EMERSON
by Dan Svatek

IN PLACE OF PERSEPHONE
by Penn Kemp


Here I hide in darkness,
sullenly squeezing red
pomegranate seeds.

There was a field of flowers,
viper's bugloss, blue and red.
Their pink buds brighten crimson,
violet and then deep blue.

Sometime I will return.
Not now. Too much hurt
reverberates the will.
The bright sky shut my eyes.

The mothers still curse me with sharp
insatiable teeth, hissing through gaps.
His mother. Hers. Her. And likely yours.
The generations swell enraged.

I chew the pomegranate slowly.
No gaps in my teeth. Here I am
young. I am beautiful. Eating
this fruit I am almost inviolate.

I am the unfading flower.
I disappear half a year.
They seek me out. Close.
I am in. Closer. Closet.

The power grows in me.
The will to be different
from them. To effect
change.

I become what I'm called.
Rage prances, it dances
with jabs neat and sharp.

I don't know for how long
before the red bull roars.

The sweet surge rises,
floods till it's over.

Power spent, futile.
Ineffectual. In effect.

Ranting in the wrong ears.
Pluto never listens.



from Binding Twine.

FARE TRADE
by Penn Kemp



I would eat local food only were it not for temptation.
A green invitation of open avocado in emerald halves.
An alluring variety of mango hot to eye, cool to tongue.


The seduction of dark chocolate.
The slurped fulfillment in oyster.
The simple necessity of rice.


Otherwise, I would be content with my yard's fall produce.
But having tasted the world's fare, how to return unjaded
to simple pleasures that this ground offers? Beans.
Corn. Squarsh. Corn. Beans. The tree sisters thrive.


Yes, I will eat local food mostly. Except for. Except for...
Accept. Not many claim carrots for their snack. But banana.
Or chocolate. No chicory compares to café au lait. Ole!
Import coffee; import tea! On to political rant:
Our food too cheap, our farmers ruined.
Our eyes closed, we rest easy, spoiled ripe fruit in the docks,
turning sleepy to sun-rotten. Given so much, we reach for more
even when over full. Poems break off as the lunch bell rings.




*

Fare Trade is presented in Penn Kemp's DVD, Luminous Entrance: a sound opera for climate action, which was performed at Brescia University College this year. It can be heard on www. chrwradio.com/talk/gatheringvoices.

Penn Kemp is a novelist, playwright, poet, sound-poet based out of Toronto. Check her out: www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/kemp.

from QUANTUM CHAOS & POEMS:
A MANIFEST (O) ATION

by Cara Benson

Why a poem.

Why not:

Waste of time, energy, materials
Distraction from the real business of living
Cannot emulate reality -- nature's knock-off
Only emulates...
Engenders alienation and obfuscation
Poor man's philosophy
Mother will worry for your future
It will upset the status quo
Fosters solipsism
Fosters elitism
Fosters confidence to write in anyone with an ex-boyfriend, a
mother, or a therapist (it's a given if subject possess all three)
Doesn't sell product
Is barely product itself
BORING!
Unsuccessful attempts at escapism (TV = better)
Difficult / impossible to quantify
Breed flies in bottles*
Weren't those anarchy black coats reading Bukowski or
somebody other like that?
(your reason here________________)
(and maybe here________________________, too)


*(Wittgenstein was said to have thought much philosophy was generating its
own conundrums to solve. Philosophers were not necessarily brighter than most
folks, merely more capable of trapping themselves in linguistic confusion. It was
a matter of, he said, "language gone on holiday." He believed it the philosopher's
duty to "show the fly out of the bottle"; to relieve the mind of confusion.)

George Oppen:
A simple poetic undertaking: to see if life is livable,
to make life livable. Without lying.

Jack Kerouac:
I myself have difficulty covering up my bullshit lies.



*

Quantum Chaos & Poems was published by BookThug in 2008. Cara Benson's latest collection, a series of prose-poems, is called (MADE). She talks about it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTVgNNtmPGY.

Cara lives in NY State, not city, without a TV.

DANCE PARTY FRIDAY!
by Zoe Page

It's Friday night so they’re throwing a dance party in the Mile End for specific people. They do this often, mostly on Fridays. I’m specific, so I go, most always. Where else am I going to get to be specific, like, really specific, flamboyantly specific? All of my specific friends are going to be there, being specific. I feel obligated to go.

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t specific so I could just go to any party, or, truthfully, so I wouldn’t have to go to any parties at all, let alone specific ones. I hate parties, but I feel obligated to go. Plus, I’m lonely. I don’t think that comes with being specific, but the posters for the party tell me that this is the best place to get with specific people, so I go, most always.

At home I put on my red shiny vest and yesterday’s underwear because it’s the sexiest. It’s just plain white cotton but that definitely beats all the other ones. I clean my room just in case, purposely leaving the collage-in-progress, just so.

The nice thing about these specific parties is that I don’t have to shave my armpits, or wear makeup or high heels. I don’t have to feel shame for wearing a sports bra. Radical specificity officially promotes saying “fuck you” to patriarchal beauty standards. In fact, I feel obligated to feel proud of my mustache, to flaunt my belly fat, so that’s what I’ll try to do, at least for tonight.

It’s a small bar on Parc, where the road is widest, where I always lock my bike across the street and time my jaywalk when the tide of cars is far, far away or when the stoplight is red, so I can close my eyes and walk very, very slowly. I’ve never made it to the other side without getting nervous and opening my eyes.

Once I’m on the curb I’m in a face off -- with the too-bright-hot-pink-tube-lighted sign that never even flickers -- it’s got one sure word it shouts over my silence, so what it says isn’t important, I always lose.

Sometimes I have friends and they’re sitting on the steps outside, but not tonight. Just the same smoke-talkers shivering in T-shirts, having heart to hearts and watching me watch them. I might know some of them from somewhere, but they wouldn’t let on. I kick dust and go for the stairs.

Inside the heat frosts my glasses. Arms pull me towards the cashbox, where I’m stamped. A shiny sea of torsos, open mouths and closed eyes, shove-heave through the crowd holding beers like fragile children above their heads. Sex organs bounce in crotch-ripped jeans between bass blasts and hand claps. Everyone seems to be trying to get somewhere else than where they’re standing. The DJ ching chings alone in the corner wearing duct tape pasties, smiling. She looks like she might be having fun.

Someone spills warm beer down my back and I am flung towards the washroom. The toilet has no seat cover, so I take my pants down to sit on it. Oh well I think, even though I’m not here to pee.

The party is muffled, and the stall is a teleport. I close my eyes and my mind travels to memories of other places I’d rather have never been.

My second grade Spanish teacher, Senorita Summers sits on the edge of the school playground at recess, flaunting her pregnant belly like an A on a spelling test. She was really pretty. Pretty like a cabbage patch doll. All the girls stop playing tag and run over to pet the imaginary fetus, a princess shining bright with mucus and blood. I always believed that beneath their cooing voices, and eyes saucy with sisterhood, the girls were conspiring against me. Alas, what they didn’t know, I remember thinking, was that it was in fact a dodgeball under Senorita’s shirt. But I keep that to myself. I don’t know… what made me think of this.

I travel to the conversation I had with that girl I met at the protest today.

“Global warming exists, and it sucks.”

“Yeah, I agree, like, whoa.”

“I totally feel like we have an affinity! Do you totally feel like we have an affinity? I totally feel like we have an affinity! Why? Because you’re wearing that headband with a bike wheel and a heart and not only do I like hearts and not only do I like to bike, but I also think it means you’re a dyke.” And then we held hands and walked off into the sunset, towards a post-penetration anarchist utopia.

Back in the stall I wonder if that really happened, or if it’s just in my mind. Then someone’s banging on the door. Maybe they need to pee, or make out, or wallow in self-pity. I realize I’m wasting my time, I only get to be specific ever so often. I feel obligated to leave the washroom, and go dance. Soon I will have to face the throngs of sweaty bodies, people with just as much torment as me, but who dress better, and who aren’t afraid to bury it in the lips of a familiar stranger or crush it in the space between pants flies, and plus they hide it better too.

*

Zoe Page is a Montreal activist and poet who organizes at the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy and the Union for Gender Empowerment.

Check her out in the Matrix 85 New Feminisms online supplement: www.matrixmagazine.org/2010/02/radical-vulvas.

SPACE! DAD!
by Ian Sullivan Cant & Melissa Bull