IMPOSTORS

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have become a victim of so-called identity theft.

THE EVIDENCE IS HERE IN THIS VIDEO.



The introduction is flattering (though I remember writing only the first book mentioned), and I am buoyed to find myself on the receiving end of such fanatical hullaballoo coming from so many esteemed authors with whose work I am sorry to say I am not familiar.

I look forward to meeting in person this Dr. Julian Avelar and discussing my work late into the night.

But I must make clear: the impostor portraying me in this so-called internet video is NOT ME.

(1) I am younger than this senile interloper, by about seventy five years.

(2) I am from Switzerland, and though my English is refined, I speak with a mild Swiss accent. The illiterate old codger in the internet video looks and sounds like he might have come from Hot Coffee, Arkansas, by way of Aveyron.

(3) I have been licked by wolves but my dog has never attacked an owl.

NaPoWriMo Thirty

After Catullus

"Dawn broke down."

I passed the elements all in a line,

The tiresome moment,

A crisis shaped like a lion's tooth,

My mistress in Groucho Marx glasses.

A dense market, nothing new.

Lender, bender.

NaPOWriMo Thirteen

Gapacity

"I tasted blood on your cheek."

Omphalos in the distance,
or an ocean of paste.

The land is pocked fiddle,
or Crimean grasses.

Sue the bed.

NaPoWriMo Tres

Collusion

"Peter Coyote never stops working."

Silver, only the light,
I pressed me,
More tar than brick,
Operations.

NaPoWriMo Deux

Aphasiac

"The language fell apart in my hands."

Shoulder of water,
shoulder of glass,
shoulder of earth,
shoulder of flesh.

Mullions on mullions,
diaphanous breadstick army.

I'm off this grid and onto another.

NaPoWriMo in Full Effect

The Rexwroth Leaf

"This hill is in perpetual decline."

Eyelets in a delta,
we measure arms in feet.

The burghers invoke themselves,
crystal chips on concrete plates.

Touch me once or twice,
literal mantle.

I'll be here all month.

Old Times, Good Times

Was just digging around and found this old piece from Matt Shindell's Poetry Postcard Project:

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Hard

An illuminating post from Reginald Shepherd on difficulty in poetry.