How much meaning do you need, Slushies? When language lingers, when images form a spiral, a murmuration, might a poem’s mood hold meaning close to its heart and simultaneously at bay? And, also, how do you pronounce ‘ichor’? All this and more in a rollicking conversation about poet Nick Visconti’s new work, “Burial” and “Unmake These Things.” And speaking of things, listen for Samantha on Anne Carson’s zen koan dollop of insight from Red Doc>: “To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.” Or for Kathy and Marion confessing their North Carolina ritual groping of the Dale Earnhardt statue in Kannapolis, NC. And finally: geese. Nick Visconti’s poem triggered a reverie-- that time when we accidentally stumbled into the annual Snow Geese migration in Eastern Pennsylvania.
At the table: Dagne Forrest, Kathleen Volk Miller, Alex Tunney, Samantha Neugebauer, Marion Wrenn.
This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.
Nick Visconti is a writer living with an artist and a cat in Brooklyn. He plays softball on Sundays.
It is love,
not grief, which inters
the deceased
in a hill made of clay.
Sod embraces
crossed arms, legs, eyes shut
looking forever
at nothing
beneath our feet—a container
for men unmade,
no boat to speak of.
No oars
darkly dipped
in water as we pictured
it would be. Instead,
a single shred of light
piercing every lens
it catches. Instead,
a pathway none cross,
just follow through
and up
and up—the cusp of ending,
nothing at all like the end.
He isn’t in this yard when
his children roam. Still,
they dig,
they expect to find him:
braided leather, steel-wound aglets,
his black opal intact.
Unmake these things
The sand before me like water, fluid and holy
under the cratered crown nearly
half-awake, circling
as I draw the one way I know—stick
figures in a backdrop scenery, thick-
headed and content, wheeling
psalms of birds, wide-sloping M’s
grouped in permanent murmur. I don’t bother
with the sun’s face, bare in the upper
left corner of the page. I’ve made
a habit out of hoarding ornaments,
given them their own orbit like the russet
ichor dashed with cinnamon
I choke down every morning and afternoon.
The city’s puncture-prone underbite nips
the sky, consuming the bodies
above—thunderheads, billboards
notched, alive in the glow of that always-
diurnal square. There’s been talk lately of
irreversible chemistry, an acceptable stand-in
for cure among believers and experts
in and on the subject of Zoloft-sponsored
serotonin. A first weaning is possible.
Do not bother with a second.
Episode 86: Sonograms, Vanity & Truman Capote
Caitlyn Jenner and Baked Alaska (or When Thumbs Cry)
Episode 84: Hot Pants & Sneeze Ghosts
Episode 83: Goodnight, Mary Magdalene
Episode 82: "1-4-3"
Episode 81: Dad Jokes & Happiness
Episode 80: In Flux
Episode 79: Do it again! Do it again!
Episode 78: It’s Brusque!
Episode 77: Belly-up!
Episode 76: A Toilet in Denver or Florida is for the Fraught
Episode 75: Gate Opening and Other Sweaty Festivities
Episode 74: Drugs, Love and Cagelights
Episode 73: Hornery Is as Hornery Does
Episode 72: Just the Tip
Episode 71: The Lost Episode (with bonus Anatomy Lessons!)
Episode 70: Scalloped Potatoes (with apologies to Ohio)
Episode 69: Memories in Connecticut
Episode 68: Rooftops and Buttered Popcorn
Episode 67: Poprocks and Monocles
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