ÿþ<html> <head> <meta http-equiv=content-type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <title>slope 16</title> <style type="text/css"> p,td { font-family: "georgia", "arial", "helvetica"; text-decoration:none; font-size:11px; color:#000000; margin-top:9px; margin-bottom:9px;} p.poem { font-family: "georgia", "arial", "helvetica"; text-decoration:none; font-size:11px; color:#000000; margin-top:40px; margin-bottom:60px;} a { font-family: "georgia", "arial", "helvetica"; text-decoration:none; font-size:11px; color:#77280a; } a:hover { font-family: "georgia", "arial", "helvetica"; text-decoration:underline; font-size:11px; color:#77280a; } </style> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" background="images/bg.gif" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"> <table border="0" width="750" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tr> <td> <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=4,0,0,0" width="750" height="127" id="topmenu" align=""> <param name=movie value="topmenu.swf"> <param name=quality value=high> <param name=bgcolor value=#ffffff> <embed src="topmenu.swf" quality=high bgcolor=#ffffff width="750" height="127" name="topmenu" align="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed> </object> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <img src="images/page_top.gif" /><br /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td background="images/page_bg.gif" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 50px; padding-right: 50px;"> <img src="images/title_new.gif" /> <p><b>Patrick F. Durgin</b> is the author of several chapbooks, most recently the free e-book <u>Sorter</u> (Duration Press, 2001). His poetry and critical writing have been published in magazines including <i>Aufgabe, Chain, Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies</i> and <i>Rain Taxi</i>, and will be included in the forthcoming anthology <u>Cities of Chance</u> (Rattapallax Press). He edits and publishes <i>Kenning</i> and lives in Buffalo, N.Y.</p> <p class="poem"> <b>Next Best</b><br /> <br /> The Beginning Of Is<br /> Is In Things By Their Right Names<br /> Names A Paradox So That<br /> That Paradox Redoubles Very<br /> Very Much<br /> Much As One Qualifies A The<br /> <br /> The Next Best Final Perhaps Arc Before the Morse Is<br /> Is Not Clever<br /> <br /> To Outboard At The Source<br /> Nope Not A Lotus<br /> <br /> Continue<br /> <br /> Thirty Voracious Muckity-Mucks<br /> Tangle Clutching Twice The<br /> Genitals Behind It A Deep Culpability<br /> So Tough Is Sobriety Talking<br /> Be There In No Time<br /> <br /> A Beast A Box Of Gears<br /> Lively<br /> <br /> The Heavily Cancelled Light Of<br /> The Moon Is All That s Left<br /> To Daunt Us This<br /> Gets Its<br /> Stubble<br /> <br /> What It Must Be Like It Must<br /> Be Like With Intentions To Be Legible<br /> <br /> Thorns For Left Semantics<br /> <br /> Realtime Theater<br /> <br /> If Love Were Anonymous<br /> Love d Be A Capacity<br /> In Which Knowledge<br /> Serves<br /> <br /> I Think It Ought To Be<br /> <br /> Summer Is<br /> Upon Us<br /> You Can Peel It Off<br /> </p> <p class="poem"> <b>Dark Relief</b><br /> <br /> In the extent to which - in a single but not singular abutment - that reveals but is less<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;revelatory than just fortuitous<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> just <i>and</i> fortuitous - we re behaving just like animals<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> in a "moment" that is the adumbration of its antecedent - a supposed lapse but just a<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;momentary lapse of imagination<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> because we have - if nothing else - an insatiable (but dormant) taste for such "things"<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> the way we want to record even our nightmares - so they ruin the same day twice, secondly as<br /><br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;we set about retrieving them from our "memory" - but never happening upon them<br /><br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;that way<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> it s all in the delivery<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> left to what is right is anywhere as I would say - when you re around everything is described by<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;it - a certain perfect blunder toggling and tussling the effort of that awareness<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> the spirit unless the letter - we do the thinking that never gets done - otherwise we d have to<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;hate it with our freedom<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> the dangling scrape of shopping carts on recycling night - no purport<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> you get on my nerves - but that s where it counts<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> by all accounts - the distraction s the emphasis - the determination the distension - the agony<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;of it all - a pride to die for<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> if you will<br /> </p> <p class="poem"> <b>Relay</b><br /> <br /> <i>Color Music</i><br /> <br /> But if a light head is a symptom<br /> of suffocation less a consensus<br /> to content us<br /> ice floes than<br /> ambience<br /> <br /> listing brings<br /> what carrying<br /> takes<br /> <br /> tremor to thought<br /> and scores things<br /> <br /> so now<br /> or figures as landscape<br /> and stunning a while like so<br /> <br /> a phantom fear of sobriety<br /> makes us hasten we are here and I<br /> have just arrived dualisms in praxis<br /> come to a sheer flammiform techna<br /> <br /> and hollowed ground is something audible<br /> learned amnesia or slim chance we walk<br /> <br /> both counting from one<br /> etymologically we are congregating<br /> and many stranded in attendance<br /> <br /> ricocheting<br /> in the cottony twilight<br /> lamplight echoed<br /> episodically<br /> the vague tarnish of the marching discontents<br /> wafting in columns<br /> at manholes<br /> <br /> and the panoplies come uncaulked<br /> in the calm flirtation<br /> the art of distance traversing itself<br /> a scumbling<br /> design war<br /> <br /> a hostage to a<br /> bleating bourse of ambition<br /> the brittle tourniquet of history<br /> selecting from one<br /> the barbed pores of heritage<br /> <br /> straining for semblance<br /> in gutbucket times<br /> we are syncopating types<br /> </p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <img src="images/page_bottom.gif" /><br /> </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>