Occupy Brooklyn Rail

Several pieces came out of the Occupy reading at Bowery Poetry Club last month that Brooklyn Rail has published in the November issue. These include:

• Theodore Hamm's "Letters to the Mayor"
• Jason Flores-Williams' "In the Battle of the Open Heart"
• Occupennial co-organizer Paul McLean's "A Poem for a Sunday Occupational Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club (10.16.2011)"

The publication contains other terrific #OWS coverage, too.

Below is one of the poems Brenda Coultas read at BPC:

A Gaze

I

A man texts a photograph of his meal, but to who? Himself or others?

Others too, texting in a crowd on a 1st aveune as glaciers recede.

They do not feel the fading cold of the ice. Only the heat of the keys strokes.

A man texts crystal water glass pixels to quench real thirst.

I texted forward a rumor of siphoned great lakes water to China. A Chinese bureaucrat texts images of fresh lake water to billions at home.

At the top of a mountain, where only small mamals live, the air is thin and gives me panic. I do not belong above the tree line even though I can drive there. Stopping to send a pic of the lichen sponge by the gift shop on the glacier, the phone lens: an extension of my eyes.

At times, I forget that I am not an extention of the machine until I burn my palms touching a hot metal pot: recoil and remember to use hot pads to protect the flesh fabric that covers the hand bones.

From the glacier tops, bodies of mountian climbers in the dead zone; Will their corpses sweeten or enbitter the drinkers of the Ganges?

 The leather shoes of the ice man texted forward. Sometimes, the tap runs while I brush my teeth and empty bathwater down the drain.

The last glass of water sits before you, how will you drink it?

We load the car on hwy 50 the lonliest highway in the USA. It whines through Nevada crossing the poney express route and ancient seabeds. Crinoid stems thirst for the ancient sea.

Last glass of glacier water boils in the kettle.  Saffron threads of a viking beard cloud the water glass.

Theft of water, relocation, diverted from its bed.  Hydrofracting.  I never thought they’d use our water against us.

When we began with this full jug of water, without thinking until the police chased us away from the creek of who owns the water, like who owns the sky. Or that satilite overhead, branded by a private owner over public space.

Wanted to absorb it, to get to the bottom and start all over again. A great anixiety about finishing and throwing it away, with a inch still in the bottom, the backwash.

Who owns the creeks and waterways of this valley? The only legal course is midstream so that anglers can trout fish without tresspass.

Into the last glass, I stir the reindeer scat with a herding stick captured from the thaw.

The water, sometimes they use it against us.  I question the interaction between the sythentic (the plastic) and the real inside of the jug on the table.  The water is an hour glass, and I write fast as I can before it runs dry

A glass of water from last glacier sits before you on the table, you glaze at the logo of an abundant flowing stream or the name of the spring which somehow sounds pure and far away as an ice berg, calved off and lassoed from the warming world. Even though you know the source  is a corporate tap of public water.

Fertilzer runs off into our family well. I used to picture a whale, a Moby Dick under the cornfield, a levathian as the source of our water. Because only a vessel the size of a sperm whale could contain the water that flowed on conmand from the tap. Even though people spoke of the well running dry. Ours magically replenished itself under the blanket of  Monstanto crops.

It flows on the green logo and facsmile of a mountain stream of abundant water. Abundant: a 20th century word.

“Natural” is highlighted and in a yellow circle it is written, “contains 16 servings” and there are only two of us left since this, now nearly empty, jug was opened.

Comments

[erik van loon]

Dear Theodor,

Nice letter. If you follow the course you will learn how to make a perfect letter. See my letters to the editors, mayors, members of parliament, etc at http://www.erikvanloon.com/demagogue/nl/opinie01-13.htm and you will find out that 52 letters have been published 97 times and most letters were discussed in the house of parliament too.

Just give me a call if you want to attend the course too.

Erik Van Loon
+1 865 2 E V LOON