Tag: best dressed

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Anne Lesley Selcer’s “A Book of Poems on Beauty”

Anne Selcer

cutouts, opulence, piling, pooling at the bottom
heaven is a negative place
a holographic poem, a list
strung on fishing line, of irregularly cut shapes
when you say pleasure, it refers back to the subject/
beauty is private, the origin of beauty is private
an open umbrella rising up through sound
when you say sensation, it refers back to the object
a picture has no skin

—

This selection comes from Anne Lesley Selcer’s A Book of Poems On Beauty, available from Gazing Grain Press. Purchase your copy here!

Anne Lesley Selcer is a poet and art writer. In 2014 from A Book of Poems on Beauty was chosen by Dawn Lundy Martin for Gazing Grain press. A double chapbook with Lara Durbeck was recently published by Supersuperette press. In 2013 SFMoma commissioned her for a series of essays and she wrote on language and the moving image. The book Banlieusard was commissioned in 2005 by Artspeak gallery, and other writing has been anthologized in It’s night in San Francisco, but it’s sunny in Oakland, The Feeling is Mutual: A list of our fucking demands, NW Edge III: the end of reality, and The Physics of Context. Poems are forthcoming in Fence and Armed Cell and have appeared in Dusie, Where Eagles Dare, and The Clackamus Review, among others. Art writing can be found in catalogs or monographs for galleries such as Centre A, the Or and the Helen Pitt gallery, and TV Books / Deitch Projects as well as in magazines Fillip and Doppelganger magazines. In San Francisco, she was a member of the Nonsite Collective. In Vancouver she created and curated the Chroma Reading Series series for artists, poets and researchers. She is the current resident at Krowswork gallery.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Anne Lesley Selcer’s “A Book of Poems on Beauty”

fabopob-cover-web_front

One unrolling bolt of ice cream silk …grape-sized globes

of lapis lazuli and goldvein grouped and reposing in the

corners…a fountain or a chandelier…a set of gold combs

scalloped in black pearl…a stretched suede book that knocks

as soft as a little girl…hautly arched whalebone stilettos…

fat, well-behaved chairs…paintings on every inch of ceiling…

tiny crystal pots containing not ions of mashed l i me, birdbath

water, temporin and pearl…a leat her up of heron quills…two

rocaille tiaras…a Zouave jacket woven f rom cr ushed leaves

and gold…the extended family of an orchid…a bracelet made

of tombstone…a wig culled from Reykví kingur towheads…a

lunar astrolabe…a millefiori flower bed…a set of handwritten

encyclopedias…a comprehensive book of cloud typology…a slice

of wedding cake crystallized into chalcedony…a Cherry Plum,

Clematis, and Honeysuckle cure…a fine and tiny typewriter…

porcelain nails in a bell china box…flowers floating in a cabinet

vivarium…a perfume of Fiji nectars…a box of San Franciscos…

—

This selection comes from Anne Lesley Selcer’s A Book of Poems On Beauty, available from Gazing Grain Press. Purchase your copy here!

Anne Lesley Selcer is a poet and art writer. In 2014 from A Book of Poems on Beauty was chosen by Dawn Lundy Martin for Gazing Grain press. A double chapbook with Lara Durbeck was recently published by Supersuperette press. In 2013 SFMoma commissioned her for a series of essays and she wrote on language and the moving image. The book Banlieusard was commissioned in 2005 by Artspeak gallery, and other writing has been anthologized in It’s night in San Francisco, but it’s sunny in Oakland, The Feeling is Mutual: A list of our fucking demands, NW Edge III: the end of reality, and The Physics of Context. Poems are forthcoming in Fence and Armed Cell and have appeared in Dusie, Where Eagles Dare, and The Clackamus Review, among others. Art writing can be found in catalogs or monographs for galleries such as Centre A, the Or and the Helen Pitt gallery, and TV Books / Deitch Projects as well as in magazines Fillip and Doppelganger magazines. In San Francisco, she was a member of the Nonsite Collective. In Vancouver she created and curated the Chroma Reading Series series for artists, poets and researchers. She is the current resident at Krowswork gallery.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Anne Lesley Selcer’s “A Book of Poems on Beauty”

Anne Selcer

When I was the beautiful girl
the fireflies signified:

I was trapped in amber.
In a sudden Midwest rain.

I sat on the curb with kids.
Eye shining, in rips and scuffs.

I held fast like an Indian
in a box of dead differences.

Stunned still.
A moth in a jar.
The ethics of the I, ignored.

When I was a beautiful girl,
in a system of ons and offs,
in the silent language of lighthouses,
in an inconsequential, feminine swarm,
the fireflies signified:

—

This selection comes from Anne Lesley Selcer’s A Book of Poems On Beauty, available from Gazing Grain Press. Purchase your copy here!

Anne Lesley Selcer is a poet and art writer. In 2014 from A Book of Poems on Beauty was chosen by Dawn Lundy Martin for Gazing Grain press. A double chapbook with Lara Durbeck was recently published by Supersuperette press. In 2013 SFMoma commissioned her for a series of essays and she wrote on language and the moving image. The book Banlieusard was commissioned in 2005 by Artspeak gallery, and other writing has been anthologized in It’s night in San Francisco, but it’s sunny in Oakland, The Feeling is Mutual: A list of our fucking demands, NW Edge III: the end of reality, and The Physics of Context. Poems are forthcoming in Fence and Armed Cell and have appeared in Dusie, Where Eagles Dare, and The Clackamus Review, among others. Art writing can be found in catalogs or monographs for galleries such as Centre A, the Or and the Helen Pitt gallery, and TV Books / Deitch Projects as well as in magazines Fillip and Doppelganger magazines. In San Francisco, she was a member of the Nonsite Collective. In Vancouver she created and curated the Chroma Reading Series series for artists, poets and researchers. She is the current resident at Krowswork gallery.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Martha Silano’s “Reckless Lovely”

martha

Hope is the thing with

an important message, a pressing urgency
I reckon Hope’s entitled to. Hope says Hello,

my dear, and it goes from there: how are you,
hope you’re well, bit hot over here in Burkina

Faso, then Hope’s done with asking after
my chargers, my panes, the windstorm nudging

my touch-and-go, has no time for me
or my closely-monitored percolations. Hope’s

not perched; she’s pouncing, marooned
to the tune of $4.5 million. But Hope’s right:

her choosing me is a question she knows
she must answer. And big surprise: the Almighty

willed it, decided against her two sadistic aunts
because, Hope says, I’m different, won’t sell

her dead mom’s home to a Mr. Molson Steven
(though who can say for sure?). Hope’s favorite

language? Waiting to hear you soonest. Hope’s
solution: hide behind a bush so when I call

she can answer, or whatever (it’s against the law).
Just like staying in the prison, says Hope before

signing off in the name of a nearby privilege,
in the name of what I need from you is this.

—

This selection comes from Martha Silano’s Reckless Lovely, available from Saturnalia Books. Purchase your copy here!

Martha Silano is the author of four books of poetry, including The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, chosen by Campbell McGrath as the winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books 2014). She also co-edited, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice (Two Sylvias Press 2013). Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Paris Review, Poetry, Orion, American Poetry Review, and North American Review, where she received the 2014 James Hearst Poetry Prize, as well as in many anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation and The Best American Poetry 2009. Martha serves as poetry editor of Crab Creek Review, curates Beacon Bards, a Seattle-based reading series, and teaches at Bellevue College.

Leslie LaChance edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration, has curated The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications and written poetry reviews for Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, and her chapbook, How She Got That Way, was published in the quartet volume Mend & Hone by Toadlily Press in 2013. She teaches literature and writing at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, and if she is not teaching, writing, or editing, she has probably just gone to make some more espresso.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Martha Silano’s “Reckless Lovely”

bumblebee close-up

Summons and Petition for Name Change

Abelmosk. Abracadabra. Abruzzi. Absolute.
Bonzery. Bogan. Love’s barometer. Bristly ballerina.
Choo-choo cherry sanctum. Cutie-cute caldera.
Dim sum-my dilberry. Down there Daiquiri.
Ear of Eden. Eminently Earthy. Empress Gensho.
Fandango-ing funnel. Fox foot. Flamingo.
Geranium in the Gate of the Gourd. Gentian’s grin.
Hallelujah in the huckleberry. Ho-Ho-Kus.
Inner Inagaddadavida. Ink on the isthmus.
Jupiter’s Big Red Spot. Un-January. Jambalaya.
Knit Kit. Kittewake. Kinnick-kinnick. Nether katzenjammer.
Laniferous lability. Hello Kitty lunch box. Lettuce cup asunder.
Mythic mouth. Mama’s milk pan melts Emanuel. Maenadic moon.
Name It Not, Why Not? Nemorous nook. Nefertiti’s niche.
O’Keefe. Unfrozen o-ring. Open the sunroom window.
Persimmon portal. Passworded pomegranate. Paisy-waisy.
Quaint Quiver. Quaking qat. Unquashable squab.
Rorschach-y rivulets. Ragmatical raven. Electric rabbit.
Susquehanna. Multi-syllabic sizzler. So strawberry.
Too much fun. Tell me another. Tisket. Tasket. Trisket.
Umbilical’s prologue. My own undeniable. Under my undies.
Velvet-it’s-not. Venus vector. Victory garden. Vroom-vroom.
Webbed Wednesday. Whipped up elixir. Wowie. Wha-wha.
Xizang. Xebec. Anti-xeric. Excitable raptor. Fringy xenon.
Yeti. Yangtze. Ygdrasil. Yucca whipplei. Yokozuma..Yapese dime.
Zounds-mound. Spangled zarf. Naughty zloty. Zerk gone berserk.

—

This selection comes from Martha Silano’s Reckless Lovely, available from Saturnalia Books. Purchase your copy here!

Martha Silano is the author of four books of poetry, including The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, chosen by Campbell McGrath as the winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books 2014). She also co-edited, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice (Two Sylvias Press 2013). Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Paris Review, Poetry, Orion, American Poetry Review, and North American Review, where she received the 2014 James Hearst Poetry Prize, as well as in many anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation and The Best American Poetry 2009. Martha serves as poetry editor of Crab Creek Review, curates Beacon Bards, a Seattle-based reading series, and teaches at Bellevue College.

Leslie LaChance edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration, has curated The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications and written poetry reviews for Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, and her chapbook, How She Got That Way, was published in the quartet volume Mend & Hone by Toadlily Press in 2013. She teaches literature and writing at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, and if she is not teaching, writing, or editing, she has probably just gone to make some more espresso.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Martha Silano’s “Reckless Lovely”

martha

La Gioconda

I’m deaf, I’m in mourning; I’ve just had a 2nd child.
I’m toothless, palsied, pregnant, paralyzed.

Clearly, I’m a reflection of the painter’s neuroses;
clearly, I have a toothache. Turn the canvas

sideways, at a 45-degree angle. Scan the dark swirls:
and you’ll see them, the buffalo and the lion. Twenty

animals in all, including a snake representing
envy, a leopard because its skin kills the wanting

of what we don’t have. I’m the Jolly Lady, wife
of Francesco del Giocondo; I’m Lisa (a real-life person);

I’m idealized, the artist’s mother, the Madonna (a mule
nestles between my breasts—have you spotted

the ape?) Superimposed on a Chinese landscape,
I’m the eternal female, queen of sepulchral secrets.

My half-smile is the smile of enlightenment,
and those glowing hands? So Buddha. In 1962,

posing with Jackie and JFK, I was valued at $720 million,
six times the price of a Pollock or de Kooning.

Some have said that in my placid eyes tiny letters
and numbers reveal I’m Gian Giamono Caprotti,

my painter’s apprentice, but don’t buy it.
Forget the theories relating to my lack

of eyebrows and lashes, lost not from plucking
but the ravages of restoration. Housed at Versailles,

entwined myself in the Sun King’s cucumber patch,
silently basked in Le Tuileries while Napoleon, quaffing

his coveted Chambertin, scuffed around in beat-up red slippers.
When WW2 broke out, they wrapped me in waterproof paper,

whisked me to a land of poppies and castles. Behind
two layers of bulletproof glass, I live on at the Louvre,

where each year seven million spend an average
of fifteen seconds discerning my ambiguous mood. I’m

unfinished; I’ve been stuffed beneath a trench coat, smuggled
back to Florence. Doused with acid, stoned, pummeled

with a teacup. Touched-up, varnished, de-varnished, infested
with insects; fumigated. I’m a miasma of optical illusions;

my paint is cracking. My visage excites the random noise
in your visual system; emotion recognition software reveals

I’m 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful, two pinches angry,
one iota neutral. You love me like you love your sphinx,

your flying saucers, your Area 51; I’m your koan,
your inscrutable floozy, your syphilitic conundrum,

your angelic aspara, your enduring durga. You’re here
because I render you agog, aha-less, uncomfortably mum.

—

This selection comes from Martha Silano’s Reckless Lovely, available from Saturnalia Books. Purchase your copy here!

Martha Silano is the author of four books of poetry, including The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, chosen by Campbell McGrath as the winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books 2014). She also co-edited, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice (Two Sylvias Press 2013). Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Paris Review, Poetry, Orion, American Poetry Review, and North American Review, where she received the 2014 James Hearst Poetry Prize, as well as in many anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation and The Best American Poetry 2009. Martha serves as poetry editor of Crab Creek Review, curates Beacon Bards, a Seattle-based reading series, and teaches at Bellevue College.

Leslie LaChance edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration, has curated The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications and written poetry reviews for Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, and her chapbook, How She Got That Way, was published in the quartet volume Mend & Hone by Toadlily Press in 2013. She teaches literature and writing at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, and if she is not teaching, writing, or editing, she has probably just gone to make some more espresso.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Martha Silano’s “Reckless Lovely”

bumblebee close-up

Damage Status

after Gwendolyn Brooks

My polonium, your magnetism. My governess, my garret; your Rue Cuvier,
your aromatic woods. Me: the stilled flickering stars; you: feverish heat; us:
opposite of stilted, a French-windowed Fontainebleau, tourmaline and topaz,
main-squeezing quartz, or let’s math it: tight quarters equal high-frequency vibrations.
We vowed in lovely blue with bicycles, with heather and gorse,
returned to the lab, to X, and the loves kept coming—the unborn/unknown
balancing the known. My constant current, your unchangeable. My pitchblende,
my nameless, our 1/10-gram proof; your tumults, our intermingled script.
What gleaming! What fission! What detonation (your/my prize). Anemia,
hysteria, sexual decline: the things we Curies would cure! Marriages that strain breath,
burn skin, glow with flowering failure. Chain reaction of aches.

—

This selection comes from Martha Silano’s Reckless Lovely, available from Saturnalia Books. Purchase your copy here!

Martha Silano is the author of four books of poetry, including The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, chosen by Campbell McGrath as the winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books 2014). She also co-edited, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice (Two Sylvias Press 2013). Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Paris Review, Poetry, Orion, American Poetry Review, and North American Review, where she received the 2014 James Hearst Poetry Prize, as well as in many anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation and The Best American Poetry 2009. Martha serves as poetry editor of Crab Creek Review, curates Beacon Bards, a Seattle-based reading series, and teaches at Bellevue College.

Leslie LaChance edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration, has curated The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications and written poetry reviews for Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, and her chapbook, How She Got That Way, was published in the quartet volume Mend & Hone by Toadlily Press in 2013. She teaches literature and writing at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, and if she is not teaching, writing, or editing, she has probably just gone to make some more espresso.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Martha Silano’s “Reckless Lovely”

martha

Pry Bar Constellation

At the planetarium the docent aimed her light-up pointer at three stars.
This is the Pry Bar Constellation, she said. This is how the mummies

spoke to Osiris, their gauzy mouths pried open like cans
of black olives. But when I googled Egyptian astronomy

I got nothing—not the Imperishables, stars that do not rise
or set in the land of the Sphinx, not the story about the crown

of Sah, which they rode for seventy days to the Underworld,
sort of like Egyptian Persephones, returning for the flooding

of the Nile. What I’d like to see is a green-backed heron wading
in the Nile. What I’d like to say is that the mummification process—

bicarbonate, chloride, sodium, sulfate, honey and wine, oil of borage,
liver and lungs packed in salt, the body covered in natron for forty days,

the brain removed through the nostrils with a single curved hook—
makes me very tired, or maybe it’s that hot, dry 100-mile journey

to a hidden cave, slaves dragging those impossibly sturdy tombs,
those libation dishes, spoonbill-adorned hair combs, tusk figurines

and recumbent lions, extravagance beyond measure heading
for the dark. I guess I’m lucky I’m not an Egyptologist, white-toga

and sandal clad, deciphering hieroglyphics, because then I’d be the one
who squealed on those who stumbled on the spoils. I wonder

if she made up the part about the pry bar, but really how much stranger
than a sky replete with a crab, a dragon, two bears, a swan?

Than a club-wielding guy in hot pursuit of a hare, a long band of leather
keeping his kilt from falling endlessly through the sky?

—

This selection comes from Martha Silano’s Reckless Lovely, available from Saturnalia Books. Purchase your copy here!

 Martha Silano is the author of four books of poetry, including The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, chosen by Campbell McGrath as the winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books 2014). She also co-edited, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice (Two Sylvias Press 2013). Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Paris Review, Poetry, Orion, American Poetry Review, and North American Review, where she received the 2014 James Hearst Poetry Prize, as well as in many anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation and The Best American Poetry 2009. Martha serves as poetry editor of Crab Creek Review, curates Beacon Bards, a Seattle-based reading series, and teaches at Bellevue College.

 Leslie LaChance edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration, has curated The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications and written poetry reviews for Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, and her chapbook, How She Got That Way, was published in the quartet volume Mend & Hone by Toadlily Press in 2013. She teaches literature and writing at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, and if she is not teaching, writing, or editing, she has probably just gone to make some more espresso.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Julie Maclean’s “Kiss of the Viking”

photo head and shoulders stripe

Moon Rabbit

 

The scrape of a hare is a special thing,
            a hollow scribbled haiku-style

            in the dirt. Calligraphy saved
for another day.

A baby is born with its coat on, eyes open,
            ready for anything.

Deity Japonaise, Sami myth.
            In a Chinese tale the hare

eats the moon, pounds rice cakes
            delighting a child who believed

in the promise of sleigh bells
            on Christmas Eve.

Stars icing a birthday cake
            in a silent sky.

—

This selection comes from Julie Maclean’s Kiss of the Viking, available from Poetry Salzburg. Purchase your copy here!

Originally from Bristol, UK, Julie Maclean is now based in Australia. She is the author of ‘Kiss of the Viking’ (Poetry Salzburg, 2014), ‘When I saw Jimi’ (Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK, 2013) and e-chapbook ‘You Love You Leave’ (Kind of a Hurricane Press, US, 2014). Her poetry and short fiction features in international journals like Poetry and The Best Australian Poetry (UQP). Blogging at www.juliemacleanwriter.com.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Julie Maclean’s “Kiss of the Viking”

viking

Lachryma: Mother Aria for a Wet Day in Oslo

Holding a baby would have been good today.
I had the urge to lullaby after the Krohg
exhibition.

His gold-framed wife suckling the boy,
telling stories of Nordic explorers,
magic reindeer, trolls that turn to rock.

I always loved you being sick. In a dream
you came back to me, five weeks old.
Everyone wanted to hold you.

I was anxious.
You started mouthing adult words
like a singer practising scales.

When you told me you were leaving home
for your new life in a foreign state, I looked
out from the hotel window;

albino Operahuset; glacial granite mimicking ice.
I watched you toboganning the slope at Baw Baw.
You were eight.

Raindrops melted the snow.

—

This selection comes from Julie Maclean’s Kiss of the Viking, available from Poetry Salzburg. Purchase your copy here!

Originally from Bristol, UK, Julie Maclean is now based in Australia. She is the author of ‘Kiss of the Viking’ (Poetry Salzburg, 2014), ‘When I saw Jimi’ (Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK, 2013) and e-chapbook ‘You Love You Leave’ (Kind of a Hurricane Press, US, 2014). Her poetry and short fiction features in international journals like Poetry and The Best Australian Poetry (UQP). Blogging at www.juliemacleanwriter.com.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.