Epistolary - Brandon Courtney

Dear Brother:

I too, have seen our sister make a rainbow with her mouth,
glass of tap water, noon sun. The halo of vapor around
her face was magic; the way a carpet burn leaves the same pink
scar as a house-fire flame.

Dear Sister:

Sing with me from your charnel mouth the paramedic’s song:
the excavation of the buried pulse, the way he presses his stethoscope
to your throat, the way he mistakes the Doppler’s echo
for a place to lay his head.

Dear Mother:

I too, have been called a magician. Watch how I wrap your birthday balloons in scotch tape, pull a needle from my boutonniere and pierce through. Watch how nothing happens, nothing pops. See how your breath is still in the balloons.

Dear Father:

I can count on one hand the barn swallows hung upside down from butcher’s string in the market. How they thrashed beautifully against the onrush of blood. How you mimicked the moth’s pale wing breaking the spider webs shape, shouting so small against the struggle.

Dear Sailor:

Repeat after me: the ocean floor was born to ascend, and meet you half-way. Tell me we can call the edge of sleep our shoreline, write our names in its sand, watch bird’s mistake your eyes for lakes, watch them crash and keep still. It seems now, the only way to hear your voice is to tie the stems of oak leaves in knots, float them from the pier, and listen to them sink.

Record Cold, 1962 by Brandon Courtney

I was told you were buried on the coldest day of the year.  The priest
        allowed the families to pull their cars to the casket
and watch through the windshield, watch as your brother broke
        his ankle punching the knife-edge blade of a shovel
into the hardened ground for your headstone.
        Someone suggested a pick axe, boiling water,
a handful of salt to accelerate the thaw.

that the week before, you walked around the house,
        placing pennies and aspirin in your flower vases to keep them alive,
watching the pennies sink hard, the aspirin dissolve like paper umbrellas,
        forgetting that hair is the first to go in sickness
that it comes apart in the teeth of a comb
        comes apart in the hands of others.

I was told that the nurse did her best with bandages,
        a sling made from old bed sheets cinched
and tied to the meat of your shoulder,
        and how you were amazed that the recoil of a rifle
could be enough to break a jaw. 

My god, it must have been something to see — the children in the backseats
        heads bowed, asleep or praying,
the priest stealing away to the columbarium —
        a respite from the wind,
as your brother used his good ankle to kick a spade
        into the frozen ground, shaving back strips of earth
like the peel of an orange until the stone stood upright. 

And how the rest of the family, hunched in the headlights
        breathing small prayers, warm air into the palms
of their hands, offered what they could:  an ungloved hand to turn
        the pages of the bible, another to strike the matches
and light the candles. I was told they returned to their cars,
        windows cracked, where they could draw enough breath
to hear each other sing.

another pick by sam

Another great poem by Adam Clay:

GRAVEYARD SONG

The bark men have all gone home. Pails of milk
Wait along the doors to cool in the night,
A reflection of ghost looking up from each one.
Covering cherubim of clouds above,
The boy on the brig has come to the Fens
To find his sister who, he’s been told,
Is buried at the feet of a stranger. His mother says
The same words spoken for the named
Were spoken above his twin. He kneels and draws
An O on each grave as if to reach through the dirt
And bring her tiny bones up to hold to the light,
But the boy blinks and seems to know
A prophet is nothing in his own country
So he walks down to Whittlesea Mere
And stares into the heavens with only a stone
In his pocket and the mirror of sky blind to itself

Sam's pick: Adam Clay

My first choice for incoming poet, Adam Clay, entitled: "Love Poem"

A baseball crashed through my kitchen window

and landed in the coffee cup you found in the dirt

and mailed to me. Everything arcs. I looked east

and read the words you wrote in cursive

above the red seam. Yes: what happens behind glass,

stays behinds glass. When the sun is just overhead,

the roads between here and there turn to soil,

grab hold of the land, and begin to bend. 

Adam Clay will be hosted by the series June 7th!         

Samantha's Pick - Mark Levine

Here's my pick for the week, Counting the Forests by Mark Levine.


We had little to work with. That was his plan.
He was out until daybreak or nightfall or until
the re-appearance of his servant who had fled
to the mountains during the ice storm.
He was out; he was out and his voice
was gone too. We heard the streetcars scraping
down the hill outside his room; we heard the drills
pressing the walls of the blue quarry.
Day broke in the silent room. Pale shadows, brilliant dust.
Night fell in the silent room. Silence and the silent sky.


He was counting the forests. That was his plan.
He carried a sack of dried fish
blessed by his servant and cured
in sea-salt. His servant was near; he could hear
the terrified rasp of his servant's breath.
His servant was making the vigil in a mountain
somewhere in the ice-country; and the ice-country was vast
and blue and full of death-forms. So was the forest.


Here in the red forest which was a forest of birds.
Birds and dark water and giant red leaves
with voices in them; and the voices were outraged.
They swept towards him like tensed wings
with their shadows tensed above his likeness like wings.
And he ran from them and he could hear
himself through the nets of the trees; but the red
forest was vast and the trees were covered
with ice. And at the edge of the red forest
he could see into the stone forest and could see


the dead voices rinsing over the stone floor.
He had been there already and had taken count.
And he had counted the animal forest and the
burning forest and the weeping forest and the forest
of the Americas and the God-forest.
What could he say to his accusers?
In some ways they were always right.
He had little to work with. He set out in darkness
and in darkness we waited at the corner of the forest
for his re-appearance. So many forests!
Somewhere was a silent forest. Ice above, ice below.
Somewhere was a coldness with a rope in it
like the knotted rope at the bottom of his throat.

Mark Levine and Robert Fernandez May 3rd!

Mark Levine - an author of several books of poetry, including Debt, Enola Gay, and The Wilds. Mark has won multiple NEA awards and was Whiting Award Recipient in the 1990s for poetry. He earned his MFA from the renowned Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and is currently an instructor there while also continuing with his own writing.






Robert Fernandez - earned his BA in English, MFA in Poetry. Robert attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he studied with Mark Levine and received a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. He was also a recipient of the PIP award in 2010.
 

"Hell Me Down" by Robert Fernandez. Next reading: May 3rd!

We take stock of the forearms:
They are like red snapper, slick
And sharp; they are like glass.
You see I am falling through

My pleasure like an intimacy
Of mirrors rubbing against
The face and you cannot uncut
The stomach: it is a die.

Here is the heat because we must begin.
Red rainbow spread like a hawk's gills;
Red rainbow tied off in its black holes
Which dot the ceiling because it is enough.

A nurse raises
Her beak from my chest:
All my vultures are warm
And with gold discs for heads,
All my vultures are form.

Lord find me,
Who is another? Where is the flesh
Of gain? Venture and thighs
Of gold and living glass?

I forget that I consented to wander
To wander by the pier; I consent
That I wander and am like paper:
A black kite wet with night.

Grid I am good and like the Aeon,
A child playing with colored balls.
In the hall because they know me,
The young ones, the eternally. They see

The stela in the flesh of my throat they divine
The throat-rod and its glyphs. Bright to burn
And nurse on cold marrow-like light:
It is midnight and I am speed cut

Into thirds of day; I am threes everlasting &
Hells of foment. Then I stand like eternal resistance
Like hell. No one who walks over this
Ground senses it is sound: look again:

We find ourselves on the shore
And the flame follows us it flows
Through our speaking it is here.
I have failed again, I am no longer I am failed.

I am first to run aground I am seen.
Let us style vital light: New moon again but I am light;
We are not otherwise we are seen.
How shall I stand how shall I be seen?

The morning curled around us like warm like
I am clasped by infinite waters, I am seen.

Sam's pick, from Mark Levine

This is my favorite poem, from Mark Levine's collection, The Wilds.

Willow

Okay, willow, breathe on me
from the sunless opening in you —
crescent of gouges and breezes — slope
on which beetles stumble and are
flushed out —
Traffic, human traffic with its rinse
of promises and pauses is coming
for keeps.
And look there goes a swallow transplanting soil.
Me (let me think it)
I can sit on this bench longer than nature
and not know or crave a thing
about this bench, bottle cap dented into its plank
and initials scratched beside it, beside
the point: two raw letters forward to back just
as rare as any combination.
And now the date, plume of digits, daily
statistic.
This is behavior, willow, this
drone, it accompanied you once
in your grove of which
you have a memory — a lush one — don't you?
Was there no breath of you there?
I crossed the arc of your silhouette and lapped
your leaves' signature.
Things grew from you
beneath you in the patched grass
and not far away sat a man on
a bench.
You take it in or you don't.
You hide the sky or else.
Things lived in you.
You, stranger.

Highlights from our April 5th reading! Nick Demske and Amy Plettner.

YAPRS Coordinators, interns, Demske, and Plettner at Beaverdale Books. Thank you for an amazing evening!

Reminder: Poetry on April 5th!

Hello Fans and Friends,

Don't forget to stop out for a short but sweet hour of poetry with the one and only Nick Demske and Amy Plettner!

As always, it'll be at Beaverdale Books at 7pm, and is free and open to all, so we hope to see all of you there! :)

Best,

Vlad Frederick
Coordinator

Samantha's Pick, Amy Plettner

Here's a poem of Amy's, Vow.

Marry me moon
on a country road
in July's luminescent dust
where fireflies orgy over a stretch of corn
and your smell of half light
breaks through the grasses
parts me open
devours
marry me like this
like a firefly
absolute
in everyone else's
darkness

a pick from Katie. "Good Touch" by Nick Demske

Good Touch
after Walt Disney

This is the most beautiful stool sample I have ever see
N. A stool sampler could search her whole life for a specimen half this perfect.
I can’t taste this food. I can’t feel my legs.
You must feel them for me. You suppository.

The emancipated marionette snips its own strings. This confirms its inab
Ility to move independent. Can you show me on the puppet where
The poetry touched you? Would you like to sample some of our
Finest stool, today? I need an adult. I need an ad

Olescent—a sweater puppeteer shiver me tim
bers. “That poetry touched me,” my virgin ears bleed.
“I was moved by your puppetry,” my bowels fess, ashamed.
The incontinent coprophile wallows in bliss. A pedophile wets the bed. Kiss me like I’m

Still a child, a Real Boy, proclaiming this, the finest stool sample of its kind,
The finest the world has seen since the great sampling of ought nine.

Sam's pick, from Amy Plettner

Our next reading is coming up! Here's my top choice from poet Amy Plettner: "Tree house"

"Plywood and two by fours nailed in a live oak.
Butte Creek Canyon steeped in moonlight.
Cicadas vibrate the chapparral.
Poison oak sleeps low under manzanita.
Uria + Mattie in a carved heart.
Smoke up a chimney"

YAPRS: Nick Demske and Amy Plettner -- April 5th, 7pm, Beaverdale Books

YAPRS would like to thank all who made it out to our reading on Thursday, and thank Dora and Steve for providing us with a powerful and awe-inspiring night of poetry. Poets AND attendees, your presence is both the reason and reward for all the work that we do. Thank You!

Culture Buzz radio show interviews YAPRS!

Hello Fans!

Please tune in to the Culture Buzz online at http://www.kfmg991.org/directory_detail.php?user=18 on Wednesday, March 7th, at around 11:40am, to hear an exclusive interview of our coordinator, Vlad Frederick, made possible by YAPRS friend and staunch supporter, John Busbee!

And don't forget, our first reading is this Thursday at 7pm, Beaverdale Books; we hope to see you there!

Samantha's Pick, Dora Malech

Here's one of my favorite poems by Dora Malech, titled "Humility & Co."

I left a little cake, a little note:
I’m sorry if I threw up on your Christmas.
Dear, you can call it catharsis, it’s still
bad manners. As if it were possible
to cancel all the flux inside, one wakes,
a levitating magnet. This is physics,
friends: the law of tell-you-when-you’re-older,
ends that justify a good cry on
an iffy shoulder in the interregnum.
Wire-mother loves to cuddle the holidays
away, swings her dinner bell and waits
for drooling. Here, the crossroads of psychosis
and bad grammar where “someone” becomes “they”
and no one cares anymore. I guess I just
mean inexact, the loss or at the very
least a lack of basics. Take a penny,
leave a penny. It’s been a pleasure. Close
the door gently and please hit the hall light
when you leave. One option is embrace
stasis, and yet some days the heart’s
this dirty, matted mutt trembling at the feet
of the family passing time between trains
in the station café: “Look, Mom! It wants
something!” Let’s walk down and watch them
fire the cannon. Let’s see if they’re still putting
the puppet show on in this rain.

Sam's Pick, from Seven D. Schroeder

This is my top pick poem from Steven D. Schroeder's "Torched Verse Ends". It's titled, "Colorado Strata."

Fire scars in aspen rings near Aspen bulldozed over
Front Range strip-mining barrens that suburb papers over
Mesa Verde dwellings built by helicopter over
Era of airports hewn from San Juan stone not over
NORAD bored under Cheyenne Mountain starting over
Pikes Peak with neon street sign superimposed over
Denver overpass above another overpass over
Semi trucks hauling Rockies rock by rock over
I-70 out to Kansas over and over and over

Vlad's Poetry Pick -- Steven D Schroeder

Here is "Clockwork" by Steven D Schroeder


Clockwork

In the 27 seconds
tacked on the end of the calendar,
she catalogs closets. Meanwhile,
the family Labrador tears

a Styrofoam stem from the P
in the baby’s name to make D
for dogged, and in the den
downstairs, the aces and eights

at the bottom of the deck
presage a hand on the back
of her husband. Finches whipping
past open windows dodge

hawks and shotguns thanks
to thousand-mile-per-hour
gusts reconstructing the city
securely inland. Not dead

in pus, off-white as lies,
her husband’s leukocytes
replenish his appendix,
pop a patellar tendon

together on the bone.
Tears satiate her thirst
for salt on lips, and wash
a pocketwatch whose dial

ignites a tiny human
who paces grounds that spread
the jaws that spew out gods—
Rube Goldberg built it best,

not first. The maker places
new digital displays,
watches them count the last
10 seconds to the blast.

To hear more from Steve, as well as from Dora Malech, please join us at Beaverdale Books on March 8th, 7pm, for our first reading of the season! As always, all events are FREE and open to the public!

YAPRS 2012 Spring Reading Schedule!

YAPRS March Reading: Dora Malech and Steven D Schroeder

Please join us at our first reading of 2012, featuring poets Dora Malech and Steven D Schroeder!

-Steven D. Schroeder is the author of Torched Verse Ends,(BlazeVOX Books, 2008). He graduated from Vanderbilt University. He currently edits the online journal Anti- and resides in St. Louis, Missouri.

-Dora Malech is the author of two books of poetry: Shore Ordered Ocean (Waywiser, 2010), and Say So (CSUPC, 2010). She earned her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 2005. She was last fall’s Poet-in-Residence at Saint Mary’s College of California.

The readings are held at Beaverdale Books, 7pm, and as always, are free to the community! Please rsvp on our Facebook page, and invite your friends; we would love to have a full house for our first event of the season!

Greetings from Katie Stever - Intern at YAPRS

My name is Katie Stever. I am a first year student studying Secondary Education with English and ESL endorsements at Drake University. When I heard of the opportunity to become an intern for YAPRS, I jumped at the chance. Not only am I passionate about reading and hearing poetry, I am an active writer myself. I am very excited for this season of readings and events. I hope I can learn about the "behind the scenes" aspects of putting together such great events. I'm excited for what's to come and I hope you all are too!

Greeting from Sam

Hello everyone!
My name is Samuel James Harper Boyer (Sam for short), and I am one of the interns with YAPRS this semester. I am a senior writing major with an entrepreneurship minor from Chicago, Illinois. My favorite poet is Robert Frost, and I look forward to working with, and experiencing the poetry of, the great poets we will be hosting this spring.
I am starting a board game and tabletop role playing game company with two partners once I graduate, but I hope to continue writing and become published and successful in the craft. I enjoy reading, gaming, the martial arts, and learning to cook by trial-and-error. You can reach me at samuel.boyer1342@gmail.com.
Here's to a great semester for us all,

Sam

Greetings from Samantha Baker, intern of YAPRS

Hi all!

My name is Samantha Baker and I am an intern with YAPRS this semester along with Katie and Sam. I am currently a sophomore at Drake University double-majoring in Magazine Journalism and English. I greatly enjoy both my majors because I am able to really express my creative side. In my free time I enjoy reading, catching up on sleep, and hanging out with my friends. I'm an incredibly mellow and relaxed person on the outside, but on the inside I am burning with passion for my majors and work.

I am greatly looking forward to working as a member of the YAPRS team and learning about poetry, from the different types that exist to finding out more about the various poets we will be hosting. I am eager to not only expand my own knowledge of poetry but to inform all of you about it as well!

Greetings from Vlad Frederick, coordinator of YAPRS.

Hello!

My name is Vlad Frederick, and I--along with my amazing co-coordinators Joel Nathanael and Michaela Mullin--will be working hard to to bring the Des Moines community another great season of poetry readings!

A little about me:

I am currently a senior BA in English with a minor in Biology, at Drake University. I am an aspiring writer, of fiction, nonfiction, and especially poetry. After graduating from Drake, I hope to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing--Poetry, with the ultimate goal of a PHD.

I first learned about YAPRS in January one year ago, when offered a chance to intern with the program for credit, through Drake's Writing Internship Program. Needless to say, I was hooked by the program's ambitious goals of informing, enriching, and entertaining the local community, all while promoting both established and rising names in poetry. I spent all of 2011 interning for this great program, before having the mantle of Coordinator passed down to me by Jennifer Perrine.

I'm looking forward to what this season will bring, and hope all our fans are ready to ring in the New Year with a great Spring of Poetry!

Greetings from Michaela Mullin, Co-Coordinator of YAPRS

Hello, my name is Michaela Mullin, and I will be co-coordinating the series with Vlad and Joel this spring. I am thrilled to be able to be a part of this great series that Wendy and Kyle founded, and which Jennifer helped keep alive this last season.

A little about me: I attended Drake for my undergrad degree, University of Nebraska for my MFA in Writing, and, this summer, I will be attending the European Graduate School, Media and Communications doctoral program. I love travel, film, art, and of course, poetry. I am currently working on a poetry collection based on the paintings of Belgian artist, Michael Borremans, and I am hoping to see my first manuscript, Tenable Cant, published in the near future.

I look forward to the spring line-up of poetic performances, and to meeting other local appreciators of poetry.