#Lisa Fay Coutley

[lunchboxpoems]

CUFFING SEASON

When Buddha said silence is an empty

space & space is the home of the awakened

  mind, he hadn’t yet crossed his legs

& held his spine both firm & calm

in the smoke-filled avocado kitchen 

of my small girlhood. What is quiet

time after fifteen thousand sunrises

a child might describe as a backhand

bruise or blood pooled to one corner

of a crooked room? Across the table

from a man who sees the lilt of tiger

lilies when I speak, my thighs say there

is another way to approach this quiet.

For me, he swears, he’ll be wide-eared

& broad-armed & I think who wouldn’t 

want to be loved as silently as a photo

of a baby goat—shielded as one’s own 

bones. I’m no different from the group

of scientists trying to locate the music

inside the noise of human life just to 

find silence raising its obscene hand.

Stick to the plan, my mirror reminds 

me in her Venus flytrap voice, it’s time 

again: kneel to each burning leaf learning

return means to stop reaching for reasons

to stay in a lullaby’s muted wish & just go.

LISA FAY COUTLEY

[the-final-sentence]

At night, the tiny carrots I planted reach for life like it isn't a grave.

Lisa Fay Coutley, from "Letter to Future Me About Which Outfit to Wear for Future Wreckage"

[poisongardenz]

Letter to My Blackout

Helen Considers Leaving Troy

The Prestige

Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem

I'm Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense

Holocene Sonnet

[mae-we-post-poems]

Holocene Sonnet

Lisa Fay Coutley

i) The bloom—the pretty part we want—is

ii) often how a threatened plant screams help.

iii) Venus flytraps can be sedated.

iv) Therefore, they can wake & be made calm.

v) Lice hatch ravenous for blood & claw

vi) linoleum one foot per minute.

vii) Mammoth sunflowers reseeded

viii) from previous diseased seasons sing

ix) the same sickness for generations.

x) Pepsis wasps haul tarantulas up

xi) mountainsides to provide warm

xii) meals for larvae. Imagine children

xiii) dragging men across highway lanes

xiv) to eat them alive, thigh by thigh.

[extrapenguin]

i) The bloom—the pretty part we want—is ii) often how a threatened plant screams help. iii) Venus flytraps can be sedated. iv) Therefore, they can wake & be made calm. v) Lice hatch ravenous for blood & claw vi) linoleum one foot per minute. vii) Mammoth sunflowers reseeded viii) from previous diseased seasons sing ix) the same sickness for generations. x) Pepsis wasps haul tarantulas up xi) mountainsides to provide warm xii) meals for larvae. Imagine children xiii) dragging men across highway lanes xiv) to eat them alive, thigh by thigh.

“Holocene Sonnet”, Lisa Fay Coutley

[wishwars]

...Pepsis wasps haul tarantulas up mountainsides to provide warm   meals for larvae. Imagine children dragging men across highway lanes to eat them alive, thigh by thigh.

Holocene Sonnet by Lisa Fay Coutley

[rabbit-light]

Why to Save the World

We need to begin by shooting                people, leaders who lead                by a leash the property

they call theirs, a friend says. My son                wants me to carry a little                pistol because men still

haven't learned that I am my own                smoking embers to tend.                At this table with a burger

& a beer I am more still than I've been                in months, even when I wonder                which of the sadfaced boys

passing in their hunt for Pokémon                might be the one to hold                a jagged blade to my throat.

I'm trying to remember how it felt                to walk so close beside someone                you let a bit of your weight fall

to them. Alone, you always listen                to the new couple or old friends                & feel them lie to each other,

performing themselves. I still hear                the scream from the woman                in the front row wearing the

president's brains after the sound                the gun makes saves the silence                from itself. We are all worried

we've forgotten something. One man                leaves his drink at the bar & never                wonders when he comes back if

someone drugged him while he pissed.                Our hearts beating, our lungs                pumping—we think of them as

often as we think how miles of asphalt                might feel like duct tape                over your gagged mouth.

On this birthday I wish to be invisible                & to make this row full of men                own my body, make them feel

living with a leash no one sees, tethered                to threat. I don't want to forget                my mother died on a bathroom

floor or to pretend our Earth is not                in a constant state of ache—                a body in pain being a body

under control. The gunshot echoes again.                Who would we shoot first? What                happens to a face the bullet owns?

How can a woman drink so much                vodka her daughter could pass                her on the street & never know?

Body of our bodies, we are becoming                strangers. We each live at the edge                of a wall we should never look over.

Lisa Fay Coutley

[fluttering-slips]

Portrait as Facts of Energy Between Us

Alone your heart thrums enough to light a small lamp or power a hand held radio. Together our two hearts could charge a guitar amp. You & I emanate the color of a small sun & people orbit around us even when we need to be alone. We tend our better health when we’re in love. Each level of energy registering higher octaves than the next until we reach the I-Thou, the rainbow, the golden egg, knowing perfection within our imperfections. Divine will is a blueprint. A white line perforating the center of our bodies roots us to the same space of earth. I pencil into a lake. You bury your dreads in a mountain cave. Intersecting streambed, vortex, radiant cloud, little television set. I’ll let you play the stronger field. Slam me against your frequency, other half of this red secret that cannot be kept. Lisa Fay Coutley

[firstlightinthemorning]

THE NIGHT YOU LEFT, SO CLOSE TO MOONRISE

The night you left, so close to moonrise.

I anchored myself to that last sky...              

(Lisa Fay Coutley,The Letter I Never Sent)

Bild: by eva arendt on flickr

[finita-la-commedia]

I only get to breathe for so long. Tell me I’m dying already,                                                                                     so I can pick up my life & move it.

Lisa Fay Coutley,  from “Small Break in the Cirrocumulus"

[robmyheart]

1, 2, 15, 21

Reese u Alaskan bitch I’ll give you some straight answers!

1. If someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?

This is kind of a weird question. Like, if you want to understand me just fucking talk to me. I’ve never really read or watched anything that really seemed like it was overly personal. There are things that I like to watch and read, but I don’t really think they represent me. So I guess Read: Peter LaBerge, Lauren Groff, Allen Ginsberg, Lisa Fay Coutley (these are writer’s names, not actual titles). Watch: Steven Universe, Prayers For Bobby (actually don’t watch that, it’s garbage and made me cry. Just go read the synopsis), Gilmore Girls, AtLA and LoK. Listen to: Sam’s Town (the album not the song) by The Killers, “Small Town Moon” by Regina Spektor, “Your Song” by Elton John (and also the Ellie Goulding cover).

2. Have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you? If so, who?

I honestly wouldn’t know if a writer ever thought like me. I guess Lauren Groff? When I was writing my novel, my professor recommended one of her books to me because it sounded a lot like what I was trying to write and I thought it matched up pretty well so I guess that’s a start.

15. Five most influential books over your lifetime.

(In no particular order)

1. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

2. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

3. Howl by Allen Ginsberg

4. The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

5. All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

Honorary Mentions: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Makeshift Cathedral by Peter LaBerge. Errata by Lisa Fay Coutley. The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

21. Do you love easily?

I guess yes and no. Like, there are certain types of love that come easily to me. Fleeting love happens to me all the time, and I feel it a lot for people I’ve never met before. Like, I love all my followers because they’re actively following me and paying attention and that alone makes me feel affinity for you and everyone else who follows me. Platonic and romantic love are things that I feel take more time and those are things I try to work for more than anything. But I feel different loves for all kinds of people and that probably sounds a bit weird but I dun care I’m a loving person except when I’m also spiteful and an annoying bitch.

[kihomystory-blog]

Mid-Semester Reflection

     For this semester, I think I have done some learning in how my creative process works. I’ve learned about how I write and the types of techniques and “quirks” that tend to naturally happen in my writing. I have also learned about how people generally respond to my writing can be very different than how I myself respond to it. I find it fascinating how many unique ideas can span from a singular source and how they can influence and meld together into their own. There are also many times where I struggle to find a good source of inspiration in how to go about my work and my plans. Inspiration can be a fickle beast. It makes me think of the general challenges of being any kind of artist, how intimidating a blank canvas can be to the creative process. The endless potential and, in some ways, the limitations. There are only so many words available in a single language. Only so many ways to put them together in a way that makes sense. But an additional challenge I find in creative nonfiction is that very rarely do I, nor anyone else, recall events as they truly happened;

The way we remember things is not necessarily the way they were. This makes memoir, by definition, a problematic form in which reality and imagination blur into what its proponents describe as a "fourth genre." The problems of memory also infect journalism when reporters—in describing the memories of sources and witnesses—wind up lending authority to a kind of fiction. (Roy Peter Clark)

This means not only can meanings become convoluted in our writings, it means feelings can be too. I recall that once I learned in a psychology class, that even though the facts of memories are difficult to keep linear, feelings about memories tend to stay firm and unchanging. This can mean there can be an emotional disconnect in trying to truthfully retell a memory. I remember having this issue myself. Sometimes it is hard to remember that people cannot have the exact same emotional contexts as you do, so one must see through another’s eyes in order to give off a feeling that is somewhere close to your own feeling. Human communication is a ridiculously complex landscape. Even people who are excellent communicators can find themselves misunderstood. But, in a sense, this is absolutely incredible to think about. So many people as there are on this planet, and yet still each and every one of them has a unique view upon the world and the interactions within it. For example, when this line came up in class;

Like one night, I was outside playing baseball in the alley when all of a sudden our streetlight went out, and I got so scared because it was so dark and so quiet and then all of a sudden a loud sound like eerrrrrrr–CK! came from far away. Light travels faster than sound, Mrs. Dufek says, but blackness before a car crashes is hard to understand. I will spend years trying to reconcile the distance between so much darkness and so many impacts. (Lisa Fay Coutley)

From my limited point of view, I understood these sentences one way, however, nearly every person in the class saw something else in their mind when they read these very same sentences. Words, in particular, can be a magic medium because of this. I can’t imagine a greater example of the diversity of human minds than how people take meanings from words. This strange realm of infinite shades of color and shape that we collectively create together. Though, perhaps, in other mediums the outcome can be different. Sound and sight are more concrete in the mind, but even then, there are pieces that come to light when viewed through another set of eyes. A picture may have intense meaning to some whereas others it is just another within the thousands and thousands they see every single day. A sound can be heard and one person will say it’s a bird while the other will say it’s a squeaky wheel of a bicycle. I think, perhaps, what is one of the greatest fears of an artist is that their art will be misunderstood. That people won’t feel their own feelings. That people will be ambivalent. But this fear, in and of itself, isn’t truly a terrible thing. This means that for every artist out there, there’s just as likely someone out there who will appreciate it. So perhaps not everyone will like my writing, but isn’t that also kind of wonderful?

     I am very much hoping, that with some time and effort, I can make a B in this class. I will try my best to go back and do as much as I can even for some credit. I understand that it is my responsibility to be my own advocate and work towards my own goals and hope to improve my grade from here on out.

[ndrmag]

Contributor Interview: Mark Seidl

Bio: Mark Seidl lives with his family in New York's Hudson Valley and works as a rare books librarian--the best job in the world! His poems have appeared in several print and online journals, including Cease, Cows, decomp, and the late-great Alice Blue Review.

1. When did you start considering yourself a writer?

About ten years ago, after several years of writing nothing, I started rereading Charles Simic and soon thereafter found my way to some of the Serbian poets he has translated into English. As I encountered Simic's poems anew, as well as the work of Vasko Popa, Novica Tadic, and others, it dawned on me that this was the universe I wanted to inhabit as a writer. So, I got serious, wrote a lot, and began to think of myself as someone with a vocation in the craft. 

2. What’s one of your favorite things about your chosen genre? (or, your work’s blur of genre) 

In poetry, whether in verse or prose, I love the possibilities for compression. I'm drawn to poems distilled down to the sparest of images and tersest of phrases. The poet who can condense to the fewest possible words is one whose work I'll revisit again and again. 

3. Who/what are main influences for your current writing?

In addition to Simic and Serbians I already mentioned, I quite like the writing of Zachary Schomburg and Edward Mullany and continue to learn from it. A friend recently introduced me to Alice Oswald's work, of which I can't get enough--especially her shorter poems! I listen to a lot of Miles Davis's music from the late 1950s and '60s. Davis was, of course, a master of compression and distillation. 

4. If you could pick one song/album as the soundtrack to your piece (the one we’re publishing) what would it be?

I'm going to dodge this question a little bit. If "A Year into the Blight" were a short film, I imagine its opening credits running to a solo acoustic guitar piece improvised by Richard Thompson, who'd know just where to drop in a minor chord or bit of dissonance. During the narrative itself, there would be no background music. Rather, just the sounds of a remote farm--wind, chickens, maybe a distant cow, and, eventually, lots of crows, the cries of which would continue through the closing credits.

5. What are you looking forward to reading this coming year? Are there any emerging artists you’re particularly jazzed about?

For my December birthday I've treated myself to Emily Dickinson's Poems as She Preserved Them, edited by Cristanne Miller, a hefty volume which reproduces the fascicles. A long, leisurely encounter with Dickinson's careful arrangements of her own poems will certainly be, for me, a high point of 2017. I'm also looking forward to digging into a collection I recently ordered: Charles Simic's translations of Aleksander Ristovic, published some years ago by Faber in the UK but never here in the US. As for emerging artists, I don't now whether Zachary Schomburg or Edward Mullany still count as such--they've pretty well emerged--but if they publish new work in '17, I'll snap it up as soon as I learn of it. I'm on the look-out to see what Wendy Xu, Emily Pettit, and Lisa Fay Coutley do next; and I'm hoping that Matthew Landrum will soon get a collection of his own poems out in the world to join his fine translations from the Faroese. 

6. If you could collaborate with any other artist (past included) on a new project, who  would it be and why? 

The Poughkeepsie, NY-based artist Monica Church has created in a wide variety of media but in recent years has worked almost exclusively in photography, a genre I especially enjoy. A couple of years ago she produced the wonderful series, Sightlines (you can see it here: http://www.monicachurch.org/sightlines/), a set of photos she took of the ocean from the window of a ship. Her images capture an astonishing range of colors, textures, and other nuances. I love the idea of working with her to assemble a collection that pairs poems with her photographs. I say "the idea" because I'm not sure that in reality I could pull it off. So far, whenever I've tried to write with a program in mind, I haven't had much success. My imagination keeps veering away, resisting my efforts to focus it on an extended project.

[lunchboxpoems]

COFFEE

What’s strange is that I never stopped opening my eyes in that room without windows, that tomb we said and agreed standing was better than lying down— even when you called me girl I didn’t stop to reach for names. You shawled our bodies with bed sheets and claimed some alien sense from a nub at the base of your head. You found my tongue there every morning. Mine was the loneliness of waking, a woman with common knots. Outside, the leashes taut, the tugged men, the rain flaying long-strided strangers in ordinary clothes. A prism in a kitchen window, day-old coffee grounds, cigarette filters spinning in a toilet bowl. Puddles never spoke to me. We were something I could climb, root-by-root and naked while another woman’s hair still mapped your pillow. If I believed in signs, this was the urgency of homing bones. Sweat real as a candle pushed back on its nail. Those mornings we sipped coffee blacker than I could stand, I never said bitter— even when you started using my name in bed. No one wants to be simple as blame or the word anger, so I held my tongue to something foreign. I never asked for anything sweet.

LISA FAY COUTLEY