James Belflower, Anne Heide, Michael Martinez

James Belflower, Anne Heide, and Michael Martinez

“Strongman” from—THE CARE WITH WHICH THERE IS

_____

My concern for every aspect of him, lately bending [1]

Older, I am unsure if ever I saw him all [2]

Yet I the room, as if through holographic rent [3]

The holograms gone are remnants of registry [4]

_____

His thick knees spread round the edge of the hologram [5]

His substance lewdly pierced [6]

_____

Maybe his baseball bat [7]

You see the round end yellow [8]

Bat within a thin wood grain that somehow avoids the stain [9]

_____

As the frame sleeves ball knowing wood [10]

As infant in tandem conjunction [11]

_____

Notes:

1.

as particular:

white hand

black gloved

(red stitching leaning

up his wrist)

fingers dispersed between

each finger, first one,

around the other

like a black gloved hand

his tight digit pinches the ball

another white… punch-up.

2.

I saw him at all. My basic Mark McGwire.

3.

The gleam, and yet, his gleam, in one swift reach.

4.

Free expansion of the baseballs,

ejecta, until they run aground

at which point, halt

so the entropy will quiet you, contained

the game quiets the eyes; sweeping up

a shell of shocked audience and then

the degrees of freedom-pitches,

renounce the hero-game, dear world.

5.

The first player in my wide, wide world

given any boy of his, I’m it.

Finite, compact region of picture-taking

edge of edge, we’re a pair.

Space is known as widow-light

natural light to photograph

a critical moment, us beautiful

density, a doll of evidence

concerning we two.

The ego is fundamentally

dependent upon external object. Him.

Cauterized hoof-prints in quenched sand.

6.

My hero I love my hero.

7.

Bat hooked in pinkie

between palm; all information

enters the horizon

think “swings,” red

here, crimson event!

Jersey, white stripe, sleeves,

“C” on red cap, our basic particulars:

as the so-called thief

an "individual" name

matures and enters, a body of water,

(predicate only the true similitude)

8.

My physiqued counterpart, language-soaked, I’m ready.

9.

To defer or postpone the "I" the

younger “I” will merge into water

which presents him

in a tricky craft, itself in the particles

of torn cotton i.e.

(the Materia into the third Principle that determines the free energy that is proceeded out of the eternal Nature)

10.

Handless

who are my game.

the inheritance of photograph.

11.

An Ideal-Infant

which expands from its own heavy

momentum through its surface,

water-dive and floating.

In my picture, ugly.

It bounced off the reflected light,

emulsion: this "other" evaporated Rose

in the foreground.

Linguistic framework elaborated,

consumed my mere Grace.

_____

James Belflower’s first book of poems, Commuter, is forthcoming from Instance Press in 2009. And Also a Fountain, his collaborative echap with Anne Heide and J. Michael Martinez, is out from NeOPepper Press. He was a finalist for the 2008 National Poetry Series and won the 2007 Juked Magazine poetry prize. His work appears, or is forthcoming in: Jacket, EOAGH, Denver Quarterly, Octopus, LIT, First Intensity, 580 Split, Konundrum Engine, and Apostrophe Cast, among others. He runs www.PotLatchpoetry.org, a website dedicated to the gifting and exchange of poetry resources.

Anne Heide is the author of two chapbooks, Specimen, Specimens (Etherdome), and Residuum::Against (Woodland Editions). Her work has appeared in various journals including New American Writing, Notre Dame Review, New Orleans Review, and Court Green.

J. Michael Martinez received an M.F.A. from George Mason University. His poems have appeared in New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review and others. He is the recipient of the 2009 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and was the winner of the 2006 Five Fingers Review Poetry Prize. He is co-editor/co-founder of Breach Press and has poems forthcoming in the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde Latino/a Writing. He currently teaches literature and cultural studies at the University of Northern Colorado. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

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RECONFIGURATIONS: A Journal for Poetics & Poetry / Literature & Culture, http://reconfigurations.blogspot.com/, ISSN: 1938-3592, Volume Three (2009): Immanence/ Imminence