Mark Young
6 poems
JPR07
or is it one of my favorite
soaps?—brings back memories
of my Grandma’s kitchen.
Now I make hoecakes regu-
larly. I can notify you when
they’re back in stock. While
waiting, listen to this rhyming
storyline about little Lulu
& her brother & how rocks
occasionally break in two at
the sound of her cuckoo clock.
Where can s/he be?
night I listen to
Charlie Parker
playing Lover-
man. & inside me
the mixing-booth
of my mind over-
dubs it with
the equally raw
emotion of Billie
Holiday’s vocal
version. The
result a citadel
of grief, an expo-
nential anguish.
La Carriole du père Junier
get around to turn-
ing the calendar over to
a new month. December
in this loose collection of
post- & past impressionists
is represented by Henri
Rousseau, Le Douanier.
It cheers me up
immediately. But
what a waste. My de-
pression could have
been carried away
in father Junier’s cart
seven days ago.
A different set of infographics
book carefully, replacing the
listed sites of interest with the actual objects when she found them. Houses that had a history, a row of shops,
fountains, parks, the plaza with its famous wall of shame.
Once she had the scene she could
fill it with inhabiants, just as
the book did when it decorated
cathedral ceilings or described
the inside of a hall. Otherwise
façades, or acts of stagecraft.
Walls that flickered into being
as she approached & hid what-
ever lay behind. She saw the
railway station & walked to-
wards it. Climbed up the steps
to find it was the concourse
where the world came to an end.
Escapology
with drawings, white
noise transversed
by the song of
wild dogs. Given
that it is essential
nothing is left where
more could be added,
where then to hide
the small hint
of hesitation, the door
that leads outside.
rustic saltiness
moving about the Earth’s
surface, leaving a record
only through large-scale
cross-bedding. I am amazed
at how quickly time — a property
not limited to bacterial colon-
ies — goes flying by.
Undulations on a non-
cohesive surface discern
the contours of the conti-
nents. Mega-ripples are
superimposed on large
scale dunes; quantum noise
appears as liquid crystals.
The pullback in platinum
reduces frictional drag. But it’s
that addition of blood
sausage — just like the
kind you’d pick up in
the market in Aix — that
really keeps us rolling.
Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland, & has been publishing poetry for almost sixty years. He is the author of forty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. Recent books include Mineral Terpsichore & Ley Lines, both from gradient books of Finland, & The Chorus of the Sphinxes, from Moria Books in Chicago. A new collection, some more strange meteorites, has just been released by Meritage & i.e. Press, California / New York.