ditch,
the poetry that matters
Leigh Herrick
Leigh Herrick is a poet, writer and collaborator whose poems, essays, music, and reviews have appeared in a variety of print and electronic journals, including, most recently, Jacket, The Jivin’ Ladybug, Unlikely Stories and OMEGA 7 (Howling Dog Publications). Her spoken word CDs Just War (2004) and Monocle Man (2009) are available through CD Baby, and a collection of her poetry is slated to be published by Howling Dog Press in 2010. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
at this juncture . . .
, Station
a ribbon a snippet a furl of hope a tireless thread treading spindled existence into press into pressure pressurIzed seam-fitted sure-footed confabulation of incubi officiating aficionado advocacy for the word: Against : curling oratorical mouth to hollow speech oracular ultimatum thematic indenture finale of opening : Opposed
A / position apposition
Clarity: Give Your Statement: This is it
a marginalized-into-shimmying dissipation and want-not attitude dredged to the landfill of adages summarily surmised to this moment of sunrise dump-thinking’s vestige for the bin-hour lauded over to unaccounted-for sums of drone-driven time sent to the recycling arena of screen pixilation subliminalization of being become having been in the ineffably quaffable sentence of the anti-affable affricative -tch -tch –dge dge displacement creation endocommensal union of the inaffable sound e e e e edge edge edge edge landing comatose deactivated impulse-control and Talk of the Nation says this is it for violent-videoed kids : aggression centers activated the bin & well of little minds jelled to here and there of screened existence chain of commandment oh my escalader!
humming
coming
humming
on
playing train/communion/stations
playing launch/word/identity
playing divisive/hemispheric/absolutism
a game of scissors/paper/rock
a game of : Opposition
nonresistant to numina
A[p]positioned
to this altar my pyrrhic moon to which I answer
countering the Against
fomenting for the cauldron of coagulating Hinge[1]
a stone cosmology
mysterious flint
this ember of tongue tipped away from arrowed alphabet ever-surfacing
Anti-argotic
Delivering
Spawn Obsequious
P – O – E – T – R – Y
O tenuous Spindle—
A/mor[t]alization
Ameliorating tenured amortization
isolating isotropical CO - igneous convers[at]ion
contemporaneous nostril inhalation X and Y
-wielded enharmonic discord coOrdination
Battle-readied Man-Stationed
Targeted Trajectory
P l e x u s e d
Antipathy
spread like fever
dismantling
dream
pitch
shape
in the unutterable accident of Pleistocene drop dripping dreaded degradation of non
-degradability
requiring Grid and Locked and citatory NOT-ation become in-can’tatory spell
to which is brought this sound: [ ]
and the following emptied clause
which is why
I really must get on
with writing
[1]Heller Levinson and Michael Annis Hinge Theory
Variation on a Theme of Sappho
1.
With Your throat : love
lyric intent bending men for centuries
And what you said it isn’t—
still is not : not war not horses not men not ships
not even
this moment
a feverish pecking at Contemplation’s threshold
the hour fallen from its faultless rock that isn’t this wall of refuge voicing iconic anonymous marks stretched across the void called exile
that is
not
not vibrational hatred
not bomb
not a drop-
ping
ing-ing itself in afterward aplomb
all overtures
atonement overdue
apocalyptic poetic lack
-ing
and missed propositions yet to come—
2.
is it
with simplicity… ,
the lover’s thumb
embedment
curve
space
spine
or
with realm … , plankton
amniotic phylogeny ontogenic tick of chlorophylled days
sun-to-mythos
wings to heliotropical ph[r]ase
a Fallen-down daze
a bubbled dioxide d[r]ead-rendering skywarded tripping away from earth to godhead to clicked erasure deleted to hand’s thunderous pause : “with plausibility…”
, protraction
a head for its time
a head over heels
a head in the clouds
a head in its hands
a head gone
to one’s head
a head gone
off one’s head
a head driven
to getting [a]head
or: heading: as in text above
as in lead
as in going somewhere as in
which direction
the front of the group
heads up
chief control
as in current spell cast
over
human organization
3. with pressure . . . ,
new heading
Will all of this finally come to a head
as: part of drum / top of valley / promontory / source of river / top of plant / countable people / countable animals / center of intellect / highest part / state of mind / section in speech / as in a heading
4. Crisis Point
A song for manifestation : woman’s body a land that can be turned to—earth acc[h]orded feminine sound : re-turning : Mother : Home : Ancient : Utterances :
this Shift
marking time
re – verb – eration making yellow iris-ed I making bee-savior fruit-suckled faceless avenue called gender of night called ligament-moon this sinew of song longed for its
lyric regeneration capacitated air assertion in fugued hour this departure breath this cell compelled in variance and the constants of:
Inhalation
Exhalation
relied upon
before the scrawl of centuries
before this minutia of universe in twittered sunrise
whose fingers know the many wounds—
For it is not that army not those horses those ships or men—
but root of fixed regard
These lyric illusions a ruin in declamation
Axiom leading to loss of
meaning
if it is
it is this ear awakened to mid-night’s calling
whose baboon tongue
whose gorilla groin
whose orangutan nipple
whose chimpanzee thumb
would write for the bonobo cousin
a transcription of healed time
saying:
Not only what you love, not just that.
But also, what you believe…
