A Brazilian epoet setting fire to her poems onstage, a la Jimi Hendrix.

Jeorg Piringer Performing at Divan Du Monde on the first night of the E-Poetry 2007 Festival in Paris.

Loss Glazier‘s poem, performed with dancers.

Chris Funkhouser reading from under a sheet, a work with featured dariens, stinky fruit.

Jim Rosenberg reading “Braided Vortex” during the second night of the Festival.

Aya Karpinska‘s reading, one of the best performances at EPoetry.

Stephanie Strickland & Cynthia Lawson Jarmillo demonstrating “Slipping Glimpse.”

The Grand Text Auto Paris interview of John Cayley and Talan Memmott.

I broke away from the conference for a few hours to catch the Samuel Beckett exhibition at the Pompidou. Here’s a bit of “Not I.”

John Cayley’s Imposition was a work that enlisted the audience to download and play one of about 20 files, creating a whispering cacophony in the auditorium.

Maria Mencia demonstrating her cool interactive collage program “Cityscapes.”

Annie Abrahams’ “peurs fears” — a bilingual poem for 12 voices based on internet postings about fear.

Anick Bergeron performing her French translation/remediation of Nick Montfort’s “Ream.”

Talan Memmott‘s “Twittering,” an installation/experimental novel/performance.

Phillippe Bootz‘s “See Venice and Die” was the closing piece of the E-poetry 2007 festival.

A view of Paris from the Pompidou escalator. Au revoir!

Valentine suffered from an unfortunate
archery accident when she was 15 years
old that severed the external pterygoideus
muscle on her left cheek and left her
with a slight tic for the rest of her
days. Her parents were simple folk who
thought it would be a good idea, kind
of clever, to name her after the day
she was born. Every year for her birthday
she got chocolates and a dozen red roses.
She grew to hate roses, eventually. Though
she grew fond of orchids, and she never lost
her taste for fudge. Her friends call her
Val. She is a native of St. Petersburg,
Florida and somewhat militantly against
matchmaking. She doesn’t like to get
involved in other people’s relationships.
She says people should make
their own mistakes.

She has a kind of funny
smile, a strange dimple
seen at happy hour when
someone tells a dirty joke. She
appreciates the audacity of
poor taste, though she never
laughs out loud.

Valentine drinks dry martinis, never the kind
of syrupy pink concoctions with umbrellas
or assorted fruits some others throw
down. She sells life insurance but she’s
not what you call a soft touch. She avoids
the phrase “loved ones” and talks to you
straight about aging and
death, her long fingers
finding your place on
the actuarial table.
She’s good at what
she does, and no
nonsense.

Our residence on the moon
is completely sustainable.
If you look closely you can
see the glint of our reflective
solar panels just to the side
of Copernicus, if you squint.
In our hydroponic farm we grow
heirloom tomatoes of many
varieties: Oxheart, Dixie Golden
Giant, Yellow Brandywine, Mandarin
Cross, and Green Zebra, just to
name a few. We reuse everything
on the moon, but the food is
quite tasty. Nothing smells like
piss at mealtime. I’ll confess
I’d kill for a tender sirloin
but we can do a lot of things
with legumes on the moon. We
get all of the channels on the
satellite, and what we can’t
get there we download off the
internet. There is no such thing
as piracy on the moon. Many things
are legal on the moon. Harry and
Frank got married just last week
and we threw them a big party.
Well, a big party for the moon.
They get the same benefits as
everyone else on the moon. We
have a lot of cool robots and
plenty of time for our hobbies
and one cat who’s a bit skittish
and a handball court in addition
to the elliptical trainer and the
treadmill here on the moon. Earth
rise is so beautiful, darling, though
the nights are very long on the
moon. Burn a fire tonight, if you can.
I’ll try to spot it with the
telescope. I’ll just pretend
if I can’t. I miss you
here
on the moon.

Another helicopter is falling from the sky,
delicate things, these whirling birds of prey.
These Black Hawks and Sea Knights have colorful
names: EZ 40, Tarantula 26, Big Gun 72, Crazy
Horse 08. Do surface to air missiles also have
names? What about bombs? Little Boy and Fat
Man sound like cartoon characters with awful
teeth. Nagasaki would have been spared were it
not for a change in the weather. The ground
is no better than the air for moving troops,
supplies, and weapons. Are fire and water
equally dangerous elements? Do car bombs also have
names? Another 80 people dead in Baghdad. Why
is it even more disturbing to read that the
warehouse stored a great deal of clothing
mannequins, which were scattered on the floor,
in thick pools of blood? Real limbs scattered
among false ones? Do window dressers name
their mannequins, or do they simply say “this
one, that one over there”? Is God really all
that great? How many mannequins were produced
worldwide last year? Would we notice if 34,452
of them were destroyed? Would we care? What if
every person killed in Iraq since the start
of the war got their own mannequin, with its
own special place in the Washington mall, and
its own name, its own little history? How long
is 34,452 moments of silence? How long until the
first cough? What if we forget
to breathe? When did you
stop counting?

the boy in the bubble wears lavender
suede shoes, a blue serge suit, and
a ruffled white shirt, pirate-style.
you can watch him on his webcam, pay
per view. he’s flamboyant and he plays
keyboards better than elton john. sometimes
the boy in the bubble does card tricks.
the boy in the bubble is now 38 years
old and quite wealthy. he writes pilot
episodes of situation comedies and
scenarios for reality shows, often
based on the short stories of franz
kafka. the boy in the bubble eats
canned egg-free cakes. his favorite
flavor is chocolate. the boy in the
bubble is allergic to the world but
in love with its media. the boy in
the bubble has asked that his bubble
be surrounded by high definition
plasma television screens. the boy in
the bubble has wireless internet access
and a personal assistant whom he
sometimes treats poorly. the boy in
the bubble has mood swings and no
one can blame him. the boy in the
bubble sucks his thumb while he watches
danish pornography. the boy in the bubble
has never known a woman’s touch. the boy
in the bubble has several girlfriends on
IRC, in south carolina, darwin, australia,
and somewhere in finland. the boy in the
bubble has a massage chair that brings him
pleasure. the boy in the bubble knows most
of the dialog from the star wars films
by heart. the boy in the bubble likes the
music of kiss, ac/dc, and shostakovich. the
boy in the bubble listens to the fifth
over and over again. the boy in the bubble
owns time-shares in miami, aspen, and napa.
the boy in the bubble rents them out for
profit. the boy in the bubble has given up
on the space suit. it gave him an awful
cold and he nearly died. there is no cure.
the boy in the bubble has significant
investments in chinese insurance companies
and canadian oil sands. certain smells make
the boy in the bubble weep. the boy in the
bubble writes star trek slash fan fiction.
in the darkness, while he sleeps, the boy
in the bubble feels just the same. now he
rocks himself, gently, the boy in the bubble
rocks himself to sleep.

-I dreamed I was in prison
what prison?
-it was like a prison on TV
american?
-probably
what were the charges?
-I’m not sure
like on what show?
-I don’t know don’t interrupt
sorry
-you were a guard
I don’t like where this is going
-no you were pretending to be
a correctional officer?
-to break me out
did I sneak in like a file, or?
-I’m not sure
did it work?
-we were just talking I’m not
I’m mean I’m sure I’d try
-you hadn’t yet
I’d work something out
-it was bad in there
like bad in what way
-the people
the people were what criminals?
-yeah
mean?
-that’s right
well I’d try, I mean I might
-you might?
I might hire a lawyer first
-you wouldn’t come and save me?
well I would, love, but gunplay
-you’d break me out, wouldn’t
gunplay’s not my forte
-you wouldn’t, would you?
I’d try baby, I’d try
-in my dream you were going to
I’d negotiate or whatever
-hmmmmm
coffee?

She makes an ice stew for breakfast
and serves it in a porcelain bowl
while wicked winter wind whips
through windowpanes loosely glazed.

The further north you go
it seems
the further north there is
to serve as a point of reference,
to make it seem less cold.

Though I feel a chill in my
bones, it is colder in Trondheim,
and in Trondheim it is warmer than
in Tromsø (the south of the North)
where when speak of up north they
mean Hammerfest and beyond. Hammer
festers will begrudgingly admit they
reside to the south of Longyearbyen,
where no one thinks they live south
of anywhere, except for the North
Pole. While there is no permafrost
in Hammerfest, Longyearbyen has
plenty of tundra. Students there
carry firearms in case of polar
bear attack. Mørktid is long and
to work in the coal mines there
one must have a good work ethic
and a sense of irony. Begrudge
them not their sealskin boots,
Southerners.

While -5° Celsius is cold in
Bergen, back home in Chicago,
it is currently -16° Celsius,
which is balmy in comparison to
the -35° Celsius in Jyvaskyla.
That is quite cold. At the
North Pole, the instruments
are frosted over. Who knows?

Not so bad
here,
not so bad.

Tend to your glassy pavement.
The oldsters slip and fall,
crack and break,
walk no more.

The glaciers are melting,
the polar cap shrinks,
and polar bears living in zoos
in warm climates turn green
from the algae that grows in
their translucent hair.
Someday we will miss long
cold nights and things that stay
frozen year-round.

Nevertheless, on mornings like this
I feel that Eliot was a
well-insulated dope.
April has nothing
on February for
cruelty.

My Dead

Sometimes my dead
get carried away.
They wake me
(inappropriately)
in the night
and appear in
strange groupings
never seen in life.
My grandmother for
instance would have
never hung around
with the kid who
bullied me at Carson
Park who hung himself
in jail before he turned
twenty-one but there you
have it.

My dead are never
frightening. Is that
strange? I think not.
Ghosts either comfort
or sadden the living.
In spite of all the
bad press, the dead
only terrorize killers.
The dead are indelible,
parenthetical, implicit.
The dead have all the
time in the world for
you now.

My dead of course are
not alive, I don’t mean
to confuse you, they are
dead as doornails (a phrase
that has always confused
me for reasons I haven’t
time to explain). The dead
are dead as dead can be but
the past isn’t dead as you
well know by now. Your
dead are more real to you
than any of your possessions.
That’s not of course to
say that you own your dead
in fact they are a kind of
communal property that
you possess no more than
the next dreamer. True
figments demand that you
share them.

The dead are not cold,
most of the dead, in my
experience are in fact quite
warm. They smell of split
pea soup, peppermint candy,
rhubarb pie, whiskey,
marijuana, and after
shave. The dead are
mostly pleasant all in
all. Sometimes my dead
embrace me, and I hug
them back.

My dead are wagging a
finger at me now, for
I sleep too long and
they understand the
importance of the day
in ways that I cannot.
My dead remind me that
one day like the dinosaurs
I will decompose and
become fuel that others
will use for their transportation
needs and to heat
their cold living
flesh. You only get one
trip, one chance
to burn.