Category Archives: Poetry

“When I Die Someone Just Fuck My Body Please” – Poetry by Ian Kappos

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Mannequin de Salvador Dali – Raoul Ubac

“When I Die Someone Just Fuck My Body Please” is Ian Kappos‘ punker-than-hell poem from our Summer 2017 issue.

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NO CHECKERED FLAG FOR ME as carsick I       cross the divide the
closest there is       on this side of town to a demilitarized
zone between the living       & the dead         I       watch an obese
woman lean over a gravestone drawing thru straw unmarked cup stomach
turns     liver face up       kidneys & jelly knees I’m       not sure if we’re
even related       in the chapel outrageously symmetrical floors a big brave
fuck you to disorder take   that death/ now I need to learn real fast how
to hug a man you know the type     strong concrete beer-gut good humor
lives at the race track fresh oil change eyes
bends             left in grief       we’re all of us staring at the body burping up
lies how beautiful the blouse is & happy but she looks
terrible I mean what sick roughshod     imitation of life is this/  well, case:
roadblock anatomy weird ditches around lips those teeth
pushing eager like I did my time let me out Dali
clock ears & nose in eternal flux of smelling obscene
smell (that’s formaldehyde baby & it’s gonna
cost you)          it just doesn’t       add up, face erasure the glasses
for everyone else’s sake &     you’d be kidding
yourself to think otherwise/ old man
shoulders quivering now saying      how he
fell asleep           by the casket       & dreamt I thought she & I’d just
hop right up &                    get out of here.             & it hits me then
the flowers       shitty carpets canned          flute music CD & pickled
grief repeating       void whistling          closed inside the straw why even
pretend/ I’m no iron       stomach is the woman at
the gravestone dead yet am I a fucking mannequin how       will
death animate me       fuck all the post-haste posthumous let’s just
go for a            joyride you & me/       get younger while the time is ripe

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IAN KAPPOS was born and raised in Northern California. To date, over thirty of his works of short fiction, nonfiction and poetry have been published online and in print. He plays in the hardcore punk band Cross Class and co-edits Milkfist, and is an MFA candidate in the School of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts. He maintains a website at www.iankappos.net.

“My skin felt too hot” – Poetry by E. Kristin Anderson

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Visual Poems: Tongue Stabbed – Lygia Pape, 1968

“My skin felt too hot” is a powerfully visceral & transcendently surreal poem by E. Kristin Anderson from our Summer 2017 issue.

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LIKE THE FOX, IT’S MOSTLY RITZY,
sort of brainy—that blood just
rolled dreaming into brutality.

I salivate like the earlier poets
flirting with absurd reason,
the doorway to so cold.

Veins willing, I thinned down,
aristocratic, bewildered
as an instant of sharp home.

Those things always
are monstrous, stung trusted,
ridden, swerving to good emergency.

And then, for some reason:

The rough tongue (like shaking hell)
was blood, as if it should have been
strong, out of the best intensions.

I wanted a flush of dissociation;
my repertoire cake sitting
in the center of my stomach.

 

This is an erasure poem. Source: King, Stephen. Christine. New York: Signet, 1983. 17-22, Print.

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Based in Austin, TX, E. KRISTIN ANDERSON has been published widely in magazines. She’s also the author of seven chapbooks, including A Guide for the Practical Abductee, Fire in the Sky and Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night. Kristin is an editor and designer at Red Paint Hill and was formerly a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked at The New Yorker.

“Hope Springs Eternal, or: The Reincarnation of Andy Warhol’s Soul” – Poetry by Ron Kolm

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The iconic pop artist experiences a poetic rebirth in “Hope Springs Eternal, or: The Reincarnation of Andy Warhol’s Soul,” Ron Kolm‘s delightfully surreal contribution to our Summer 2017 issue.

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THERE’S A SLIGHT DISTURBANCE
Among the potato chips
In a pink Tupperware bowl
Sitting on a wooden picnic table
At a Baptist prayer meeting
In Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Now this particular disturbance
Is not man made, nor is it
An act of Nature; it is, in fact,
The awakening of Andy Warhol’s
Reincarnated soul.

What the Hell, Andy thinks,
A potato chip? I silk-screened
Monroe for this?
The guys at the Factory
Assured me I’d come back
As the hippest thing possible
But a potato chip?!
Now, it’s nitpicking
In the extreme
But we should note
That Andy Warhol
Returned as a Pringle,
Not as a real potato chip, a detail
That would have delighted him
In his previous incarnation.

The afternoon wears on,
And one by one his companions
Disappear; Lou, Holly, Baby Jane,
Gerard, Viva, and, yes, even
little Edie — until Andy
Is the only chip remaining.

Please let me come back
As a roll of aluminum foil
Next time, he prays,
As the shadow of a large,
Calloused Baptist hand
Blots out the sky above.

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Continue reading “Hope Springs Eternal, or: The Reincarnation of Andy Warhol’s Soul” – Poetry by Ron Kolm →

“Delicate / Cheap” – Poetry by Jessie Janeshek

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“Delicate / Cheap” is one of five quintessentially flappy poems by Jessie Janeshek in our Summer 2017 issue.

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I’M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU                                                            doped and thick
                  not going to kill you                                                       old shouldered
       red incense        red saints
but Paris was one of my places
                  where they kept saying                                               seaweed and ketamine
and           what is the name of your station?

 Delusion is one kind of service
                  and beauty is truth                                                        in drink and black roots.
Harlouche stories are blue
                  Theda Bara reading your Tarot through three generations
transmuting frustration-green snakeskin
                  around her an aura of snow.

Step down/open up                                                                         an era of bad on both sides
                  New York City                                                                   an ice blue Saturday night.
                  Move through the store                                                                w/ your blue eyes on top
tableted paper or pills.                                                                    Figure out Marilyn
                  in front of the falls or the fog.
The world was so friendly                                                              the bridal veil slick
                  her walk opening up
but what is your signal?

We weren’t the brownettes                                                            throwing shoes or preserving
                  the notion of marriage
flickering cocaine                                                                               and vanitas into each other
                  how Baby moved                                                              in her sailor blouse
                  transmuting Vs                                                                   toward rot at the altar
wouldn’t drown out                                                                           in her white fur at night
                  and so what if it was puppetry
kabuki and pretty                    when they kept saying
                  we can’t believe Harlow’s no more
                  and what are we doing it for?

 

Note: A few phrases in this poem are taken from page 317 in the sixth edition of the Radio License Q & A Manual by Milton Kaufman (New York: John F. Rider Publishing, 1957).

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JESSIE  JANESHEK‘s second full-length book of poems is The Shaky Phase (Stalking Horse Press). Her chapbooks are Spanish Donkey/Pear of Anguish (Grey Book Press, 2016), Rah-Rah Nostalgia, (dancing girl press, 2016), Hardscape (Reality Beach, forthcoming), and Supernoir (Grey Book Press, forthcoming). Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010) is her first full-length collection. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an M.F.A. from Emerson College. You can read more of her poetry at jessiejaneshek.net.

“Spider-Woman” – Prose Poetry by Satoshi Iwai

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Illustration to “A Week of Kindness” – Max Ernst, 1934

“Spider-Woman” is one of three haunting and fantastically surreal prose poems by Satoshi Iwai in our Summer 2017 issue.

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SHE IS FALLING DOWN from a height of 30,000 feet to the thoughtless land where she has served as a careless agent. Someone whom she has never known betrayed her and bombed the airplane. Watching her colleagues being carbonized in every second, she wonders whether the thread of her white silk dress is longer or shorter than 30,000 feet. The hem of the dress was cut by a broken glass when she was thrown out of the window. The glittering thread is being unweaved in every second. At a height of 20,000 feet, her butt has already been exposed. At 5,000 feet, she starts shaking with cold. In her eyes, thousands of old spires grow bigger and bigger. Her grief and shame reach a height of 30,000 feet along the white silk thread.

An hour later, she is still falling down while the coroner pours her brain tissue into a small cup.

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SATOSHI IWAI was born and lives in Kanagawa, Japan. He writes poems in English and in Japanese. His English work has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, RHINO, Small Po[r]tions, Your Impossible Voice, Poetry Is Dead, and elsewhere.

“Molecular” – Poetry by Kofi Fosu Forson

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Untitled (Phallus Girl) – Hans Bellmer, 1964

“Molecular” is one of three subversively sensual & supremely surreal poems by Kofi Fosu Forson in our Summer 2017 issue.

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INTO THE LACERATION human body suspended divine cathartic thing
An anus mount. Figure formed penetrating to assume role of Alpha.
All that there is, denouement. Capricious as phallus-erected-god(dess).
Within resurrection this being governs a king made submissive queen
Neither sensory nor circumcision feeling person pure in luminescence.
Lamprey kiss, long limbed leg on leg, fortuitous embrace. My brossa
I am bro. Butch temptress on air, Omega having spun her life cycle.
Bars uphold weight, flesh and bone. Pillar points where the head
Meets the feet. Erroneous adventures, our false selves decapitated
Either or dethroning, crown relinquished, disrobed. Nude culture,
Tempestuous taste. In the droned season, ghosts give off sensations.
What we become, maturation from thought-positivity, embryo, cell.

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Continue reading “Molecular” – Poetry by Kofi Fosu Forson →

“Summer Water” – Poetry by Sarah Bridgins

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Woman with a Glass of Wine – Lovis Corinth, 1908

“Summer Water” is one of two witty & intoxicating poems by Sarah Bridgins in our Summer 2017 issue.

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I’M NOT AN ALCOHOLIC,
but I lie to my psychiatrist
when he asks
how much I drink.

I come from a long line of women
who luxuriate in pain
adorn themselves in velvet trauma,
spend their days
in coffin-dark rooms
using wine and longing
to summon dead loved ones.

All I want to do
is play chess
with a set made from dead mice,
read books about women
who were murdered
by strangers,
take boiling hot baths
in dirty tubs.

In a crowded bar,
I spill whiskey on my leg
and rub it in.

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Continue reading “Summer Water” – Poetry by Sarah Bridgins →

“Caulking the Wagon” – Poetry by Devin Kelly

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A classic computer game inspires meditations on suffering & struggle in “Caulking the Wagon,”  one of two darkly beautiful & profoundly moving poems by Devin Kelly in our Summer 2017 issue.

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after Nate Marshall’s “The Oregon Trail”

IN THE CLASSROOM, I GATHER KIDS around & make them relive
my childhood. I type their names into the wagon, call myself
a carpenter because I know a wheel will break eventually.
I have no desire to spend my money on what can be repaired.
Dirty sweat & knowledge. The human condition is always
in need of upkeep. Because I know a house is not a home,
I ask them to imagine our wood lined with fur, a mess
of rug begging for the shaking out. We will take turns.
We will leave as the last frost thaws free the first flowers
of spring. There’s no option to pause the game & bend
to harvest milkweed. There was no vase for sale
in Independence, Missouri. We will deliberate the crossing
of water, delegate the tasks required to caulk the wagon –
who here has not hammered tar-soaked cotton into a wedge
in order to keep their body dry? How easy our suffering,
that we may make the pace grueling. How we stop
to view a tombstone & laugh when Michael dies
of dysentery. In our heads we know there is no time –
we will bury his body with the one shovel we own,
taking turns in heat, & leave above him just a pile of stone
some stranger might use to bludgeon an animal into meat.
                                                                              This isn’t real.
Not the sun, not the pixelated bullet slow-twirling
to kill the buffalo, not the purple mountains swirling
round the plains. When I was younger, I believed
in this nation’s majesty, each loss a synonym for some
greater gain. But look. Even here, the children are dying
one-by-one, lost first to cholera & water, then to what
this game offers no name. A bullet, a color, a wrong place
once thought safe – call the outside of this school a mass
grave, a massacre, a high mass turned toward God in a language
riddled with blood. The oxen are bowing their knees, bending
weary heads to push the earth away. There are no pixels
in heaven. There is only the song of your life sung backward
through the mouths we call the stars. You listen & feel
the wagon wheel’s roll, the crunch of it winding in reverse,
the land unbound & unnamed, the paper turning back to trees,
the trees un-leaning their way toward sky, all of eternity
driven back to dawn. By which I mean the promise of something,
that slick patch of morning when what you expect is the same
as what you hope. When my father returned from the West
he brought back a soft pack of cigarettes & a custom
cowboy hat. His mother was still alive. Later, no one sang
at her funeral, or if they did, I don’t remember. There was
only my father & his returning no longer a story & how his brother
left for West so many years ago & never came home. Most days
I want to give in to nostalgia, surrender my body to the burn
of light curling at the edges of a memory, trade old stories
like currency.  Sometimes the going-on is the dirty speckle
on the petal of a rose, beauty gone to hiding. There’s no option
to turn back, the kids say. How will we carry all that meat onto
the wagon? The sky does not look like that. They sigh. They moan
open their mouths like fish to unhook themselves from twine. This game
sucks, they say. This game sucks, this game sucks, this game sucks.

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Continue reading “Caulking the Wagon” – Poetry by Devin Kelly →

“Mercuria, the AndroGenie” – Poetry by Zoel Paupy Stirner

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Venus – Walasse Ting, 1980

The grand finale of our Spring 2017 issue is Zoel Paupy Stirner‘s bawdy, lyrical epic poem / post-modern sailor’s shanty “Mercuria, the AndroGenie.” 

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STICK MY JUNK IN A BOX? / only if we’re talking ’bout Schrodinger’s
Yet with a bod like a vase / I sure ain’t boasting no dough figure
cause I sport no bigger a waist / than a glossy fat-shame trigger
yet no smaller my nates / than your own favorite pop singer’s
and if we’re talking ’bout face / mine’s as good as it gives
plump lips like felt lace / where I hook my svelte finger
and my beard’s long and dark and / carefully grizzled
into which I comb petals / among crumbs of old vittles,
stogie butts and gnawed bones, / glit-ter and dried spittle
I shake out my mane as I girlishly giggle
“Mercuria’s here, who’ll buy me a drink?
step quick to me, children / fate comes fast as a dink”

And the barman will nod as a queue quickly forms
Old men and young women, students fresh from their dorms
who’ve heard the queer tales of my magical wiles
stories teased out through whispers and half-ashamed smiles
A weaver of wishes / A teller of truths
A seer of souls / and a good lay to boot
Breasts that spill milky from a red-sequined dress
and gams that cross coyly, grained black like hir chest
with curling dark hair, refused to be shaved
but take care not to stare, lest you find Mercuria’s gaze
upon you and pleasure forever denied
along with your fate, to live haltered and blind

So they say, So they say / though my work’s still much stranger,
to portend’s my play / and your love is my languor

For every augur, a glass / mine’s a lipstick stained beer-mug
For every Samson, an ass-bone / and a fond parting ear-tug

“A prostitute priestess?” / “A hermaphrodite Christ?”
“Nailed ‘gainst the loo boards most ev-er-y night?”

All this, lovies, my dovies / All this and much more
Mercuria’s Queen where the sky strays the shore

Continue reading “Mercuria, the AndroGenie” – Poetry by Zoel Paupy Stirner →

“Nine Masks” – Poetry by Gregory Crosby

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Old Woman with Masks (Theatre of Masks) – James Ensor, 1889

We love our masks here at FLAPPERHOUSE, so of course we fell hard for “Nine Masks,” a sequence of mythical, mystical poems that Gregory Crosby contributed to our Spring 2017 issue.

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{ Mask of Born-to-be-head-of-the-world }

WHEN YOU PULL THE LIGHT ASIDE, THE DARKNESS
shines through, sable & smoky, a river
at midnight. A baby in bulrushes
doesn’t cry but makes a sound not “just like”
rushing water, but is rushing water:
a sweet gurgle of time, a waterfall
of eternity. History is the
barrel & we are all in it except
you, child. You are watching from the shore,
staring down into the mist you adore,
the one place where you can’t see anything,
the one place you’re free to forget your face,
imperious & blank. Out on the banks,
the daughters of Pharaoh stare into space.

 

{ Mask of a Supernatural Being }

THERE IS NO REASON WHY I SHOULD NOT BE,
but reason precludes me. I am proximate
without being near. I am forever
unclear in my perfect clarity.
I am great & terrible & worthless.
Anyone can wear me out, anywhere.
I dream your haunts more than I haunt your dreams.
I am the false face made real by the seam.

So why do you believe me when I tell
the tall tale of the heart’s desire?
Why do you believe me when I tell
the beginning of the beginning of
the beginning, without end? Why do you
cover your eyes with eyes as empty as mine?
Continue reading “Nine Masks” – Poetry by Gregory Crosby →