wake up, rod

Bbrrrrap! (the force is strong in others) I don’t shake, I detonate. See I can pile up words like casings in a bullet factory. See I can twist your ear with a swish of jawbone. A cotillion of lashing. An affront of debutantes. I don’t give a fuck, I keep them all for myself. I break it smooth: the force is strong in others, the mysteries beat firm in the breasts of any John, but Tenderheels I will workmanlike my way into your softest tissues, will pound the raw meat of your feet into crunked trochees, shatter this tartare tertiary terroir until it speaks in the voice of all joyous aberrants! Bbrrrrap! goes the bass-loud glade! Bbrrrrap! goes the drumbomb in your heartspace! strongarm the yellowpages if you want that fancy stacking, here is just the sound of explosions and sega chimes ringing brash in the long dark. pray only so your knees get hard enough to get down. write only so the pens get stabbier – see the bloodshed we dream with graph paper! Bbrrrrap! I detonate! Bbrrrrap! I...

Hi, I've had an assignment bubbling for a while, and Kate's poem jump-started my interest in it, specifically the "the whole god-damning summer / squall of me." For lack of a better word, all four of us, and many others I know, do this type of poem occasionally that I'm going to call the Declarative poem. A statement of some power that creates agency and urgency in the self of the speaker's persona. A toast, a boast, a demonstration of will and skill, a this is what I can do, a bring it. The you-can't-imagine-my-___ness. I think these types of poems are extremely exciting to both read and write. But I'm fascinated by the reason for it, the execution of it, and the efficacy of it. I know that all four of us write them - we all interpret it differently, but it's a tactic we use. So this is a two parter. Write one. Then explain it. You can talk about the specific poem, the greater "category" of the "declarative," or how stupid you ...

trotting into the sprinkler spray, frightening sweetly  when you get wet—meet the whole god-damning summer squall of me. I'll drip the paisley down your sides, swell and simulacra you into a billboard fit to advertise my most commercial cravings. You can't think yourself into un -assuming.  I see you for what you are : a fraud who needs feeding from a trough bigger than this terminal highway. Look, puppy, 90-Degree-Jawline plucks women from the street as he preens the brittlest leaves from his garden bed.  You are not invisible if inaccessible . No eyes make us so let's truce— let's put our bodies to pray in the push of a bawdy barroom throng. Let's sin for closeness more like combustion: a flip-the-fuck-out with a shockwave that brings the best benders to their knees before easing. Puppy, you are a a luminous prick of longing looming over open water, a tantalizing never-near what I see when I look down.  I admit it : you are my ache for chaos consistent, ...