where is the river :: a poetry experiment

JJ Rowan & Nate Logan :: Six collaborative sonnets Stacey Allam & John M. Bennett :: Two collaborative poems Karin Cope & Ryan Josey :: Screen blinds John Breedlove and Lea Graham :: from Guerillas on the Mississippi Maureen Alsop and Joshua Gottlieb-Miller :: Four poems Robin Brox and Nava Fader :: Let Her Chris Turnbull and Bruno Neiva :: 19-21 from undertones

When a revolution has sufficently destroyed this common symbolism leading to common actions for usual purposes, society can only save itself from dissolution by means of a reign of terror.   Those revolutions which escape a reign of terror have left intact the fundamental efficient symbolism of society.        —Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect Up on Chickasaw Bluff see her go, girls Up on Chickasaw Bluff spy her blue, blue shoes        — Marilee 1.    A Natural History of Insurrection on the Inland Waterways From Lipscombe came Einhorn (Heidelberg gut doctor, partner to Schussler), road connecting Institute to commerce east of Olmstead’s park—O the heron flies west above evening jays at raspberry hedge little Claude’s bridge    Wormtown Dogs   St. Spyridon’s wall:   Socrates   Plato   Aeschylus    Sappho The engineer Bourgault’s gone down south for ...

Head to I The head barked in a chair bristles of not wanting to loose your feet in the window of vision, invisible thumbs and flowers falling loosely from your teeth stubble and blinding light dotted indirectly over the i's Hole Fluff The heavy fluff of popcorn balls written on the window glass blurried like a hair in a bang was a faucet open over the sill spritzing against plastic without holes Stacey Allam: At 13 I came home from school and listen to partridge family records and david cassidy records. Now at age 57 I come home from work and listen to partridge family david cassidy records and wonder why in between that time theres been a 28year marriage a 26 years old daughter and a 24 year old son that are definitely more than afterthoughts. That just about says it all.   John M. Bennett has published over 400 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials. He has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in thousands of ...

               You have gone (which I lament), you are here (since I am addressing you)                         Roland Barthes, "Absence" A Lover's Discourse (Fragments)             claps and claps             her one hand                         Olga Broumas, "Innocence" Beginning with O Screen Blinds is an extract from the visual research portion of a collaborative project by Karin Cope and Ryan Josey called "Caught Looking/ Looking after Albers," which they conducted, in part, via an Instagram feed  under the name "lookingafteralbers" (See https://www.instagram.com/lookingafteralbers/ for additional images & source materials.) Initiated at the behest of curator Jolee Smith for a show centered on work by artists who some...

T rinity River Dear birds building a nest in the dry river, are you expecting to rise up from water surge, from lying by unseen fence and wire as the dam mists up with a heavy horn in a deep bleat. Under hummingbird heart  remember an irredeemable dream, wine’s multiplicity, pale splendor of snow. Just beyond touch more letters fold toward the chain-link fence than your flock. What multiplicity of flight, what unlikely life you have made for yourself, little bird, that requires you hide from yourself.                           Trinity River II It is not symmetry in the glass membrane between glaze of silver mica and the low hum of fire bells, but sun cloud's randomized movement as the pleasure I get a delicate swift orange finch setting smolder a palm tree the top first on the horizon then low to the ground from my angle but at a great height from yours, pollen drifts sipped...

Robin Brox is a poet who moved to the Driftless region from Buffalo, New York where she worked extensively as a creative writing teaching artist.  She is the author of Sure Thing (BlazeVOX 2011), founder of Saucebox Book Arts, a feminist micropress and occasional performance series, and a graduate of SUNY – Buffalo & The University of Maine – Orono. POMEGRANATES , a collection of poems, prints, & photographs, is forthcoming from Xexoxial Editions. A collaborative project with Nava Fader, Slant Homestead , is forthcoming from Shirt Pocket Press. Nava Fader received her masters’ from UB Poetics Program, writing her thesis on Adrienne Rich. She is the author of All the Jawing Jackdaw and Hitching Post (BlazeVox), and several chapbooks. Most of her work begins with a line by somebody else. Recent projects include a manuscript of fake translations from Dante’s Inferno   and work with Wikipedia.  A collaborative project with Robin Brox, Slant Homestead , i...

nineteen Some young foreign diplomats, still oblivious to the secrets of the chancelleries. Shells of ships floating amongst maritime litter. ~ the young - we will call them young - eyed the striped box with its handle. each cranked it, complicit. twenty FANLIKE TAIL FEATHERS OF PEACOCKS IN AND ABOUT. THOSE WERE THE LAST DAYS OF DIPLOMATIC LOITERING, OF THE TRUE PLENIPOTENTIARIES. THEY PUT ON FALSE BEARDS AND RESUMED THEIR TÊTE-À-TÊTE. IN DUE COURSE, IT WOULD TRIGGER THEIR INVOLVEMENT IN PHILANTHROPIC ACTIVITIES. ~ tails often abut. we’re last, loitering, diplomatic putters. false sand, their course: cough up green fees, strategy ~ holes, clubs, par. twenty-one Port Arthur is still taken every day by late Bergman characters. But breakfast first. Bran soaked in petrol. Won't take long. ~ foliage density amplifies sonation, instrumentation, guided wrinkles. Chris Turnbull is the author of continua (Chaudiere Books 2015) an...