Kimberly Grey Moved
Check out my new website and blog over here: http://kimberlymgrey.com/
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Poem by Bob Hicok
re: incarnation
To you who say you've been here before, I say
I've not been here yet, I say
I'll be here soon, I say
what a mess you've made.
Next time, come back as an apology
or broom.
Next time, bring enough doughnuts
for everyone.
I would ask if there's a next time
to be the phrase, life is brutish and short.
I would have a child who is the phrase, life is supple
and vibratory.
She would have a child
who is the clamor behind the waterfall, twin of the child
who is the ruckus in front of a waterfall, sisters
to the child who is the screaming of the sun
against the dark.
The first atom bomb came back
as whispers, fallen eyelashes, dew.
Sometimes I hope I'm shitting out
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot.
In those moments, I wished Americans believed
in bidets.
If Americans came back as Europeans, we would believe
in bidets.
And the carrier pigeon would come back
as the carrier pigeon, only this time,
it wouldn't be the fashion to shoot them.
It would be the fashion to say look, the carrier pigeons
are back.
Everyone would turn and wait for the buffalo.
Everyone would turn and wait for us
to honor our treaties with the Indians.
And while everyone was turned, all the interesting stuff
would happen up ahead: the bumper car
would come back as making love.
Advice as minding your own business.
Slivers as roots of jungle
under skin.
And there God would be
trying on all the slippers, hoping one pair
fit, hoping one pair got him from the ball
to happily ever after.
As if.
As if.
from Washington Square Summer/Fall 2010
To you who say you've been here before, I say
I've not been here yet, I say
I'll be here soon, I say
what a mess you've made.
Next time, come back as an apology
or broom.
Next time, bring enough doughnuts
for everyone.
I would ask if there's a next time
to be the phrase, life is brutish and short.
I would have a child who is the phrase, life is supple
and vibratory.
She would have a child
who is the clamor behind the waterfall, twin of the child
who is the ruckus in front of a waterfall, sisters
to the child who is the screaming of the sun
against the dark.
The first atom bomb came back
as whispers, fallen eyelashes, dew.
Sometimes I hope I'm shitting out
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot.
In those moments, I wished Americans believed
in bidets.
If Americans came back as Europeans, we would believe
in bidets.
And the carrier pigeon would come back
as the carrier pigeon, only this time,
it wouldn't be the fashion to shoot them.
It would be the fashion to say look, the carrier pigeons
are back.
Everyone would turn and wait for the buffalo.
Everyone would turn and wait for us
to honor our treaties with the Indians.
And while everyone was turned, all the interesting stuff
would happen up ahead: the bumper car
would come back as making love.
Advice as minding your own business.
Slivers as roots of jungle
under skin.
And there God would be
trying on all the slippers, hoping one pair
fit, hoping one pair got him from the ball
to happily ever after.
As if.
As if.
from Washington Square Summer/Fall 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Four years
From Anne Carson's translation of Sappho:
"For the man who is beautiful is beautiful to see
but the good man will at once also beautiful be.
I feel so lucky.
"For the man who is beautiful is beautiful to see
but the good man will at once also beautiful be.
I feel so lucky.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
New York Geometries
Little Bite of Light
Little Jailed Sphere
Little Striped India
Little Gate to Go
Little Squares to Save
Little Circle of Noon
Little Jailed Sphere
Little Striped India
Little Gate to Go
Little Squares to Save
Little Circle of Noon
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot
Paradoxes and Oxymorons
By John Ashbery
This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be
A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.
It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.
From Poetry Magazine
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181395
By John Ashbery
This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be
A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.
It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.
From Poetry Magazine
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181395
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Poems
I have two new poems in The Awl:
http://www.theawl.com/2010/05/the-poetry-section-kimberly-grey
http://www.theawl.com/2010/05/the-poetry-section-kimberly-grey
Friday, April 30, 2010
Lower Manhattan
It felt strange to walk around Battery Park tonight. I still feel like I should be silent, like I should be muttering some kind of elegy to the suffered buildings. Like I should walk with my head slightly toward the ground. Maybe it's because I still think of this part of Manhattan as bruised. Or maybe, it's just me that is still tender. But after hearing Anne Carson read tonight, one thing remains: Death makes us stingy. However immensely beautiful the buildings seemed, the Hudson, the sky, the poems; tonight I want to keep it all to myself.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
from Ceiling Unlimited Series
(magnet mine)
It isn't a question of what's quaint, what
hurts. If the telephone wires look like
an endless perch, the birds will avoid
the trees. The train's reflection in the water
can't help but glimmer more than the train.
As long as the local cathedral has an
unpronounceable name, people will come in
droves to sing their songs to the residual blue.
When the rain was wanted they used to shoot
cannonballs into the clouds. So prosaic. So pretty.
The planets couldn't be more so. Or if it's scale
that attracts you, come closer - there are seven
tiny piles of bright pigment in the sink. Lava-less-
lament, flimsy-attempt-to-draw-you-in-
call them what you want, but call them.
from Pity the Bathtub its Forced Embrace of the Human Form
By Matthea Harvey
It isn't a question of what's quaint, what
hurts. If the telephone wires look like
an endless perch, the birds will avoid
the trees. The train's reflection in the water
can't help but glimmer more than the train.
As long as the local cathedral has an
unpronounceable name, people will come in
droves to sing their songs to the residual blue.
When the rain was wanted they used to shoot
cannonballs into the clouds. So prosaic. So pretty.
The planets couldn't be more so. Or if it's scale
that attracts you, come closer - there are seven
tiny piles of bright pigment in the sink. Lava-less-
lament, flimsy-attempt-to-draw-you-in-
call them what you want, but call them.
from Pity the Bathtub its Forced Embrace of the Human Form
By Matthea Harvey
Monday, April 26, 2010
The Awl
Here's to taking chances. A few weeks ago I read two of Matthea Harvey's new poems in The Awl, a new New York magazine that is interested in politics, culture, and the arts. Harvey is easily my favorite poet writing today. I was quite enamored with her poems and other poems published in The Poetry Section. So I sent Mark Bibbins a couple poems on a whim and wish, not even sure if they take unsolicited submissions. And as it turns out, they don't. All the work has thus far been solicited. But, the lovely Mark liked my poems and has decided to publish them in The Awl in a few weeks. I am thrilled and can not help but think a little turtle that left this world and broke my heart, has something to do with all the great things that are happening to me.
Matthea Harvey's poems in The Awl: http://www.theawl.com/2010/04/the-poetry-section-two-poems-by-matthea-harvey
Matthea Harvey's poems in The Awl: http://www.theawl.com/2010/04/the-poetry-section-two-poems-by-matthea-harvey
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Nox
Today I received Anne Carson's latest book "Nox" almost two months earlier than I expected to. What a great surprise. The book is one of the most strange and beautifully constructed books I've ever seen. I haven't actually read it yet, just ogled over the pages and designs, but she never disappoints me. This is what it looks like:
In other news one of my poems was accepted into The Brooklyn Review. It was one of the nicest acceptance letters I've gotten. (It was addressed to "Dearest Kimberly"). I'm really excited for two reasons: it's my first print publication and it's a poem I wrote well after I graduated from my MFA program. It was never workshopped, never revised, and only one person read it before I submitted it out. It is one of my favorite poems I've written thus far and I'm excited to share it with The Brooklyn Review and the world.
In other news one of my poems was accepted into The Brooklyn Review. It was one of the nicest acceptance letters I've gotten. (It was addressed to "Dearest Kimberly"). I'm really excited for two reasons: it's my first print publication and it's a poem I wrote well after I graduated from my MFA program. It was never workshopped, never revised, and only one person read it before I submitted it out. It is one of my favorite poems I've written thus far and I'm excited to share it with The Brooklyn Review and the world.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Advice To The Busted Among Us
By Ada Limon
But everyone is busted a little.
No consciousness of the breaking, just the history
of a dirty footprint—even the easy stuff,
the small conversations about our worth.
(To be an anonymous object,
the innocuous heart, the smallest part of flesh.)
On Withers Avenue, a rat circled the bottom of a trashcan,
it threw its body against the plastic green walls of its new world,
I heard it. I removed the top. I put the top back on.
(Small brilliant hole in the dark, let me out.)
Standing, in what seemed ridiculously human clothes,
I argued with the rat. I asked him,
Are you rabid?
Are you crazy?
Are you responsible for the plague?
He didn’t answer, he threw his body again.
Are you mean?
Did you hurt your children?
Did you hurt anyone?
I want to tell you that I let that rat out.
Kindness overwhelmed the tough pout of people-cleanliness.
I want to tell you I put him in a shoebox and
brought him to the country, fed him corn and taught him to read.
(Ungettable parallel time, fathomless choices.)
I say to a stranger, I am harmless.
But the word doesn’t seem right. I have been harmed,
but I do not wish to do harm, but I could do harm,
I am not without desire.
I want to tell you the rat moved in with me, made a good living.
But, I tell you, I let him be.
I think he might have managed to release himself,
he was not harmless. He had intent. Flirting with the world.
He’ll show up one day, long-wandered in the weather.
He just needed someone subversive to bend in
real close and say,
You can bristle all you want,
you can reinvent the shout,
but you got your rat-self in there,
now, get your cunning rat-self out.
From Octopus Magazine
http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue10/main.html
But everyone is busted a little.
No consciousness of the breaking, just the history
of a dirty footprint—even the easy stuff,
the small conversations about our worth.
(To be an anonymous object,
the innocuous heart, the smallest part of flesh.)
On Withers Avenue, a rat circled the bottom of a trashcan,
it threw its body against the plastic green walls of its new world,
I heard it. I removed the top. I put the top back on.
(Small brilliant hole in the dark, let me out.)
Standing, in what seemed ridiculously human clothes,
I argued with the rat. I asked him,
Are you rabid?
Are you crazy?
Are you responsible for the plague?
He didn’t answer, he threw his body again.
Are you mean?
Did you hurt your children?
Did you hurt anyone?
I want to tell you that I let that rat out.
Kindness overwhelmed the tough pout of people-cleanliness.
I want to tell you I put him in a shoebox and
brought him to the country, fed him corn and taught him to read.
(Ungettable parallel time, fathomless choices.)
I say to a stranger, I am harmless.
But the word doesn’t seem right. I have been harmed,
but I do not wish to do harm, but I could do harm,
I am not without desire.
I want to tell you the rat moved in with me, made a good living.
But, I tell you, I let him be.
I think he might have managed to release himself,
he was not harmless. He had intent. Flirting with the world.
He’ll show up one day, long-wandered in the weather.
He just needed someone subversive to bend in
real close and say,
You can bristle all you want,
you can reinvent the shout,
but you got your rat-self in there,
now, get your cunning rat-self out.
From Octopus Magazine
http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue10/main.html
Monday, March 8, 2010
Morning Dialogue A
8:31 a.m
J - Good morning sleepy darling.
K- Throw a shoe at the ceiling.
J- A shoe?
K- They are making so much noise
J- I am not going to throw a shoe at the ceiling
K- Just throw a shoe (falls back asleep)
J - Good morning sleepy darling.
K- Throw a shoe at the ceiling.
J- A shoe?
K- They are making so much noise
J- I am not going to throw a shoe at the ceiling
K- Just throw a shoe (falls back asleep)
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