J. Mae Barizo
J. Mae Barizo was born in Toronto. Shortlisted for Canada's 2008 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and Ahsahta Press's Sawtooth Poetry Prize, she has received an International Publication Award from Atlanta Review, and was an Editor's Prize finalist for Spoon River Poetry Review. New work appears in Prairie Schooner, Denver Quarterly, Bellingham Review, Zoland Poetry and Another Chicago Magazine. She is the author of two chapbooks, "The Concert Review" and "The Marble Palace."
A N T H E L I O N
Answer me when I send text messages that make no sense but which
Notate ever so delicately the names of things not said. Beauty, above all,
Trickles in between the mnemonic spaces. O unmastered world. Yield
Haltingly when it is grey, numbra of word across the
Electric page. When I try to remember the documents
Lilt back and forth like pendulums, lulling me
Into a pleasure house. Even the telephone
Oscillates into my perception of it, which ultimately blinks wearily, means
Nothing that counts.
N O I L E H T N A
Nothing means that your are weary. Ultimately perception will
Oscillate into the telephone. Even the house pleasures
Into a lull, pendulum, forth and back like
Lilting documents. Remember? Try to. I am
Electric. Across the numbra a word greys
Haltingly, yielding to the world. Unmastered space between us
Trickles above beauty. Things are not said, names so delicately
Notate but sense that text messages are sent.
Answer me.
N O M E N C L A T U R E
Nonlinear as an interface can be, we wound round and round the rainy
Opening. No matter that the edibility of the food inside the container
Mimicked something unpalatable. The abdomen swelled,
Eyes flittered, the tricycles circled our
Nirvana: pink-pedaled, honking, the harmonies
Cloistered and unfathomable. When the tongue trilled in that
Lustful manner the instrument could do nothing but
Act as if it were a human body or an eye, not looking at her.
The bones bent towards each other, visited a whiskey pub,
Undressed the bar stools with attentive ears.
Rama talked about Christian Bök and the sign said “You’re not in Kansas anymore”.
Either way, she knew that the night would not soon end.
E R U T A L C N E M O M
End soon the night knew that she was not anymore in Kansas.
Rama eared Christian Bök and the attentive bar stools, then
Undressed the pub. Whiskey makes us visit each other with bending bones.
The not-looking-at-her eye embodied something human.
Acting, but nothing instrumental in the manner.
Lustful in trilling with the tongue. Unfathomable. And
Cloistered harmonies honked, pedaled pinkly, what a
Nirvana! Our circles and tricycles flittered,
Eyes swelled, the abdomen unpalatable. Something
Mimicked a container inside the edible food, no matter that the
Opening was rainy and round. We both can be interface, wound up in each other and
Non-linear.
T R I A N G U L A R
The reasoning of the brain falters. Not to say that such plasticity can
Return to its original shape, but the child, perhaps. Though not
Inside the seed climbs slow, thumb prints on the skin
And within a dream of. There was a river, I think,
New green of eye and an unsteady violence—
Grant me this, will you? A small wish,
Unwarranted but sentimental, the rain so
Lawless and untidy no one thinks of Death at all.
A reply of sorts, please, the shape that does not waver but
Reveals such a faultless austerity.
R A L U G N A I R T
Revealing but not wavering the shape was faultless and
Austere. Sort of a reply Death thought you untidy,
Lawless, so the sentiment of the rain was
Unwarranted. Wishing a small you, me,
Granting violence, unsteady I eyed your greenness.
New thinking like a river or a dream within.
And the print of the thumb climbed slow on the skin. The seed
Inside though not the child, the original shape
Returned. Can plasticity say something that falters?
The brain reasons. Touch me.
