#kara candito

[bibliomancyoracle]

No matter how often you talk to the night the night will not tell you its secret name.

*

from “THE RIGHT WAY” by KARA CANDITO

[underneaththetop]

Taste of Cherry

Taste of Cherry by Kara Candito

There is no way to tell this story.

        How she said come with me and you did, you followed her into the bed                    of a stolen truck, into that bar          where you shot the bartender

         and made everyone watch while you kissed her hard and pulled the wilted orchids from her hair.                    Threw them to the bloodstained floor.          How you wanted something

         dark and dramatic. Chamber music at the circus. And she was so lovely, sharpening her knife,                    shifting from one foot to the other          in the glare of headlights.

         How her breath was close and hot against your ear and you learned to stitch a love scene                    from the shredded night.

2. Maybe you should start with the boring part.

         Before the chase scene, before Bonnie and Bonnie dropped acid and swallowed their tongues,                    before they fell into deep, inexplicable          fucked-up love,

         you were cutting yourself on the bathroom floor, crying in front of the mirror because the tears felt more real                    when you watched them fall into the sink          where the jagged hairs

         your father shaved from his face the night before made a halo around the drain. You were dreaming of stilettos                    and fast cars, a shove-me-hard-up-against-the-wall          kind of love. You were not dreaming

         of undressing in the back of a truck halfway to Baja with a warm beer between your legs and her hair, the best kind                    of blindfold, wrapped like night          around your eyes.

3. Every story takes a wrong turn.

         Those donuts you did, laughing in the parking lot of the police station, the blood that stained your shirt no matter                    how hard you scrubbed. How you said          the wrong things over and over

         until she hated you. Maybe you shouldn’t have broken a bottle over that guy’s head. You always tried to turn the smallest                    gestures into a lesson, like that that time you wore          the I love my pussy shirt to church.

         Maybe you should have never touched her. Grinned and sat on your hands that day in the planetarium under Ursa Minor.                    But, you wanted a love like an air raid,          all sirens and red explosions.

         In the morning, the charred remains of everything that came before. You wanted more scenes in which death is narrowly                    averted and everyone dances naked in the rain,          their bodies no longer afterthoughts.

4. It began like every sweet, false myth.

         There was a pop song on the jukebox. A broken bottle on the bar. The stars were arranged in rows, like obedient                    children, girls. Pressed up against her,          you felt safe and warm.

         And you knew what would happen next. The snake ready to strike, the bullet finding a body. Night.                    The taste of cherry.          This is the astral plane,

         this is the spirit world, she says and draws a heart on the dirt floor with her finger.

[winebrightruby]

At some point, past!me either failed to record or deleted from the wrong file a fairly large number of quotes that are in my stichomancy oracle book. I started going through it systemically last night to make sure everything is recorded where it should be (this is how I avoid duplicating entries). I thought I was only missing a couple, but it’s nearly every excerpt from Kara Candito’s book Taste of Cherry as well as a handful of Julia Kasdorf excerpts from Eve’s Striptease which I don’t even think I own anymore x.x

So it’s taking forever. I’m on entry 255 of 430, and I started at about 7:30 last night. I’m just coaxing myself through it because having this fully done and updated would be a great Christmas present for myself. 

[endless-unfolding]

I have often wondered, if a cable snaps in an empty building, if a poem plunges six stories in the dark, does it make a sound?

Kara Candito, from “Elevator: A Love Story,” Better #6

[pigmenting]

I am willing to resort to drastic measures—you and I together in any elevator you want, my face on your face, hands singing up legs, my voice in your ear like a madwoman imitating a madwoman: release me release me release me.

Kara Candito, from “Elevator: A Love Story” published on Better

[ofamaranthlie]

What the body wanted was its penance; scar, reminder that I could love anyone, gnash my teeth on their shoulder, then forget them in the subway car, the stale air and grime of it, metal bar still warm from a stranger’s hand and the shock, almost erotic, of being jostled by so many limbs.

Kara Candito, "Self Portrait with an Ice Pick"

[thingsseenthingsmade]

Favorite Poems of 2014

Lots of people are doing lists of their favorite albums or films or whatever of 2014, and I am... not doing that. I think I saw like four movies this year in theaters (CA:TWS, Guardians of the Galaxy, Big Hero Six, and Snowpiercer. I'm pretty sure that's it.), and there is no chance of me actually remembering what music I acquired new. But I did go back through my poetry tag and pick out some of my personal favorite poems this year--not necessarily things that were written this year, but that were my favorites this year.

1. “Catch a Body” by Ilse Bendorf

If I had to pick a single poem to last me for the rest of my life, it really honestly might be this one: “we can / re-write Icarus, flame-resistant feathers, / wax that won’t melt, I mean it, I’ll draw up / a prototype right now, that burning ball / of orange won’t stop us”. I would like this to be my life motto.

2. “Bocas: a Daughter’s Geography” by Ntozake Shange

If there's a theme for this list of poems, it's probably something like Fuck you, old white dudes, we're alive and growing whether you like it or not; i.e., “we are feeding our children the sun.”

3. “Tiny Treaties” by Sherman Alexie

Before I started going through my poetry tag, I would not have said that this was the year I fell in love with the poetry of Sherman Alexie. I’ve been a pretty consistent, low-key fan of his for a while now. But I think of all the poems I read in 2014, this is the one that took a feeling I’ve had difficulty expressing, made it a whole and separate thing outside of me, and then turned around and punched me in the face with it. And that’s the whole point of poetry, really.

A couple of bonus Alexie poems, because goddamn:

“On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City” and “Sonnet, with Vengeance”

 4. “Taste of Cherry” by Kara Candito

I may have actually written an actual short story inspired by this poem. (Spoiler alert: I did, yeah. I’m in the process of editing it and then I’ll be sending it out to publishers. It has cyborgs.)

5. “Semi Semi Dash” by Jillian Weise

Speaking of science fiction. This poem asks a question that I wish I knew the answer to.

6. “The Saints” by Margaret Atwood

“is it suffering or goodness / that makes them holy, / or can anyone tell the difference?”

7. “Kingdom of Trick, Kingdom of Drug” by Saeed Jones

If I could link to the entirety of Prelude to Bruise, I would. Except I wouldn’t because you should totally just buy the book, it’s lovely and painful and amazing.

8. “In a Beautiful Country” by Kevin Prufer

It’s kind of a cheat to put this poem on the list, since I first read (and posted) it in 2013, or possibly earlier--my memory is unreliable. But, I spent most of this November obsessing about it, to the point where I reblogged myself (something I rarely do). This poem is important to me, for reasons I don’t really want to flay open. I'm not sure I could fully explain it if I tried, anyway.

9. “not an elegy for Mike Brown” by Danez Smith

This one, on the other hand, is kind of self-explanatory. I suspect my #fuck the police tag has seen the most dramatic increase in posts this year, especially since Mike Brown’s murder in August.

10. “Today Means Amen” by Sierra DeMulder

I’m not sure there’s a more suitable sentiment for the end of 2014 than the victory of simply surviving. “The word 'today' means 'amen' in every language / Today we made it / Today I'm gonna love you.”

[thedollhousereads]

DH #36 is Saturday! RSVP here.

KARA CANDITO is the author of Spectator (University of Utah Press, 2014), winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, and Taste of Cherry (University of Nebraska Press, 2009), winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Her work has been published in Blackbird, AGNI, The Kenyon Review, jubilat, Drunken Boat, Forklift Ohio, The Rumpus, Indiana Review, Best New Poets 2007, and elsewhere. Candito is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and the recipient of scholarships and awards from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Council for Wisconsin Writers, the Vermont Studio Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Santa Fe Arts Institute. She is a co-curator of the Monsters of Poetry reading series, a creative writing professor at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville, and the  co-director of  Membership for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She lives in Madison, WI, where she reads, writes, eats spicy food, drinks mezcal, and dreams of living in the tropics.

[motherground]

Initiation #5: Lorca

He is standing at the foot of my bed with an insanely tragic smile and a syringe full of lead. He is sitting beside me in a bloodless body, stroking the pink sheets with eyes like a fruit that's never in season. Burning casinos and countries I'll never visit pass over the room. I am here to learn how to suffer more beautifully. Outside, at the bus stop, thin men in scrubs read about nanobots, and maybe they can map the malignant cells unspooling in my marrow, or the best, fastest path of a bullet entering the chest. Inside, in another dimension, we are riding two lame mares to the pasture where I am ravaged by centaur after centaur, never a satyr. Bodies matter, how they break open, which animals we let inside us. I am here to learn how to suffer more beautifully, to smile for the white air and give everything away.

-- kara candito

[therumpus]

I’m fascinated with the voyeurism that defines so much of contemporary culture. We watch others, we watch ourselves, and share images of ourselves being watched. Revisiting the stories and myths that encompass many of the poems in Spectator necessitated a kind of voyeurism, too.

The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat With Kara Candito.

[sansura]

Monologue During A Blackout          by Kara Candito

      What about zebra?—suppose you had to come back as a zebra,       knowing you'd spend your life                 trampling the savannah with the desperation       of an Open During Construction sign?

      Once, stepping off a plane onto the blacktop of an ancient city       where my father was born,                 I smelled burning garbage and understood       anything can happen, Often,

      it doesn't. The rain stops. We are not washed away. I do not       glide down five black flights                 to greet the electric truck. But when       the air conditioner aches on again, how blunt, how exquisite. No, I don't want to be famous. Yes, the radio—                 a man with the voice of a woman sings       about a woman. The sky,

      you said, is darker now. Would you call white a bright cobor? Would you       like Bach better through headphones?—                 I mean the seismic privacy of tiny, angry

      gods beating your middle ear. I mean

      to make you dizzy. Here, run your thumb along my chin       while two workers shimmy down                 a high voltage poll and everything       that can pass between two people— pleasure, shock, surveillance—       the static of it—private or public—draws shut                 like curtains across a first class cabin.

      What I thought in the dark, forget it. A group of zebras is called       a harem. We call them black.                 We call them white.

Copyright © 2014 Kara Candito All rights reserved from Jubilat from Verse Daily

[notaswel]

taste of cherry

1. There is no way to tell this story.

          How she said come with me and you did, you followed her into the bed                     of a stolen truck, into that bar           where you shot the bartender

          and made everyone watch while you kissed her hard and pulled the wilted orchids from her hair.                     Threw them to the bloodstained floor.           How you wanted something

          dark and dramatic. Chamber music at the circus. And she was so lovely, sharpening her knife,                     shifting from one foot to the other           in the glare of headlights.

          How her breath was close and hot against your ear and you learned to stitch a love scene                     from the shredded night.

2. Maybe you should start with the boring part.

          Before the chase scene, before Bonnie and Bonnie dropped acid and swallowed their tongues,                     before they fell into deep, inexplicable           fucked-up love,

          you were cutting yourself on the bathroom floor, crying in front of the mirror because the tears felt more real                     when you watched them fall into the sink           where the jagged hairs

          your father shaved from his face the night before made a halo around the drain. You were dreaming of stilettos                     and fast cars, a shove-me-hard-up-against-the-wall           kind of love. You were not dreaming

          of undressing in the back of a truck halfway to Baja with a warm beer between your legs and her hair, the best kind                     of blindfold, wrapped like night           around your eyes.

3. Every story takes a wrong turn.

          Those donuts you did, laughing in the parking lot of the police station, the blood that stained your shirt no matter                     how hard you scrubbed. How you said           the wrong things over and over

          until she hated you. Maybe you shouldn’t have broken a bottle over that guy’s head. You always tried to turn the smallest                     gestures into a lesson, like that that time you wore           the I love my pussy shirt to church.

          Maybe you should have never touched her. Grinned and sat on your hands that day in the planetarium under Ursa Minor.                     But, you wanted a love like an air raid,           all sirens and red explosions.

          In the morning, the charred remains of everything that came before. You wanted more scenes in which death is narrowly                     averted and everyone dances naked in the rain,           their bodies no longer afterthoughts.

4. It began like every sweet, false myth.

          There was a pop song on the jukebox. A broken bottle on the bar. The stars were arranged in rows, like obedient                     children, girls. Pressed up against her,           you felt safe and warm.

          And you knew what would happen next. The snake ready to strike, the bullet finding a body. Night.                     The taste of cherry.           This is the astral plane,           this is the spirit world, she says and draws a heart on the dirt floor with her finger.

- Kara Candito

[hush-syrup]

Maybe you should start with the boring part. Before the chase scene, before Bonnie and Bonnie dropped acid and swallowed their tongues, before they fell into deep, inexplicable fucked-up love.

From Taste of Cherry by Kara Candito

[latenightlibrary-blog-blog]

Never-before-seen footage from Late Night Library’s reading series, In and Out of Town, from December 6, 2012 at Literary Arts! Featuring poetry by Samiya Bashir and Kara Candito, as well as music by singer/songwriter Timmy Straw and a dance by Nina Kostur & Ben Saeks. (Footage from our most recent event coming soon!)

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for updates! Learn more about Late Night Library at latenightlibrary.org!

[cinemaissatanschurch]

"... fucking felt like falling into the center/ of something soft and unnamable." - Kara Candito, He Was Only Half as Beautiful

[truthofnostalgia]

Taste of Cherry by Kara Candito

TW: Self-harm

1. There is no way to tell this story.

          How she said come with me and you did, you followed her into the bed                     of a stolen truck, into that bar           where you shot the bartender

          and made everyone watch while you kissed her hard and pulled the wilted orchids from her hair.                     Threw them to the bloodstained floor.           How you wanted something

          dark and dramatic. Chamber music at the circus. And she was so lovely, sharpening her knife,                     shifting from one foot to the other           in the glare of headlights.

          How her breath was close and hot against your ear and you learned to stitch a love scene                     from the shredded night.

2. Maybe you should start with the boring part.

          Before the chase scene, before Bonnie and Bonnie dropped acid and swallowed their tongues,                     before they fell into deep, inexplicable           fucked-up love,

          you were cutting yourself on the bathroom floor, crying in front of the mirror because the tears felt more real                     when you watched them fall into the sink           where the jagged hairs

          your father shaved from his face the night before made a halo around the drain. You were dreaming of stilettos                     and fast cars, a shove-me-hard-up-against-the-wall           kind of love. You were not dreaming

          of undressing in the back of a truck halfway to Baja with a warm beer between your legs and her hair, the best kind                     of blindfold, wrapped like night           around your eyes.

3. Every story takes a wrong turn.

          Those donuts you did, laughing in the parking lot of the police station, the blood that stained your shirt no matter                     how hard you scrubbed. How you said           the wrong things over and over

          until she hated you. Maybe you shouldn’t have broken a bottle over that guy’s head. You always tried to turn the smallest                     gestures into a lesson, like that that time you wore           the I love my pussy shirt to church.

          Maybe you should have never touched her. Grinned and sat on your hands that day in the planetarium under Ursa Minor.                     But, you wanted a love like an air raid,           all sirens and red explosions.

          In the morning, the charred remains of everything that came before. You wanted more scenes in which death is narrowly                     averted and everyone dances naked in the rain,           their bodies no longer afterthoughts.

4. It began like every sweet, false myth.

          There was a pop song on the jukebox. A broken bottle on the bar. The stars were arranged in rows, like obedient                     children, girls. Pressed up against her,           you felt safe and warm.

          And you knew what would happen next. The snake ready to strike, the bullet finding a body. Night.                     The taste of cherry.           This is the astral plane,           this is the spirit world, she says and draws a heart on the dirt floor with her finger.