Out of Fire

Under the angles of protein
naked asteroids gleam

demand to press
flesh with the cigarette

stars thrown like lowdown dice

fierce men, arched at an angle,
will through a door in the east
dream of us

tongue can pleasure
flying shrinking to nothing
wet with electricity

when the stars themselves finally give
out from the trees

like the end of your wick
that becomes a summons

the momentary
wanderings of the
blind

and all their angels flicker.

The City Visible

Reading the work included in the new anthology, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, is a great starting point for anyone interested in contemporary poetry, especially poetry being written by mostly younger poets. Jennifer Scappettone, Suzanne Buffam, Srikanth Reddy, John Tipton, Eric Elshtain, David Pavelich, Peter O’Leary, William Fuller, Michael O’Leary, Mark Tardi, Erica Bernheim, Michael Antonucci, Chris Glomski, Garin Cycholl, Luis Urrea, Kristy Odelius, Lina ramona Vitkauskas, Simone Muench, Lea Graham, Ed Roberson, Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, Shin Yu Pai, Dan Beachy-Quick, Maxine Chernoff, Kerri Sonnenberg, Jesse Seldess, Paul Hoover, Michelle Taransky, Robert Archambeau, Bill Marsh, Larry Sawyer, Cecilia Pinto, Johanny Vázquez Paz, Ela Kotkowska, Jorge Sanchez, Joel Craig, Daniel Borzutzky, Joel Felix, Raymond Bianchi, Cynthia Bond, William Allegrezza, Jennifer Karmin, Tim Yu, Laura Sims, Roberto Harrison, Brenda Cárdenas, Stacy Szymaszek, and Chuck Stebelton are for the most part poets who have either grown up in the city of Chicago or were drawn to this literary nexus from elsewhere. Calling Chicago a literary nexus at first sounded strange to me, but it has become so. Bob Archambeau, one of the poets in the anthology, has written on his blog about the benefits and pitfalls of contextualizing groups of writers based on geographic location. It's interesting to see all this gel.