Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Michael Lauchlan

Detroit Pheasant

From a window, the boss calls to us
where we load his truck with bricks.
"Turn around fellas-look."
A pheasant wades through the brown grass
across the street, vanishing
and emerging from the tangle.
A shed leans near a phone pole.
Bumpers glint from the weeds.
Blocks from the old foundation
angle through the earth.
The pheasant paces his courtyard.

We have killed the city which lived here.
The hieroglyph of its streets and rails
has joined the ancient lost tongues.
Buds unfold on a dwarf maple.
A rooster hollers.

--from Trumbull Ave. (2015)

Friday, April 24, 2015

Louise Gluck

The thing that surprised me was how big the book [of her collected poems] was, because for most of my life, I've felt I wasn't writing. Hitting my head against a wall, raging and raving to my friends because my mind is blank. Or dead. But the book was so large. It was a quite marvelous feeling - that my current sense of failure might not be so reliable.

[Emphasis added.]

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Jon Stewart

Watching these channels [Fox News, CNN, MSNBC] all day is incredibly depressing. I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don’t get turd lung disease.