Understanding Yourself as People You'll Never Meet
(the titles of the following poems are taken from George Carlin's spoken word piece, "Join the Book Club")
1.
Understanding People You'll Never Meet
What are typical questions you would ask when a ghost is speaking through you?
If I fall in the forest, can you feel it in Minnesota?
How much are lightbulbs anyway?
If you are moving at the speed of light but forget to tie your shoe can you trip through sound?
Can you show me the forest you want to fall in?
Why can I always feel it in my belly?
Is it Oreos or wine or ghosts?
Why is understanding people you will never meet difficult?
Why is understanding people you will meet difficult too?
2.
Apartment Hunting for Devil Worshipers
They say to understand the mountain
I must first learn to climb it. Grief
however, is a bottom all to its own
and no matter the climb down
can't help but look up at what
was desired but never gained,
so, I find myself in something else's
worship and share what is often
and fond and new and the embrace
for community is always
piercing, peeling back skin
this neck, the erupture
new, beating and red
it's a mountain, this grief
it’s always there.
Only pets allowed.
3.
Your Shoes Are Worth Money
When someone offers their 2 cents
let them know your time is worth more
than that.
When someone says you haven't walked
a mile in my shoes offer them 2 cents.
4.
Things No One Can Help
The ocean
is going
to help
itself
and that's
ok.
Recede.
Listen.
And that's
the ocean
and it should
be the ocean
but, what
about me
is it too
late, to care
about
me, the ocean
is a yawn
away from
being
about me.
I am about
me. I Recede.
Listen.
5.
How To Turn Unbearable Pain Into Extra Income
Poetry
pulped
from the finest
oranges on mirth
all of them singing in
waves of amber and grainy
light home movies become standard
the real is over the piano boldly pungent
trying to 'toxicate and we go back to my place
but I don't invite you in; I put on my robe then I take it off
then I dance around the room alone and then I take out my asthma inhaler;
this unbearable income makes this extra pain more unbearable yet all these
oranges.
With the precision of a surgeon and the hand of a craftsman, Pole Ka draws bodies, dissects them, flays them, and composes their sharp images. She misleads her strange characters through imaginary landscapes, grotesque scenes. Visions straight out of a cabinet of curiosities take shape; here mix animals, insects, plants, hybrid and monstrous characters, summoning medicine and religion; it is an Encyclopedia of ancient bestiaries, evoking the paintings of Bosch and Cranach, the surreal collages of Ernst or Štyrský and the anonymous illuminations of the Middle Ages.
In addition, Pole Ka works alongside the companions of micr0lab, who are scattered around the world, to publish and peddle deviant fanzines, impossible games, creaky vinyls, and to organize epic evenings of drowning music.
Extravagant anatomies, disappeared pathologies, desolate landscapes: Pole Ka engraves her own history of Woman and her sufferings, draws a taxonomy inhabited by androgynous ghosts with troubled sexuality, and prints the plans of a collapsing world.
The winner of a performance grant from the Staten Island Council of the Arts and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Thomas Fucaloro has been on six national slam teams. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the New School and is a co-founding editor of Great Weather for Media and NYSAI press. He is an adjunct professor at Wagner College and BMCC where he teaches world lit and advanced creative writing. His latest chapbook, There is Always Tomorrow was released in 2017 by Mad Gleam Press. Thomas’ forthcoming chapbook, The Only Gardening I Do is When I Give Up by Poets Wear Prada, is due winter 2020.