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Michael Rothenberg’s poems have been published widely in literary magazines including Exquisite Corpse, Berkeley Review, The Cortland Review, Sycamore Review, Ironwood, Pearl, Rockhurst Review, Rolling Stock, Lungfull, and others. He has published several books of poems including Favorite Songs, Nightmare of the Violins, What The Fish Saw, Man/Women and The Paris Journals. In Fall 2003 Unhurried Vision will be published by La Alameda Press and Grown Up Cuba will be published by Il Begatto Press, Amsterdam. He is author of the novel Punk Rockwell (Tropical Press). Publisher/editor of internet magazine Big Bridge ( www.bigbridge.org )and Contributing U.S. editor of the CDROM journal papertiger, Rothenberg is also editor of Overtime, Selected Poems by Philip Whalen (Penguin Putnam, Inc.), and As Ever, Selected Poems by Joanne Kyger.

Concrete sky dwelling of stars skyline bending
Helicopters, sirens mating songs around a crime
Crush that between lungs and spine spitting daisies
Yachts trail speechless scars resurrect seal

Channels born of days populated by affairs
They turned a profit and got laid in the transaction
Seagrape & sand spit barrier island mangroves
One day Hart Crane came and built a bridge

Mainland beyond boundaries drunk in The Atlantic
Harvesters, tillers, industrialist fill and grow
India, Ecuador, blue temples wavering mirror walls
Perception is nothing but an impersonation

Community & education possessed utopian libraries
Culture mattered would survive bomb, population
Have I finally lost faith or is this the grace
From which faith is phoenix born in the dark night

Of the uneventful soul boxing around the amber
Lamps that frighten off cat-burglar, demons
Under the bed, hedge, terror of total known
Curse you chicken shit troubadours crippled by

The experiment, shamed by exposure for position
The game is Yellowstone National Park and diners
Hot apple pie, vanilla milkshakes, pork noodles
Steak still blood on the bone marbled so you taste

The fat, slaughter, life, pursuit, commerce, death
That makes the world, cosmos, universe soak itself
In gravity, anti-gravity, vanish and be whole, all
The District of Colombia, Kabul, London, Miami

The monuments of predatory flyways reenactments
Of holocaust, apocalypse, generals, foot soldiers
Camouflaged peacekeepers, champions of Oz
Behind the curtain, iron or bamboo, and in the majesty

Of the curtain itself is the awe high flourishing
Wealth. We were thrashing here encased infectious
Weeds, thorns, vines, milk weed, nettle sap, bee sting
And the pain is luxury, the prison is divinity, ruthless

Promises kept within the story long after the proof
There would be nothing to denounce without
The pronouncement of effervescent love-lit hope
Out there in the crowd, in the torn mourning of family

Sapphire rings on the pinky of a hoodlum
There’s more to hunger than the cold barbed-wire eye
Follow me down to the top, loss is lust, Mother
I am never alone, desperate in hand-me-down ash

Green pelicans and Hare Krishna, purple elephants
Some strangers hand, smile or sequined perfume
You know, you know, you know. That’s plenty

December 30, 2001