April 23, 2016

Deborah Poe, Kyle Schlesinger, & Lu Yim

Saturday, April 23
7:00 pm

1001 SE Division

Deborah Poe is the author of the poetry collections "Keep," the last will be stone, too (Stockport Flats),Elements (Stockport Flats), and Our Parenthetical Ontology (CustomWords), as well as a novella in verse,Hélène (Furniture Press). Her work has appeared in journals like Denver Quarterly, Court Green, Loose Change, Colorado Review, and Jacket2. Her visual works--including video poems and handmade book objects--have been exhibited at Pace University (New York City), Casper College (Wyoming), Center for Book Arts (New York City), University of Arizona Poetry Center (Tucson), University of Pennsylvania Kelly Writers House at Brodsky Gallery (Philadelphia), and ONN/OF "a light festival" (Seattle), as well as online with Elective Affinities, Peep/Show, Trickhouse, and The Volta. Associate professor of English at Pace University, Pleasantville, Deborah directs the creative writing program and founded and curates the annual Handmade/Homemade Exhibit. She has also taught at Western Washington University, Binghamton University, SUNY, the Port Townsend Writer's Workshop in Washington, and Casa Libre en La Solana in Tucson and serves as Distinguished Visiting Writer for Seattle University during Winter Term 2016.

Kyle Schlesinger is a poet living in Austin, Texas. Recent books of poetry include: Sydney Omarr's Wild Children with Flynn Maria Bergann (Planned Obsolescence Press, 2016); Far & Away (Textile Series, 2016); Keep the Change with Deborah Poe (Great Fainting Spells, 2015) and Parts of Speech (Chax Press, 2014). Scholarly works include Poetry & Typography (Ugly Ducking Presse, 2016) and Threads with Steve Clay (Cuneiform/Granary Books, 2016). He is proprietor of Cuneiform Press, a nonprofit literary organization, and Associate Professor of Publishing at UHV. 

Lu or Lucy Lee Yim creates work through a combination of experimental sound, writing, video and somatic movement practices. Through unrelentlessly tender means, Lu makes things, tributes to other dimensions, of non binarisms and contradictions. Lu collaborates with Physical Education (Takahiro Yamamoto, Allie Hankins and keyon gaskin) and Sean Christensen/Phull Collums as Woo Lee Allen in LL LL. Support for her work has come through residencies from the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (Creative Exchange Lab), Performance Works Northwest (Portland) and Pieter Performance Space (Los Angeles). www.lucyleeyim.com


I.

flowery bullshit
handsome color
violent self-acts disguised as self-care
notation, parenthesis
knees breaking
failed participation
a scan of the house
the act of portraiture
the fear of cliche
our selves
her non body
turning weather
faltering hands
paranoid writing
unscented and hypoallergenic
deep heartache
going into sound
airbrushed vegetables
discouraged lobotomy
post-fever aesthetics
pre-determined radius
eventual death
illegitimate catharsis
the drag of the chair
the aura of your breath
forgotten names
crumbling vanity
fear of the middle path
feet on pavement
feet on carpet
the large room you live in
windows of color
odorless steps
blood inside dreams


Lu Yim



ALL SEASONS

 
 
It was all seasons at once, someplace like San Marcos, and there's me, David, Brad, Hunter, Jamaica, and a few other friends from town. Areas of the ground are covered in snow partitioned into neat geometric areas, but the air is warm, the sun is strong, like the first perfect day of spring and everyone's in a really great mood. There are patches of bright green moss and wildflowers, creating a kaleidoscopic pattern I can see from high, high above us. Everyone's on magic mushrooms, and we're sitting on a small stage made of wicker and pallets, and the stage is on a drawbridge. I'm sitting next to a big pile of pumpkins and Brad's at the other end of the stage meditating near a bale of hay. His eyes are closed and his posture is excellent, just like in real life. The rest of the group is laying on beach towels between us soaking up the rays. Everyone looks great wearing cut-off jeans, and the men are wearing leather sandals with their shirts off, while the women are barefoot, with vibrant swimsuit tops and flamboyant plastic sunglasses. None of the men are wearing sunglasses, except for this one guy with a beard that I don't recognize. Brad sends me a telepathic message: I don't trust that guy in the sunglasses--keep an eye on him. Roger that.
 
David and Hunter are lost in conversation, David lying on his stomach, while Hunter stares up at the clouds. Since we're all in telepathic dialogue, we're sending each other images and responding to them with words aloud. Moments of silences come and go, and although to an outsider, it might appear that we're speaking in non-sequiturs, we've actually arrived at a dialogue of pure poetry. Off in the distance, we hear the sound of a tugboat's horn, a low, earthy drone, and then the call of the seagulls, and there's music and magic in the air. I invite everyone to a poetry reading happening at 4:30. I'm digging everything and everyone, but there's a part of me that wants to leave, to drive through the mountains alone, to feel the cool rush of the air and the wafting smell of spring mud coming down from the hills, to burst into the tangerine sunset by myself. Hunter scratches his nose.
 
The sound of the tugboat is near, and suddenly, the drawbridge begins to tremble and there's a quickening of the heart. I snap out of my groove for a moment, and wonder why there isn't a whistle or a light alerting us that the drawbridge is about to open? David senses my concern on the instant, and tells me that if we all stay connected and centered, everything will be fine. We feel the shift in our equilibrium as the bridge begins to lift and our collective elation is growing. Everyone's smiling warmly at one another, except for that guy in the sunglasses and beard. The bridge is almost vertical now, and I make meaningful eye contact with a clockmaker across the street who has come out to watch the tugboat pass. He's seen it a thousand times. He's wearing cute spectacles like Benjamin Franklin, and he's got jolly cheeks and a world-weary apron on. The bridge keeps lifting, rotating, shifting cranks and pulleys and I love these pumpkins so much that I connect with them as well to keep them from falling through space. Now we've ascended beyond the vertical, and we're coming down completely upside down, staring into the water, watching huge chunks of ice drift downstream.
 
from A New Kind of Country
Kyle Schlesinger




Taos

 
sometimes a place no matter how lack-lush barks at the mind under-(re)conceived
 
gorge expands by way of crevice and anti-shadow
no soul but cocaine, and a hostile 
 
the AIDS floor of the haunted mother-in-law--adobe--a déjà vu
the way memories reside between mind and moving 
 
a piece of paper resisted home in Ashley Pond 
(unconsummated & artificial 2AM light)
 
outside our extinguishing minds, our bodies
carved nickel, spark gauge, the number 6: metal fragments in a drawer 


Deborah Poe




Call the florist a business opportunity

 
Feet first
above the pool
stay of course
 
restless legs
in the limelight
 
Straight and narrow
walk into a bar. Which
is held captive?
 
Quite a car you got there
A killer smile
 
 from Keep the Change 
Deborah Poe & Kyle Schlesinger