Three Poems
The Shaggers and The Tragediennes
sending her a dime so she can buy Juicy Fruit
Scotch-taping the dime to a piece of paper
when did I own my first roll of Scotch tape
is the violin plaintive or explosive
can I see your tennis bracelet
do you wear it in the shower
a pearl with an inaudible word attached to it
oboe entrusted with symbolizing the will to wander
Todd swam in the polluted river
a risked life is a Todd life
enlarged adenoids is a brother illness
in a herring jar
anus of sunbather visible near photographer’s jumper
a Berlin anus apparently
without sexual meaning
simply a love of nature and Vitamin D
two bands performed at the party
the vertical band was the Shaggers
the horizontal band was the Tragediennes
the Tragediennes and the Shaggers had a bake-off
the Shaggers baked the winning cake
it stood diffident and rude on its summit
Todd’s daughter Evelyn played harp in the Tragediennes
she baked a lament pie
no one voted for the lament pie
Evelyn’s lament pie an embarrassment and a fiasco
a sick mellifluousness overtook Todd as he lay in bed
contemplating sidereal geography
this statement is true
the symphony you considered a masturbation epic
included a ritornello
devoted to the defenestrated jock
ouch says Todd
Evelyn says we need more treble
the Shaggers and the Tragediennes destroy the government
I work for the government in a back office
an office so insignificant you would need to pile up your regrets for fifty years
before you could begin to comprehend
the empire’s diapered minutiae
Accurate Pralines
according to Mercedes McCambridge
I gargle with Vitalis
but Vitalis is a hair tonic
not a mouthwash
I paid tribute to tribadism
while climbing a steep hill
Jiffy Pop is always relevant
on Mount Atlas if your follicles
are majestic and authorized
Mercedes wasn’t credited in Touch of Evil
I excise father from the Marlene Dietrich
circuit of relevance
a difficult circuit to justify or explain
on Monday morning
when I wore a tunic in the studio
to worship the bygone category of hippie
like Jeanne Moreau in Querelle
are you stirring risotto alla Milanese
in 1990 in a stiff pot
no death is justifiable
said Auntie Em
taking punitive note
of Dorothy’s oneiric truancy
why are pralines accurate
are you the victim of their accuracy
from Belgium in a wooden box
with straw to protect the perishables
Veiled Dance
after my friend's mother died
he gave away her clothes
she was a flashy dresser
in photos she resembles Cher
my friend gave me three items
scarf, bolero jacket, dress
the dress is the center of this story
pocked by eyelets
I can’t speak about the dress
it stymies speech
friendship dress not to be explained
like a tank top
except for the frilly collar
if I cut off the collar
and raise the hem to waist-level
I could convert the dress to a shirt
I wore you in my micro-movie
called The New King Lear
in the dress I became
silent Cordelia
I danced like Salome
waiting for her father to relent
fathers are not built
to be cajoled
Lear is not seduced by my dress
though the fabric is pocked
with umpteen
eye-shaped holes
Wayne Koestenbaum
Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, fiction-writer, artist, filmmaker, performer—has published 23 books, including Stubble Archipelago, Ultramarine, The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Circus, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen’s Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). His first solo exhibition of moving-image work, July Synesthesia, took place in summer 2024 at the Millennium Film Workshop. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Whiting Award. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Kathryn Lynch
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Kathryn Lynch received her undergraduate degree from William Smith College in Geneva, NY, and an MFA at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. She was awarded the NYSCA/NYFA artist Fellow in Painting in 2018. She has been invited to Skowhegan, Yaddo, The Marie Walsh Foundation and The Vermont Studio Center. Since earning her MFA, Lynch has held solo exhibitions and participated in well over thirty group shows both nationally and internationally. Her work is in the permanent collections of the University of California Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA and Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN, as well as many corporate collections, including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and the Millennium Art Collection in the Ritz Carlton, Battery Park, in NYC. The artist lives in Catskill, NY, and works in a curated artist campus called Foreland.