Thursday, May 9, 2024

Screen Dump 758

You practice your lines in a two-way mirror
plagiarizing last night's notes
ghosts escaping into the semantic other
balancing tongues
at least believing such
that this is the way you have learned
to manage the world . . .
to manage you in the world . . .
Something will come undone . . .
You will then fondle happy moments
lipsyncing the middle of a chapter
from your childhood's diorama
carried along by the current . . .
your grocery list sheepishly revealing the answer 
to a question you have yet to ask . . .
the neighborhood's scammed
as odysseyites fill their foreigns with ancient myths . . .

Kate Barry




Thursday, May 2, 2024

Screen Dump 757

Your earlier self inhabits the body . . .
A trolley on a back street searches for passengers
who were meant to be elsewhere . . .
You'd better not hear me say that! . . .
the weird aftertaste when you at least tried . . .
then the green of a standin
asleep in the other room . . .
Yes, perhaps the endgame
which if nothing else will stoke the confusion . . .
Someone will be kicked to the curb
before the overflow is reckoned with
and rendered inconsequential . . .
You began the conversation on a positive note . . .
a concert A? . . .
yes, that's it, you said, recognizing
the ramifications of a lost lyric
in the early morning, no, no, not that,
it wasn't that, I'm sure . . .
It's not about making the cut
the call and response . . . that sort of thing
reconfigured from audio files
dropped off at a transfer station . . .
It's about a musical suite in a stand of pines . . .
Can you imagine the confusion
of a left turn . . . then another . . . and another? . . .
Nervous motion, head jerks, tics, shouts . . .
The sinister recording of happenstance
followed by a rewind, a retelling . . .

Eva Torkarchuk



Monday, April 22, 2024

Screen Dump 756

Recall the chef you went to high school with
deboning your salmon steak
while in an antechamber
a one-nighter riffed on a Fender? . . .
You wanted so much for it to be . . .
The deck is stacked but you know that . . .
Veganism? . . . OK, veganism . . .
There's loneliness in acceptance, yes? . . .
The time your pickup broke down
leaving you stranded in nowhereland
only to be dropped off at a subway stop
staring at the third rail
as if onlookers refused the magic
of your harmless costume . . .
And later at the bus stop
where rehearsals got out of hand
and the day became a graphic novel
in a strange tongue . . .
You knew this but continued your renderings
rubbing your hands together between your legs as if . . .
As if, what? . . . As if the director would call a reshoot? . . .
Take a moment to close read your journal
then return to the diorama of your neighborhood . . .
Forget inevitability . . .

Jan Scholz


Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Screen Dump 755

You're taking a line for a walk
to capture the cherry blossoms along the River Styx . . .
It's a day in someone's life, yes? . . .
The someone who was promised this but given that . . .
How unlikely . . .
Then the excitement of the roles you took on
after the barman's Last Call
bloating your Little Black Book
with fingerprints from your tweens . . .
You were dusted . . . and sent home . . .
Your Hokas make the unseen seen
with canned images from the produce section
of the neighborhood Hannaford . . .
Plans to repair the fence
trampled by wolves in sheeps' clothing
en route to grandma's
await the results of COVID testing . . .
The director of Netflix's Ripley
refuses to believe it . . . or not . . .
There once was a time . . . you suppose . . .
 




Monday, April 8, 2024

Screen Dump 754

You've become enamored of the invisible,
the mystery of entanglements . . .  
It's not so much the unknown,
it's the excitement
of being seduced by the moment,
the feeling of engagement, a shared journey . . .
The sloop of your dreams, drifting . . .
This performative feeling about writing . . .
that it's not set in stone . . .
that it's not closed down, not done . . . never done . . .
is good! . . .
You wake to an openness . . .
a blank page, an empty canvas . . .
And, no, it's not too late
to resume the close reading of your autofiction . . .
to experience deconstruction . . .
A bookstore materializes long enough
for you to buy your book, which isn't for sale . . .
Someone chimes in with sequencing is arbitrary . . .
Where does that fit in? . . .
Nothing wrong with being inquisitive . . .
Better than being aggressive or defensive, yes? . . .
The slippery slope of misinterpretation? . . .
of misunderstanding? . . .
The time left is now . . .
your experimental film . . . infinitely looped . . .

The Turin Horse (2011)




Sunday, April 7, 2024

Screen Dump 753

A  Polaroid of young people at a beach
and the tale of the white Donald Duck tank suit
dripping with the full catastrophe begins . . .
A return to the days of then
soundtracked by 45s
the carefree exchange of goods and services
Jerry's Long Strange Trip . . .
high heels clicking on a 4 AM sidewalk
following an n of 2 or 3 or 4 . . .
all legs and arms and hair and words
streams flooded with binge
when . . . fanfare, please . . . a bread truck
rolls onto the scene
with Henry Miller at the wheel
Can I give you a lift? . . .
so you climb on
for yet another ride
costumes aplenty
experiences aplenty
memories aplenty . . .
Regrets? . . . A few . . . You too? . . .
La-di-da, la-di-da, la, la . . . à la Annie Hall . . .
years later . . . an ice storm cometh . . .
its outage an insult to the Age of Crocs . . .
The world teeters on the edge
of Hawking's uninhabitable . . .
yoked to this and that . . . this and that . . .
and your hand . . . their hand . . . a full house . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Monday, April 1, 2024

30 days . . . 30 poets . . . 30 poems . . .

Rensselaerville Library's Eighth Annual Poem-A-Day Project
celebrates National Poetry Month
with a new poem by a local poet each day for April’s 30 days.
With this year’s entries, PAD will have showcased
240 poems by 136 poets.
Stop by PADYES for your daily poetry fix!

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Screen Dump 752

You’re inventorying defining moments, trying to decide which one to include in your proposal for grant money to mount your play which you haven’t begun to write, so you're like, This may be a defining moment, with feet entering the five and dime from your childhood, drawn from a linebook by the director of that over-the-top production where everyone was fitted with a body double to stand in when excitement paled, but now with the defining moment head-butting, you turn to noone and begin improvising a selection of Beckettian anecdotes because, just because, you're in the mood to name-drop . . .

Billie Whitelaw in Samuel Beckett's Footfalls (1984)


Thursday, March 28, 2024

Screen Dump 751

This is where the metaphor gets a little screwy
with you playing the part . . . whatever the part may be . . .
knowing that observing the inconspicuous
is your forte . . .
Let's start with an invisible person
sampling poutine at a diner . . .
They leave their cell phone at a bakery
with a baguette and stories to tell . . .
Are they a tourist? . . . Maybe later . . .
Cut to a lump of clay shape-shifting . . .
toggling the fourth wall as if a gift horse's mouth . . .
Are you OK with the vegetables in your garden? . . .
Let your family know . . .
This is important . . .
Family relationships are well worth
their autofictitious melodramas . . .
Think Tolstoy . . .
Everyone thinks about changing the world
and no one thinks about changing themselves . . .
How this came to this is well worth the time
it took for you to open the door to an unknown sound . . .
A cellist in the woods works through a Bach sarabande . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Screen Dump 750

A draft of a manuscript is being read aloud
by a voice from the air . . .
Crows mock crows . . .
You enter the scene idiosyncratically loose
in bib overalls and Mucks
approaching as if in the middle of a paper spree . . .
An unshapely tuft of something begins . . .
It's all about dreamscapes
in Rothkovian colorways . . .
The mist . . . as written, yes? . . .
but why this consequence by an unknown? . . .
I mean you could have just as easily engaged
with the cameras rolling . . . as discussed . . .
I'm not sure you're ready to apply the rules
of present tense . . . when the color of time being
is finished anyway . . . staying out beyond curfew . . .
of course you remember that day
on the street when the rightful owner
emerged from a late-model SUV
and began interviewing you for the next installment . . .

Federica Putelli



Thursday, March 21, 2024

Screen Dump 749

You sport incompletion at an archaeological dig
with Etruscan vases and dental instruments
playing the part with players playing root canals
costumed as shattered visages . . .
The lone and level sands pull out into traffic . . .
You disappear into a labyrinth of words
but manage to recite your way out
with No coward soul is mine by Emily Brontë
whose disregard for convention
makes for an enjoyable trek
across the Yorkshire moors of someone's dreamscape . . .

Leila Forés


Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Screen Dump 748

You concede a strange bunch of circumstances
abutting a consolation of sorts
nothing to complain about . . . yet
but someone's interior monologue is about to sound . . .
It could be UPS
in the guise of medievalism or innuendo . . .
You're tizzied over an early arrival . . .
Try not to get hammered again . . . there's no need . . .
not that there ever was . . . at least according to the transcript . . .
It could be just what the doctor ordered
not unlike when your development was muted
and you were on your clovenly way . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Monday, March 18, 2024

Screen Dump 747

Your rhyming dictionary is off the grid
cluttered with words
you meant to Uber . . .
Buybackers stream . . . yet another example
of wardrobe anxiety from your out-and-about days
of celebrity passcodes . . .
This will begin . . . and this too will begin . . .
dreamscapes overshadowing your vintage items . . .
Regressing to some well-worn route
leading to a floor-through apartment
filled with the clarity of your mirror image
warms on the back burner . . .
Nothing is ready for you . . .
Nothing will be ready for you . . .
Appointments are backed into double wides . . .
This is not new . . . consolation prizes
leak language barriers . . . a throwback to the days
you shopped for muffled noises
only to be disappointed by more days of exceptions . . .
or expectations, whatever . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Screen Dump  746

Your costume mishap is a trailer park
and the horses in Patti Smith's
debut studio album are having none of it . . .
eating and drinking their shortlisted lives
in the orchard that went viral
while you studied your reflection
in a glass bead game not unlike Ahab's
he's dead but he beckons . . .
And here comes everybody's electronic music
with Moby whose middle name is Melville . . .

Patti Smith


Friday, March 8, 2024

Screen Dump 745

And now you're cutting and pasting . . .
exiting through the gift shop
with Billie Eilish's What Was I Made For? . . .
An uncertainty about how to live? . . .
A turning like the turning of the seasons? . . .
An image of a face from long ago
but the entanglement is like a train
leaving a station recalled
for a phrase rethought . . .
Enough to cross the bridge
with street cred and sky-high interest rate . . .
Not that you haven't been warned . . .
It's the unremitting arrogance
of a violist da gamba stopping by woods
on a snowy evening quoting from
a remaindered copy of How Should a Person Be? . . .

Leila Forés


Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Screen Dump 744

The tiresome bobbing and weaving
obliterate the string of pearl days
basking in the unseasonable 50s . . .
What you thought you heard
is what you heard . . . at least
according to hearsay . . .
Emptying a bottle of invisible ink
to the Big Pharma of resolution
is an AI monologue composed
not from images but from words . . .
Objections disallowed by dissonance, yes? . . .
How can masterworks survive
in this forensic undercurrent? . . .
A din drifts in from the back room
where pleas are bargained
before headlining virtual tabloids . . .
Your lines riskng enjambment
will doubtless make the six o'clock news . . .

Leila Forés



Friday, March 1, 2024

Screen Dump 743

Lately you've been lapse . . . and why is that? . . .
The intricacies of intimacy
with you elsewhere retooling your philosophy . . .
Nietzsche's We have art so we don't die of reality? . . .
Is that it? . . . OK, I'll play along
with the casual dress code
but now what? . . . now you're complaining
because you're telling me
that complaining kickstarts creating
and isn't that what we're all about? . . .
Like listening to someone's words
as if on the noisy soundstage of a silent film
or listening to a serial open mic reader
whose words supply a different narrative
every time someone texts
or listening to your own words
dress-coded for undertow with boxy takeaway . . .
Illusory, perhaps? . . .
Reupping with the help of an intimacy coach should do it . . .

Leila Forés


Thursday, February 29, 2024

Screen Dump 742

Thinking a reshoot of the end game
is one way to pass this late season snowstorm . . .
The hiking paths wait . . .
This pincushiony dynamic is offputting
to say the least . . . it can't help but raise a flag
to the 365 days of summer . . .
It's something to think about, I suppose,
especially when considering footwear
and the miles and lines to be traversed . . .
I hate to remind you but those cyberdays
keep coming back, their moves color-coded
for easy turnstiling . . . and more . . .
Flat screens are a turn on . . .
Reminds me of Miles cranking out however many hits
to fulfill his contract and join Columbia . . .

Leila Forés


Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Screen Dump 741

You're turning the room inside out
looking for the missing link
you forgot to include in your email . . .
Rhode Island Reds cluck news feeds . . .
the regulated symbol in art
smearing your dreamscape lakeside
with the cinematography grammatical
to showcase your outré demeanor . . .
It's nothing . . . really, this imagining
as if one were willing to retreat
to a safer pop-up monastically . . .
even with everything curated, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Screen Dump 740

You're collapsing the story . . . but why? . . .
Why this segue into alienation
with voices at the back door? . . .
No, not gallows humor, not just yet . . .
You have come too far to fear the end . . .
of course, it's all about coming
at the drama from a distance
all stops pulled out
the perspective just that
and, what, you're trying to reel it in? . . .
You do recall the reshoot
after several lines had been cut
leaving you at loose ends, yes? . . .
a kind of detachment
even about the most intimate of details
fanning out like a stacked deck of cards
with the magician asking you to pick one . . .
There's more to it, sure, but let's not, not now . . .

Antonio Palmerini



Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Screen Dump 739

Fat Tuesday kicks off a super bowl of Cajun gumbo . . .
Cybersecurity mavens schedule colonoscopies
with iCloud colorways
as if keyboarding members of the alphabet
to guide a 20-wheeler through the woods of words
would be enough to maintain a daily stepcount of 10,000
for a buy-back from the gods of uncertainty . . .
Repurposing confidential information next to a dogbed
is a bullet train back to the future
where rehearsals are more rehearsals
and the game afoot raises the stakes
to a sub two-hour marathon
fixed on the window of a Magic 8 Ball . . .
The drama resurfaces in water under the bridge
quenching no one's thirst . . . with you
leaving the table of random numbers without a word
without finishing the song . . . driving away
into sheets of sound . . .

Leila Forés


Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Screen Dump 738

You're riding the shapes of the books you have read . . .
the geometry of stories
etymological underpins
backstories
late night walks - real and imagined . . .
Self-mythologizing life's path or paths
however logical or reverential
may seem, if pressed against a whiteboard,
a mapping of your encounters
etched from bootleg tapes
whose words fill thought bubbles
alphabetizing utterances
from the street, the media, internet feeds . . .
It's not just that though is it? . . .
But what of hopscotching the ongoingness of paradox? . . .
A trifle? . . . the intoxicating trance? . . .
the blindness of happiness? . . . I mean
you seem to be coming into the country of the end game
as it is, or better, as it will be . . . an alternate stage
upon which you can enact or re-enact 
your one wild and  precious  life  . . .

Leila Forés


Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Screen Dump 737

You're shadowing Kafka . . . with pointe shoes
spinning . . . spiraling . . .
into the tremendous world
inside his head 
then it's on to the drone
with the speed of a grizzly
but not whose woods these are . . .
the plaintiff continuing despite admonitions
with someone alleging misappropriation . . .
Again, the unbearable whiteness
before the conductor
raises her baton to begin
reeling-in the orchestra . . .
letting them know
where she wants them to go . . .
giving the impression
they're behind the beat . . .
But they know . . . yes, they know . . .
not unlike the time you waded into the water . . .
baptismally, perhaps? . . .
quoting Gilgamesh
the unbearable heaviness . . .
the emptiness of the endgame . . . moving . . .
wait, not moving, no longer . . .
A matinee . . . but not . . .
flip it . . . to a rendering of the terrain . . .

Leila Forés


Wednesday, January 24, 2024

The Ghosts Among Us

Death bench-presses a cosmos of darkness . . .
a friend's wife . . . a poet's partner . . .
The clock smirks . . .
It's not only life's etch-a-sketches
or the diagrammables
in the Kafkaesque cul-de-sac
but more . . .
which will play out . . . regardless . . .
Acknowledging re-acquaintances will buy time . . .
especially now with the truth-or-dare-isms
repotted in the guest room
where someone's once-and-future . . .
once waited . . .
There will be an ungodly number
of happenstances carried aloft
through the streets . . .
white chariots drawn by white horses . . .
The Trojan Horse will appear . . .
weighing history heavily . . .
And in the final moments of the final quarter
extras as ghosts will fly in
to make it all seem real . . .

Leila Forés


Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Screen Dump 736

Having discarded the template-a-minute app
as an unbearable lightness
confused by impersonators
you engage the drudgery of filling in the slots
while polishing stones from a not-so-hidden cache . . .
Altogether now with meaning, yes? . . .
You're drifting off-course . . .
the day's minutia fogging the lens
to say nothing of wannabes warming up . . .
The little green room is plantless . . .
an amalgam of exchange
without dawn's pristine view
reaching back for a foothold
or facsimile
which in time will revisit this memory . . .
This is not without precedent
but the moment-to-moment displacement
is hard to accept . . . let alone confront . . .
Your call-ins have been duly noted . . . and archived . . .

Leila Forés

Monday, January 8, 2024

Screen Dump 735

As if using a prepared piano
you explore the fringe between music and noise
experiencing emotions
as you write about them . . .
Is that something you even think about? . . .
Meaning? . . .
Cavorting with unbearables? . . .
Not sure . . .
but there always seems to be less to go on
especially when films echo the wavelengths of the lost
sitting with ferals napping on stoops . . .
Confronting silence with veiled undertones? . . .
Interpreted as joy? . . .
It's the presence, yes? . . .
That's it . . . the presence . . .
Questioning the call of odysseyites
inserting  pronouns to enhance palatability . . .
But didn't you say you were confused
by the struggle to make it all fit
into a nice little takeaway? . . .
OK, maybe elsewhere . . .
Forget the trends . . . rampant on the boulevards . . .
There's more to it than that . . .
the pounding at the back door, for example,
or the voided wishes of inoccupants in dilapidated storefronts . . .
It's probably worth the bother . . .
besides we all know you enjoy winging it
with the monochromatic subtones of early morning drivebys . . .

Leila Forés


Thursday, January 4, 2024

Screen Dump 734

The mesmerization of the airbnb . . . a loophole
to magic your audience into hypnotic submission . . .
scripting the maelstrom of your wiles
with alternative mysteries
leading to the decreation of egocentrics
who are left to wander the empty boulevards
of Walmart Supercenters . . .
Your promiscuity alchemical . . . its weird threads
seducing those on the edge of aftermaths
as if feeding an inner mindscape yet to be embraced . . .

Leila Forés


Saturday, December 30, 2023

Screen Dump 733

You've misplaced the opening scene
where you in silhouette
disappear into an apartment building
in a late-night snow storm . . .
Inside the vacant apartment
miniature glass slippers
arranged paradoxically
speak to you extemporaneously . . .
You entertain the notion
of a dentist's appointment
for a loose crown . . .
or an afternoon feeding the bears
that wander onto the knoll
looking for evidence . . .
Nothing can be done about this . . .
Nothing should be done about this . . .
The light will change
but isn't that usually the case
especially when ordering takeout? . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Screen Dump 732

That the magicians left
is a rain-soaked late December morning
in a glut of jaundiced checkmates . . .
Your late night posturing
has opened a cabinet of Caligari moments
flooding a willingness
to split the session for odysseyites
miming on a gessoed stage . . .
The world will begin again
and again
with contemplatives appending
for appending's sake
while you, delightfully costumed,
will be seen through the half-inch
of a window left open
by one of your entourage . . .
moving seductively to Mahler's Fifth . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Friday, December 15, 2023

Screen Dump 731

Your dream sounds a diminished seventh
in a wine-soaked gritty eatery
with you wearing your want in bib-overalls
inventorying the dissonant conversations
that once filled the long, narrow, high-ceilinged
hallway to nowhere . . .
A chance encounter, the makeshift profile
a deluge of lines that grows tired
as you excuse yourself
onto a parallel stage
colored with red collared Maine Coons
big enough to intimidate . . . a perfect fit
for your inscrutable autofiction . . .
How often did standins speak their tongue? . . .
anticipation flooding their ludicrous logic . . .
a takedown by a passing mathematician
whose game theory panoply just out in paperback
leapfrogged to the top of some obscure list
of academic best sellers . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Screen Dump 730

You worry you're spending too much time
within the mirror in the mirror
of your one wild and precious life
memeing Proust's madelaine . . .
burned-out AI memory chips
spewing the anger and anguish
of living in The House of Crazy . . .
You're trying to capture the colors of the 13 moons
but the composition bullies down
the Rothkovian palette . . .
You decide True Blue will do
knowing Michelangelo bailed on The Entombment
because he couldn't afford ultramarine . . .
its extraction and production so prohibitive
that the semiprecious color was restricted
to the Christ and the Virgin Mary . . .
You fear the clock's relentless ticking . . .
Will you return now to the easel with snow forecast? . . .
Will your image remain long enough to be captured? . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Thursday, November 16, 2023

Screen Dump 729

Blue-lined notebooks fat with FAQs sideswipe
with indifference . . .
You deconstruct backstreets
and hang out at a kiosk,
the one with BOGOs of pics
of your former selves -
some then . . . some now -
sorting through fragments
of what might have been . . .
the read-through pristine yet unconvincing
as if bell lappers knew all along
your retreat into the backdrop . . .
There will be additions which you will fail
to anticipate . . . gorging yourself on hasbeens . . .
captivating onlookers with pretense
your costume re-engaging the opening masterfully . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Wednesday, November 15, 2023

Screen Dump 728

Is this why you rise early, brimming with alterations? . . .
Little matter . . . no one will be duped . . .
Nothing incidental here in the foundry of stamped emotion . . .
You can examine it, dissect it, take it for a walk . . .
without recrimination . . . without regret . . .
leaving indelible - and very real - turnabouts
for those who feel nothing about feeling nothing . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Screen Dump 727

And you in the ungraspable somewhere
flopping down on a couch
grabbing the remote
channel-surfing
leaping intuitively to the ending you must have . . .
these mere players playing their parts
their table-reads off the grid
between the lines
improvisational
winging-it
flying by the seat of their pants
scenes colliding, mounting to confusion . . .
The moment to moment . . .
Drafting the incense of homecoming
as you follow the directions . . .
the rights and lefts
climb the stairs, review your notes
one last time before entering . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Monday, November 13, 2023

Screen Dump 726

Your younger self on a dirt bike pulls up to a light
and the cameras roll into the next decade with ins and outs
tumbling through the paper drifts of assignments . . .
That was when you repainted your room
with your altered ego
leaving a memory of special effects in a milk truck
before dawn's early light . . .
The cavalcade of costumes was well worth the tag team takedown
when eyes wide shut for unknown reasons
stepped in from another season of reruns . . .
The confusion addictive
but then we were all in the mix of Mother Jones . . .
the Dickinsonian obliquesness
conducive to auditioning for different roles . . .
a shoo-in for this and that . . . this and that . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Monday, November 6, 2023

Screen Dump 725

Your spectrum of entanglements
continues to tickle comings and goings
Roman numerals stacked
fleeing into an anxious canyon
of choral meanderings
memories flooding the stairwell
evoked by the tracks on your mixtape . . .
You're checking out playlists
trying to throw light on the passage of time . . .
fragmentary dreamscapes
draw you in . . .
You've been tagged for a workgroup . . .
the behind-the-scenes incidence of intimacy . . .
It happens, yes? . . .
The days into weeks into months into years . . .
grasping at fillers to avert the inevitable? . . .
Sitting there,  smiling,
your tongue unleashed from its moorings . . .
unctuous in its wake . . .
as if regression took the wheel from some roadie
when, at the last misstep, you decide
to stay a while . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Friday, October 27, 2023

ars poetica (with a small p)

(reposted from Tuesday, February 15, 2011)

A poem should not mean / But be.
          - Archibald Macleish

Outside, the snowflakes dance a minuet.
Wait a minute.
Do I need outside?
Isn't it implicit?
Outside, the snowflakes.
Inside, a minuet.
The snowflakes minuet.
No! No! Too telegraphic!
Try this.
The waves lap the shoreline.
The shoreline?
How about the shore?
The cat lapping the milk.
A minuet of cats.
And the paperboy?
He too could be pelted with snow.
On the beach?
Yes, on the beach.
In the middle of winter?
Why not?
What about the middle of summer?
What about it?
An evening of minuets.
Outside?
Yes.
Under the stars?
Of course.
The empty parking lot filling with snow.
Tracks.
In the snow?
From the dancers?
Dancing a minuet?
Yes.
Outside?
Yes, outside.
Under the stars?
Maybe.
Implied?
Possibly.
Possibly?
Possibly.
The newspaper is snow-soggy.
I'll speak to the paperboy tomorrow.
Outside?
Wherever.
Whatever.
In the middle of a minuet, if need be.
A paperboy dancing the minuet?
Why not?
As one of the snowflakes?
Yes, as one of the snowflakes.
Wouldn't his legs get cold?
Perhaps.
Are they made of paper?
Of course not.
They're made of snow.
He's one of the dancers.
Of the minuet?
Of the minuet.
The dancers have spent weeks rehearsing.
The minuet?
Yes, the minuet.
And now it's snowing?
Yes, and they're dancing.
The minuet?
Yes, the minuet.
I can see it.
Yes, it'll work.
Outside?
Yes, outside.
Outside, the snowflakes dance a minuet.


Thursday, October 26, 2023

Excited that two of my "woman" poems (below) have been selected by Upstate Artist Guild artists as prompts for paintings to be included in exhibitions at Troy's Fish Market Gallery in November & Albany's Food Co-op in December.

Woman XVII

She enters my dream
through a side door
a blues harp player
in snakeskin boots
and weathered jeans.
Getting out of bed
I slip on a musical note.

Woman XXXIX

She says she wants to ride
and pulls up on her Harley.
I roll my Schwinn
back into the garage.

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Screen Dump 724

With irrevocability looming, how can you be sure? . . .
Unlocking the tee-time,
OK, I get it,
but let's face it, it's nothing,
days pummeled with coffee and Danish . . .
No one in the know . . .
No other way . . .
The joint had to have been bugged, yes? . . .
Subjects flashing tenure, mashed with newsprint . . .
Opening statements . . . gappy, medieval references . . .
The room in stitches . . .
Talking heads . . . He walked! . . .
despite the fact they had chauffeured the 12 angry men
in an unmarked vehicle, windows blackened . . .
Yup, closed-mouthed
for the rest of the show, they were . . .
It was positively 4th Street, or maybe 5th, I forget . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Thursday, October 5, 2023

Screen Dump 723

Your past lives gather in a room filled with familiars . . .
You're dumbfounded . . . speechless . . .
standing outside in knee-high grass . . . green and metronomic . . .
An upright bass player on loan from the produce section
of the food co-op runs changes over the retractions
you're riffing . . . prompting you to peel a dead language
from the interim speaker of the House of Crazy
who casts his die midstream and arrives at a reception
where the scene unfolds with blank stares . . .
Your mother's eyes redact the script . . .
A director calls for softer thought bubbles . . .
The move trips a flushed response hurling the entire cast
into the bowels of a banned book . . .
You want this hot early fall day to be enough but it is not . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Friday, September 29, 2023

Screen Dump 722

You draw a line as if the why is adrift
in a soon-to-be-predicted snowstorm
when incomplete sentences flurry
and you, jacketed against the cold,
attempt a semblance of sanity
while talking heads feel compelled to cosplay . . .
The moment-to-moment touch and go diminishes . . .
especially now with crumpled scripts
cluttering the gazebo
where an Anthony Hopkins' lookalike
walks you through the proof with:
Let X equal the cold . . .
In real life, it’s not that simple . . .
In real life, it takes a long time to break the ice . . .
the entire ordeal offputting  . . .
You worry tragedians . . .
You confirm the faces comprising your past selves
which your therapist, confusingly, demurs . . .
Yet, a brisk walk awaits . . . so you leave, quoting Woolf:
If a writer were free, there would be no plot . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Wednesday, September 27, 2023

At the Transfer Station

Rain sheets the windows
of the black Dodge truck.
There’s a young guy
in the passenger seat
and he’s giving you the thumbs up.
His grandfather is unloading the Dodge.
You're getting soaked
wrestling trash bags
out of your SUV
but you stop, put down the bags,
and give him the thumbs up.



Friday, September 8, 2023

Screen Dump 721

The provocativeness of close reading triggers
a memory that will prove your undoing . . .
Still, it's a wonderful life, yes? . . .
Clouds retreat in joy to the core of a volcano
on a remote island in a sea of forget-me-nots . . .
A sidelong glance from before glimmers . . .
You, in the moment, spend the rest of your allotment
running lines from award-winning one-acts
hoping, if nothing else, for a takeaway . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Saturday, August 26, 2023

Screen Dump 720

Wait, there's more . . . it'll come to me . . .
that elusive construct that opens a dialogue
and you're off and running
with depositions about the hazards of following suit . . .
I know you know what I mean
having been interrogated again and again
about the meaning of meaning . . .
You said as much in discovery
and now you're living in a yurt
with midnight puppets
editing autofictions with invisible ink . . .
mirror images reflecting after-hour hookups . . .
It's not so much the tabbing . . . but flipping out
over the admittedly loose adaptation
of a fragmented backstory . . .
And this was elsewhere, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Screen Dump 719

You thought you had the journey all mapped out
dividing days into passionate melodrama or befuddlement . . .
napping in transit as resident fashionista . . .
Ubers and Lyfts at your beck and call . . .
Upgrading short stacks from a Dance Macabre . . .
odysseyites promenading with corpses along the boulevard
only to be messaged stack overflow . . .
That you decided at that point to shuffle the sequence
ballooned the palatability to the delight of standins . . .
You could have danced all night . . . and you did . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Saturday, August 12, 2023

Disconnecting the Dots

(reposted from Wednesday, August 16, 2017)

Sometimes I left messages in the street.
          - David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress

And then Frank O'Hara stopped by.
He's living in a yurt . . . in the 'Dacks
doing this . . . doing that
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!

And how about Gustav Mahler channeling Frank O'Hara . . .
bicycling Bavaria
I seem to be absolutely born for the cycle!
deconstructing Moby's Porcelain
disconnecting the dots
as if it matters . . . and it does . . . but not to
his gorgeous, alcoholic, hearing-impaired,
superflirty, 19 years his junior, wife and muse, Alma,
whose bedpost is mottled
with the notches of affairs.
Billed as the most beautiful girl in Vienna
she believes several men are better than one
and spills as much to Freud one afternoon on his couch.
Never a fan of her husband's music
she chooses none of his for her funeral 50 years after his death.
And here again is Frank:
It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, . . .


Laura Mentink in Wittgenstein's Mistress (2017)












Early this morning, bicycling Route 28 to Inlet:
unforgettable . . .
meandering past pristine lakes, deep woods,
and rustic little towns,
 someone wrote.
I know a moose when I see one.
And I've seen several . . . at Hoss's General Store in Long Lake.
Everything anyone would need . . . or want.
Everything.
Books . . . some read, some unread . . . on my shelves.
OK, so I've skipped a few chapters
and skimmed others
and disregarded enjambments.
Who hasn't?
But really . . . what is this thing called PO-ET-RY?
Without coffee, I mean . . . or, I mean, of course.
And what's with that?
Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends:
A photograph's all that's left of you.
Must we write from prompts?
Or from furniture music, à la Satie?
I am now trying . . . to write upon nothing, Swift said.
Someone keeps elbowing in with irregardless.
Where, oh where, are the grammar police?
Can you spell donuts?
How about potato?
How about VP Quayle's version of potato?
By the way, it's now called Dunkin'.
Dunkirk is showing at Bow Tie Cinema.
Try this . . . but not at home.
This is a text.
I'm embedding pics in a text.
Putting pen to paper . . . sitting on the fence.
Trying to write right
and other absurdities for understudy
by standins . . . and passersby . . . and wannabes
saddled with odysseys.
Three rows over, 60 years ago, in Latin Class
this girl - an upperclassman - in the school uniform
imprisons me in Dr. Caligari's Cabinet
while Julius Caesar divides Gaul into three parts.

Latin Class













Coming Into the Country with John McPhee
who memorialized big rigs and other uncommon carriers
in Uncommon Carriers
after shadowing truckers for a few months.
Something about momentum
and air brakes
and commercial breaks
which speed delusions
with Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man.
I'm out here waiting for the answer with Soren Kierkegaard
the other Dane who loved the rain falling mainly on the plain
in full view of Either/Or
written after breaking up with his fiancée Regine Olsen
using the pseudonyms A for Either, B for Or,
and Johannes Climacus for The Diary of the Seducer.
I can well understand why children love sand, Wittgenstein said.
It's all about castles . . . my home is my castle, yes?
With you bundled with apps . . . one day in the foreseeable . . .
An algorithm walks into a bar . . .
This too will be tweaked . . . and tweeted . . .
to fit the model to the facts
or the facts to the model . . . whichever . . .
before Cicero's Third Oration:
How long, O Catiline, will you tax our endurance?
How long will that madness of yours escape us?
To what end will your unruly boldness hurl itself at us?


Lucius Sergius Catilina













Sound familiar?
This, by the way, is an example of trichotomy,
in full habit Sister Anna Roberta said.
And why the Fates red-carded Caesar
in the middle of the Rubicon
and why Hannibal joined the circus and mastered elephantese.
It comes full circle . . . all of it . . .
the dots connected . . . disconnected . . . fading from view . . .
with paybacks and fallbacks
playbacks and callbacks
wetbacks and drybacks
and boxes of ephemera
near the counter of the old, lamented
Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston,

Dan Chaisson wrote in The New Yorker
brimmed with
mangy postcards
wedding announcements
lobby cards
vinyl LPs
hippie stickers and patches
Civil Defense pamphlets and evacuation maps
poker chips
Old Maid decks
and skinny dogeared self-published PO-ET-RY chapbooks
filled with messages in the street.

Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop

Thursday, August 10, 2023

Screen Dump 718

Rehearsing lines for detox where talk-talk is restrung
with unwords for transposition . . .
rearranging the furniture of the mind
to extract the right answer by rewording the question . . .
Of course, the drama of the get-go
with the feel of a silent movie . . .
eyes darting around the corners of the room
as if a mouse had sped past
slamming down chunks of cheddar
trailed by a reconfigured tabby . . .
The flattish physiognomy of the perp
under the cold, bleary sheets of confusion
opens the key to eventual deformity . . .
To hear the little click for another season of reruns . . .
is OK . . . even par for some of the players
chomping to borrow a phrase
for when the lake freezes over
with you dotting the horizon in yet another rewrite
of your one wild and precious life
bought and sold by plagiarists
shoplifting future episodes for junkyard flaneurs
in search of thought bubbles
floating above orphaned backstreets . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Monday, August 7, 2023

Screen Dump 717

Content providers are providing content
for weekend do-it-yourselfers . . .
Why did you walk off the set? . . .
The troubling aftermath of parsing the logic
long listed drip-dried
up and out . . . into and out of the tropes
clutching the elusive, the untranslatable . . .
chopping and framing the sum of its parts
to evoke the essence of absence . . .
You're drowning in word soup and loving it . . .
backstroking to Nothing Compares 2 U
while down-time and emptiness haunt the backstory . . .
Wouldn't you rather smirk the passcode
reminiscing short stacks in the greasy spoon
of one of your past lives
when odysseyites stood on their heads
and busied themselves
assembling paraphernalia
for your next expedition
into a supermarket's labyrinthine aisles? . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Screen Dump 716

A long hauler paging through the elements
and with that, the scene shifts
summoning a fact-checker
to fact-check the epigraph on tippy-toes
when all seemed taken by the virtual bridge
you had conjured the morning after . . .
Where were you on the night in question?
You seem never to tire of that . . .
Approaching it as if this is it
as if this time is it
as if toggling the options . . .
The events in the just-released transcript
by the just-released who had long been forgotten by most . . .
But that was long ago
to say nothing of your selfish devotion to your art . . .
And then this happened
with the weird-ass energy of the woebegotten
and you bejeweled with scrimshaws
sitting among the antique furniture in the atelier
blue-penciling diatribes . . .
Was there no other way? . . .
What was that anyway? . . .
The dynamics of engagement, perhaps? . . .
The regrettable choices? . . .
The nomenclature of streaming seems to have caught on
as a contender for an individual's legacy
revealing the contents of the steamer trunk hidden in the attic
having been asked on facebook chat what's important . . .
Weathering love's inconsistencies
you may want to consider the language of divinity schools
where the shades of gray are Wac-A-Moled into submission
to the delight of those on the wait list . . .

Antonio Palmerini