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LAGNIAPPE

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Poem
by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa


Evil Nature

(3)

in the cathartic clouds
(explain:)
why you are killing me with your stare?
(explain:)
the inadvertent comedy all love stories are
(explain:)
danger you made no effort to avoid

(explain:)
"....down the road of sacrificing our country to a flaccid and corrupt government in bed with profit-obsessed, amoral corporations...."



(7)

written in the sky
your makeshift identity
the storm, at sea...

blurry scene in a gloomy bathroom

"they envied my emotion...."

(2)
dream: bouncing on a wave i find gold

dream:     same as above
reality:     same as below

dream:
reality:     same
reality:     different



(6)
as a Teutonic novelty
men dressed up in animal skins
as women
slaves and masters ate and drank together
people practiced fleeing
from the lords of misrule

balloons were flown to
prevent enemy aircraft
from flying low over cities

the girls wore party frocks

(11)
recipes for disaster: eggs,
ice cream, and tuna with seaweed. stir
gently....

(5)
heathens in a basket, oh!, the world
in my pocket. Asunder is a-nice. I
thought i could be melting, but it
merely looked that way to
passersby. It is funny
what does go on in the minds
of others. But scary, too.

Who decides this fluff?

(9)
. . . . the terror of the alphabet . . . .
. . . . a continual form of spawning . . . .
. . . . a form of tail wagging . . . .
. . . . you know you had to . . . .

(88)
in a corner & pretend to work. student speaks.
i cannot hear her i return to my book. something floats
over my head. i think it may be a plane in the shape of this poem...

(11)
floor stained red with the whale's blood /
        in the uninvited fog /
seductive clouds in various stages of undress /
        pointy breasts clouds /
in the boyish wind /
        pointing to

(12)
our egg he
        out lie as
I if on in
        I he as in

(13)
remit now!
frightening the scholars, squalor still more!
where is your withdrawal!
i would die without!
postcolonial stars!

(01)
of psychic nosebleed
a plastic orgasm
of "never satisfied"

of not yet imagined

(15)
trees like shoppers, grasping
        swallowing the clouds haul
them into the grass trip
them naked to the waist
        immediately all other clouds line up in
the manner of
the period the foreign sky now
        unrecognizable in the sterile grass
in a war torn area of my body
i cross out the trees

(16)
dead in a car cloud
        accident of birth cloud
                3 starving kids on welfare cloud
                        hiv positive cloud
"distractions of the rich"
diluted landscape
trees headed for the highway

a curtsying sky
in an overflowing world


. . . afraid the stars would fall on my head
. . afraid to inherit the earth . . .