dye-soaked strings around fat jets
until becoming an expert population of farmers
William Allen White was black
with coal and chaff
and tears were striping his features grotesquely
the palsy of terror loosened its steel bands
a white terrorism is horrible
“the huge abhorrence” includes
how to produce a great point about power
who owns democracy
and lots of bare, undulating land
succumbs and loses her voice entirely
but I can’t ever recall having been slagged
using these gifts as lures
Note this
the shrewdness of apes
a terrible and a terrifying place
It was played to death
and its remakes are crap
but still it sounds okay Walt Whitman
then we get lost and poorly written
for this we can principally thank suffering
and the foreskinned/unforeskinned sons of mothers
plus ça change, plus c’est compost
or a combination of bugs and overwhelming war
I guess there is nothing more to say
probably decades of slovenly affections
probably a circuit debate
probably comes another raw poem about monkeys
I will shoot a tiger!
Walt Whitman is gay!
I had a sort of dream-trance
in which I saw an imposing Kansas jail
with the ambiguity of language
every cell had a stenciled arrow pointing toward Wichita
every slick majesty cost me an arm
was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1973. She is the author of The Romance of Happy Workers (Coffee House Press, forthcoming 2008), Selected Dreams with a Note on Phrenology (Dusie Collectif, 2007), and Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse (Effing Press, 2006). Her work has appeared in The Poker, Denver Quarterly, The Canary, Painted Bride Quarterly, and other journals. She now lives in Overland Park, Kansas (a suburb of Lawrence), where she edits the poetry magazine Abraham Lincoln with K. Silem Mohammad.