Harvest the Dirt - Wil Gibson (Great Weather for MEDIA)

Today's book of poetry:
Harvest the Dirt.   Wil Gibson.  Great Weather for MEDIA.  New York, New York, 2015.

Spend some very enjoyable time reading Harvest the Dirt by Wil Gibson and you might be inclined to think that he is one dark and rough piece of bark.  

That is until you read his terribly tender ode to Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "So It Goes."  There is almost always an exception to the rule.

Gibson's rules might run along the lines of the "drink 'em, smoke 'em, crank 'em when you've got them" school.  These poems describe a difficult life of great turmoil and torment, a road full of bad turns and bad choices.

So how does Gibson turn this into such bittersweet poetry?

What  I should've said to the older gentleman

who happened into the bar during a poetry

reading and stayed for the duration:

I saw you nod in approval with the first bent heart poem you

heard. Was that the first time you heard someone else speak your

mind? I saw that you dropped a twenty dollar bill in the passed

hat payday, so I assume the open wounds on stage were enough

for you. I saw my Granddaddy nod the same way the first time I

read him a poem. He knew the poem was about him and smiled

a struck match to burn away the lost cause from the dust bowl

lump in my throat. In your open mind I saw Granddad's pride. In

your accidently art-filled evening you gave back to me a reason for

writing I thought I had lost or forgotten.

...

Gibson is a romantic, no doubt about that, but he doesn't give in to it easily.  It's all kicking and screaming, coming across the finishing line on fire sort of stuff.  

Harvest the Dirt is earthy stuff, an eight-ball, dime bag, bobo huffing earthy stuff that hits the nail, repeatedly, right on its big flat head.  Gibson is almost polymorphous in his range of romantic follies. He is affectionate about: certain country singers, Tom Waits, Bobbie Gentry, his family, the American South, meth labs...

Last Man Standing

I refused to smoke or snort meth the first time I did it. The more

experienced tweakers put it in toilet paper and told me to swallow

it. When my stomach acid dissolved the thin wood pulp, the

explosion of crank into my system burned a hole from my hips to

my mouth. Each organ etched its name into my skin with a cattle

prod. Lightning shot through my intestines.

I ran to the bathroom and shit out everything I had ever eaten in

my entire life. I shit out my mother's breast milk, and the amniotic

fluid I floated in for nine months. I shit out things I thought about

eating. I shit our everything I had seen other people eat and all the

food in all the commercials I had ever seen. I vowed to never do

this horrible drug ever again.

Twenty minutes later I had a straw to my nose and was being

passed a freshly packed light bulb to smoke from. I inhaled the

sweet smell of impending snow and hot chemicals. My head

spun like the world around me. I didn't eat, sleep, or do anything

remotely sane for the next fifty-three hours.

The next seven years were facsimile nights and carbon paper days.

Everything was broken light bulbs, broken promises, broken

promises, broken promises, broken hearts, and full-blown crazy.

Most things were broken. I lived awake and died in my dreams

every rare time I slept. I still have trouble sleeping.

...

Wil Gibson's Harvest the Dirt is the meat section of the grocery store, pure bloody protein.

Today's book of poetry's morning read was raucous to say the least.  Milo has seemingly overcome any trace of his previous shyness.  He can't wait to get up in front of us and read and he has become quite good at it.  Many mornings now we simply let him read to the rest of us.  Today everyone wanted to get in on it.  Kathryn insisted on reading the Vonnegut poem, twice.

Whole. South. Side.

Dust bunnies scratched weak scream claw marks down

the hallway.

No milk in a new house,

third this year, another cupboard empty.

June is a terrible month to move,

made easier when you lack clothes and furniture.

The new cockroaches were smaller.

The new neighbors mutter "poor white trash"

under their breath, never to our faces.

They don't mean it as hurtful or angry,

they only mean we were pitiful.

They smile with sad eyes and treat us like

a man whose wife cheats on him.

There is no way to tell someone they have been forgotten.

...

Gibson takes it all on in Harvest the Dirt - poverty, race, violence, drugs, country music and so on.   He does it with the slow grace of a poetic Richard Pryor.  Saint Richard of Pryor never passed a pipe he didn't like and was the best straight-up stand-up there has ever been.  We here at Today's book of poetry like to make big proclamations just to see who is listening.

Wil Gibson is a slap and a caress, not always in equal portions.  Poetry like this can make you squirm in your seat and that is a good thing.  A damned good thing.

Wil Gibson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wil Gibson was born from a good idea and a bottle of bourbon and raised in some of the poorest communities northern Illinois and eastern Arkansas have to offer. He is a proud, mistake-prone, father of four.

BLURBS

Harvest the Dirt is the fuck-you-listen-to-me reminder that life is real, and raw, and constantly in a state of push and pull and break. Gibson doesn’t need metaphors to talk about drugs and despair and life. There’s no hidden meaning. This is not a collection of self-help pieces. He’s not going to tell you that anything will ever be better. What Gibson will do though is craft a guide of real-world, worst-case scenarios, so that maybe you’ll give a damn about yourself, or the world around you, or art, or whatever it is to which you yearn to cling. This is Jim Carroll and William Burroughs meets George Carlin and Sam Kinison in a dark alley for an I’ll-raise-you-a-story kind of raw. This is not a book of poetry; this is an experience.—Chris Margolin, The Poetry Question

Harvest the Dirt is a gritty, relentless testament to the survival song that is Wil Gibson. Each poem is a bloody ride out of the city that birthed you; a psalm in the name of recovery; an open window on a stormy day somewhere in the middle of this country. This book is filled with a man’s truth and, while it isn’t always pretty, that truth never apologizes.—Carrie Rudzinski, author of The Shotgun Speaks and The History of Silence

Here, now, in 2015, there is an eye on race, southern culture, and the relationship between the two that is as focused as I remember it being. That eye is large, and general. Wil Gibson’s Harvest the Dirtis specific, and on the street. But no less large. Harvest the Dirt is proof that country music doesn’t need a fiddle, a pedal steel, or even sounds at all. All country music needs is a heart breaking or a heart trying to mend, and a bent ear. Enjoy the listen.—Justin Wells, singer / songwriter

Full of should-have-saids and self portraits, Wil Gibson’s newest collection gives a vivid look at the life he has lead. It is harsh. It is visceral. Most importantly, it is truth. Harvest the Dirt captures the purest of moments and the most honest of self-reflections through remembrances and images of an universal truth about the America we live in. It is an insightful read of contemporary poetry in an unrestricted and accessible tongue.—Katrina K. Guarascio, Swimming with Elephants Publications

Wil Gibson

"Stories"

(NPS 2015)

video: Button Poetry

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

Debridement - Corrina Bain (Great Weather for Media)

Today's book of poetry:
Debridement.  Corrina Bain.  Great Weather for Media.  New York, New York.  2015.

Debridement - is to clean the wound, to remove the dead, damaged or infected tissue so as to promote the healing of the remaining healthy tissue, or so says my Oxford.

So here's Corrina Bain tearing away at the rough edges of your discontent with a chain saw and a laser.  Bain gouges out huge and harsh pieces of our misconceptions with a buzzing Husqvarna and then cauterizes them with her laser tongue.

Debridement is constantly one step ahead of the beat.  Think of Joe Harris playing drums on Charlie Parker's Ko-Ko, jumping one step ahead of Parker and Gillespie as though they were giants chasing him through the woods.  It is disconcerting and delightful.

First Time

I tried to take it. Not a real
Barbie
a figurine
from a happy meal
smaller
one fused piece.
It was not mine, but so pretty
I thought I needed it. She
belonged to some girl
my parents thought
I should be friends
with but I did
not see
her. The girl had red ears
and light brown hair.
I had eyes only
for the tiny, mute princess. Ballgown
rigid opalescent plastic, deep
pink with light
pink bows. I wanted to
own it.
A picky child, my list of beautiful things was
short: My mother
Baryshnikov
white flowers
some birds
but not all
the doll's pale yellow hair
like a cartoon sun. I shoved her down
my pants. Bulge
in my Levis, imagined what my
innocent face would have
looked like, tried
to copy it. Found out, I cried, claimed
I only meant to borrow it.
Everyone forgave
the obvious lie.
I meant to have her. To measure
and study. Her small
peach-colored neck. To glean
the lesson my parents refused
to teach me, what a
girl is supposed
to be. Then, with
the big rocks
in the yard, to crack her
open.
To find out
how thick the
skin, how thin.
What she was made
of, underneath.

...

"First Time" is a bit like a fairy-tale introduction into Debridement and perhaps a little unfair but we did a straw poll around the office and it was agreed.  Today's book of poetry laments our three poem limit frequently, but never more than today.  These baby's are hot.

Bain is absolute in his resolve to take NO prisoners.  You are going to hear the word 'fearless' used by almost everyone who writes about these poems.  Make no mistake, this is high-wire act stuff, no nets and high wind.  Bain solves this by stomping across that wire with authority and menace, as though he were on rails.

The Means

GUN

I was made for war
and game. Those were
happy years.
I was a late bloomer when
it came to girls, but once
I'd been introduced
how could I ever get enough?
Tunneled past whalebone
and crinoline, opened
a wet blooming under
their dress. Now the
ladies, they love me. They
know my names and my
aliases. I do what
your man can't. Smuggled
or paraded, stripped
and shined. Don't let the
tough-guy act fool you,
I love the ladies back.
When it seems I am just
laying heavy in your lap
I am asking for a kiss
your mouth's soft ceiling, pale,
heavy, lady's
brain up there, still
and helpless as a sleeping cat.
Bury the senseless, disposable part
of myself inside you like
a stopper. Even though
I won't care for you as much
in the morning. Even though
a kiss is never
enough.

...

Gender is not a diaphanous pool that Bain swims in and out of, although he sometimes creates that crafty illusion.  No, Bain's poetry is an assault, it is battery, it is bawdy and it is beautiful like a matador's coup de grace.

Corrina Bain's swath cuts across political, sexual and social boundaries.  These are exactly the sort of poems we need more of.

United States Army Private First Class
LaVena Johnson to Sarah Palin

Dear Sarah
             from the moment I saw you
beatific, anointed in news-ticker light
I knew you were meant for me
             that you would change my life
we are so alike
             I don't just mean the woman thing

your small town, a place
where nothing bad could happen
             photographs of you beside your husband
halos of animal fur around your pink faces

what a terror for you to be there, Sarah
under the midnight sun
to know your body
would make you a meal in times of famine
thighs rendered for lard               hair stuffed in
to soften a sawdust mattress
I see you running             desperation
to feel yourself God's chosen daughter
decided all the other lives were second
inferred sanctity into the function of ovaries
God's will in the dropping of dirty bombs

If you were not you
if you were some housewife
stranded in middle America
you would be so forgivable
but you are you--

you cunning pillowlips
you are the chosen

So when you said, in Wasilla
             that rape survivors
should pay for their own forensic tests
I knew what had happened
that you had passed
through the curtain
into a place where women
             are not women.
Where women do not live

now you're there you think
the power they gave you will protect you
like moss green poplin
and brass buttons would protect me
they would have to admit I was human
if I showed that love of country

You know what they did Sarah--
the contractors in our own employ
             abrasions        loose teeth        burns on my hands
the acid           they poured into me                 to burn out
their DNA                        the hole
they put in my head
could not have been made
by my shooting hand
and they told my mother it was a suicide

the molecules of my last breath
spread out over the desert
glinting sugary sand in the dawning light--
it looked like snow

if there is a god like you believe in God, Sarah
He keeps me here
waiting for you
my mother's anguish twisting me four legged--
I scan the horizon
             my time will come

you will fall from your helicopter
your rifle will kick and jam
I will feel your throat pulse
against the gray fur of my jaws

and you will know me                 Sarah
flesh of your flesh

...

Get that into you!  Debridement doesn't deal with issues of gender, Debridement opens them up like an anatomy textbook, then blows them up like an abandoned building, Bain blows them up with the very strong wind of wounded angels.

Next dinner party on Dagmar, I'm giving out copies of Debridement as people come through the door. We'll read our favourites for dessert.

My wonderful nieces, Larry, Curly and Moe, are going to go ga-gag for this book.

Corrina Bain

photo: Syreeta McFadden

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Corrina Bain is a gender non-conforming writer, performer, and teaching artist. He is a former member and coach of multiple national-level poetry slam teams. His writing has appeared in anthologies and journals such as Muzzle Magazine, PANK, A Face to Meet the Faces, and the Everyman’s Library book Villanelles. Corrina’s work engages the nuances of the body as a source of identity, pleasure, betrayal, and shame. While deeply rooted in the personal and specific, his vision extends to encompass history, mythology, and politics. No injustice, hypocrisy, or human weakness escapes this poet’s gaze, especially his own. Searching beyond violence, he suggests there is power in trusting the body’s wisdom, in witnessing suffering, and in speaking what you do not dare to say. Currently, Corrina lives in Brooklyn where he practices roundhouse kicks, twerking, and emergency psychiatric counseling.

BLURBS
Corrina Bain writes poems as mean as the headlines, as true as a scalpel. To debride is to tear away the rotted, so everything can heal. Corrina Bain knows that what looks like savagery can be salvation, and has written us love poems from the church of the wound. Bone-heavy and scalpel sharp, read these poems, let the poison flow, and celebrate the beating, beating heart.
     —Daphne Gottlieb, author of 15 Ways to Stay Alive

Corrina Bain’s long-anticipated first collection, Debridement, shows what’s possible in poetry when you pour enough blood into the page and craft what rises to the surface. With a formal inventiveness that serves the brute bravery of this work, these poems have no qualm reaching down your throat and pulling out your living heart just to say look at it, look. Look.                                                                     — Sam Sax, NEA Fellow, author of  A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters 

Corrina Bain writes with utter fearlessness. These poems unveil an intoxicating examination of body and its complicated—often unhinged and relentless—affair with the mind, how inextricable the two. Here, the body’s boundlessness and betrayal. Here, too, the mind’s. Debridement is exactly that: a probe into what must be eradicated in an effort to survive. All this, Bain sees and sees. Among these texts, an unblinking sight.

     —Jeanann Verlee, author of  Said the Manic to the Muse and Racing Hummingbirds

Corrina Bain

"Pinnochio"

(Poetry Observed)

video:  Button Poetry

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388

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

Retrograde - Puma Perl (Great Weather for Media)

Today's book of poetry:
Retrograde.  Puma Perl.  Great Weather for Media.  New York, New York.  2014.

I don't know yet if Puma Perl is my new favourite poet, I'll have to read Retrograde a couple more times.  And I will definitely have to find her other books.

For Retrograde you'll need your seats in the upright position and you'll certainly need your seat-belt. Some of you will need helmets.

I haven't felt this way about a book of poems or a poet since the first time I read Charles Bukowski back in the 70's.

I was living in Edmonton, Alberta, with Blanche Dubois and I was working as a dish-washer at a jazz club, The Palms Cafe.  I found Bukowski at the Edmonton Public Library.  Got on a bus to head home and didn't lift my head until I'd read the entire book.  I'd gone the entire bus route and then some and was further from home than when I had started.

This is blog #324 and I've pretty much used up my accolades  -  so you might have heard some of this before.  This is one of the strongest, most surprising, and sublimely splendid collections of poetry I have ever read.  It comes on like a sledgehammer breaking down your front door.  Sublime yes but this is never subtle, Perl grabs the reader by the collar or the hair, whatever she gets a hand on, and pulls you into her world.  And there is no boundary she won't happily piss on just to see the splash.

Dreaming in Daylight

She fakes orgasms
with herself
just to get it
over with,
hopes sleep
will come
dreamlessly.

She misses
nicotine patches,
and glorious
nightmares,
wakes
in darkness,
reaches
for the magic,
cums
like a robot.

The sun
does push-ups,
fantasy runs laps,
the moon exploded,
hours knock
on windows,
she sleeps
in daylight,
night waits.

She fakes orgasms
with herself.

...

Retrograde drew gasps from several of the interns, along with several red faces.  This is not your grandmother's poetry, it in not MFA in creative writing poetry.  Perl is completely fearless and does not depend on the opinions of others, men or women, to define herself.

These poems howl haughty, they are the knife edge of feminine power, self-determination.  Perl could care less what the quiet tide sounds like, these poems scream with scatological harmony and never lack for dark beauty.

These poems come off of the page like white lightning.  Hard and hot and almost unpalatable on the first swig.  But from that moment of conversion on -- you are either a convert or out of the game.     Perl swallowed me whole like I was taking communion and I imagine she'll have the same effect on most of you.

Orbit

Some night my man is a stranger.
He hides behind his big hands
and deep eyes, burns orchards
as I sleep, his thoughts drill
holes in the sheet, dreams move
in orbits along the same path.
I forget to remove my bracelets,
they turn to steel, I don't know
whether to slap him or fuck him,
it all feels the same, the bed
crashes into the wall, encounters
are never delicate, somewhere
a door slams shut, the morning
is clear, he hugs the pillow
as I leave, I crawl back
beneath the covers and he
returns, like surrender.
We draw closer as we sleep
until the invasion resumes.

...

Puma Perl just kicked the crap out of my expectations when I opened Retrograde.  I always hope to like the books that publishers and poets send, I want to admire them all.  Puma Perl is a poet who will now be part of my ongoing poetry conversation.

She is someone like Sue Goyette, someone you simply HAVE to read.

Fuck Like An Anarchist

There's an uprising in the bedroom.
Machine guns rattle in his chest.
He sleeps.

I wouldn't mind the snoring if I didn't hate you,
she says, and she leaves the room, returns half dressed,
climb on top of him, and she fucks him. She fucks him
because she's angry, she fucks him because she hates him,
she fucks him because she doesn't know what else to do,
and she can't talk about it with her tongue down
his throat so she fucks him. She fucks him with one leg
on the floor, she fucks him in black mascara,
she fucks him half naked, she fucks him half dressed.

She wears her red lace push-up bra while she fucks him.

She fucks him without rules and authority.
She fucks him with no sense of order.
She fucks him into a state of lawlessness.

She fucks him like an anarchist.

Pillows litter the floor.
She steps over them and gets half dressed.
Then she gets the other half dressed.

It's time to leave.
He sleeps.
Quietly.
She locks the door behind her.
She's done.

...

Today's book of poetry admires smart and Puma Perl is all over that.  We like screaming hard electrical jolts of neon truth and that is Perl all night long.  And we have all the time in the world for brave.

As Andy Griffith said in that old movie: "It ain't braggin' if you done it."

Puma Perl's Retrograde is as exciting as any book of poetry I've read in a long time.

Puma Perl

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In the mid-70s, Puma Perl happened by the Nuyorican Poets Café on its second night of existence. Along with countless other Lower East Side residents, she discovered that the transformative power of poetry and performance was accessible to her, regardless of class and academic achievement. Decades later—still living in New York City—she is a widely published poet, writer, performer, producer, and photographer.

Puma is the author of two chapbooks, the award-winning Belinda and Her Friends and Ruby True, and the full-length collection knuckle tattoos. Her poetry and short stories appear in numerous journals and anthologies including It’s Animal but Merciful (great weather for MEDIA, 2012), The Understanding between Foxes and Light (great weather for MEDIA, 2013), Maintenant, Rattle, The Chiron Review, Have a NYC (Three Rooms Press), and Bullying: Replies, Rebuttals, Confessions, and Catharsis.

She was the co-creator, co-producer, and main curator of DDAY Productions which mounted shows in many New York City venues and highlighted emerging artists. Her newest venture is Puma Perl’s Pandemonium, which brings together poetry with rock and roll. As Puma Perl and Friends, she performs regularly with a group of excellent musicians. She continues to be transformed.

BLURBS

Puma Perl is a remarkable poet and an exciting performer. Her works in verse are packed with riveting details of modern life and chronicle her unrelenting resistance to the way things are or meant to be. Retrograde is a true contemporary masterpiece.

 — John Sinclair, poet, jazz and blues historian, former manager of the MC5, radio host, and political activist

Perl reminds me in some ways of Ginsberg. Both weave the immediate into their work as documentary evidence. Both have a desire to somehow sing to an audience of their peers. Both have motifs…talisman symbols that speak to core experience. Ginsberg returns again and again to his “clock of meat”: Perl returns to her knives, honed and handed over in tiny, sharp cuts of poems (“Do not believe / my spoken word, / read my scarred / letters, they crawl / down my arms / like predators”) and to the vital squalor of LES apartments (“I don’t sleep on the floor any more. I’m too old to crash on moldy blankets, bodies of strangers on either side, sounds of wet fucking, smells of beer, blood and vomit.”)

—B.A. Goodjohn, Mom Egg Review

Absolutely gut wrenching, achingly beautiful. bittersweet and painfully true. Puma seems to have written this in her own blood not from what bled out but from what she ripped out from deep inside. You will recognize yourself in this book. She makes no observations, she relates experiences. She runs the gamut of hustling, scoring, cooking and shooting, the beauty and ugliness of the high and fall, and you begin it all again but never told as a victim only as a survivor and winner.

 – Guido Colacci, Steel Notes Magazine

Retrograde is a true rush…An extremely authentic and unsentimental look at the gritty and dangerous New York that has since been glamourized, mourned and burnt beyond recognition into the realm of cultural mythology.

 – Scott Stiffler, The Villager.

The book is for those who do not wake up screaming, but wake up wanting to scream…The poems span everything from years of addiction, long ago, to the now where there are “social media” and cell phones. It is a a world where “it is always sometimes, never forever”: as it has always been, it’s just a world where it is more glaringly obvious. 

– David McLean, Autoerotic Elegies

Puma’s writing shoots straight from the hip or straight to the lip, powerful, honest and to the point. Her writing hits home, and often conveys things most people are too unaware or afraid to admit.Puma pulls no punches, telling tales of self-destruction as a celebration of life until way after the party is over, and somehow being graced with a second chance to survive. Don’t try this at home.

 —Iris Berry, publisher, Punk Hostage Press

The collection moves through time, whether it’s looking toward a dangerous past, a muddy future, or a bleak present; it is a study in how humanity changes yet stays stationary. Perl draws divine inspiration from Elizabeth Bishop, as the sense of loss permeates between every line, syllable, and period…The book is void of bullshit, portraying American city life in all its unglamorous, gritty glory. 

— Joanna C. Valente, Luna Luna

There is regret and deep disappointment in these pages, lurking but not hidden beneath the swagger of gritty urban attitude, the haze of cigarette smoke, and the back-of-the-water-bill list of pointless sexual encounters with boys who think they’re badasses…Retrograde is a brilliant title for this book, referencing that relentless forward motion that seems to sometimes reverse in both appearance and reality.” 

—Eric Paul Shaffer, The Pedestal

With words that hit like hammers, these poems bring us into a New York City of speedballs, broken windows and fast encounters. There is also ginger tea, soft sleep and yearning. You may have been here—I know I have. And if you haven’t, the raw emotion in Puma Perl’s free verses will transport you. 

—Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of “Haywire”, “Tetched” and “Roughhouse”

These poems make me cry and want to punch a wall. They bring me to that place inside where the darker hours loom. Puma Perl takes us on a trip through our interiors piecing together the moments we wanted nothing and everything at the same time. Her mastery shines when suddenly a word or phrase sparks a laugh, daybreak comes, and she (we) steps out triumphant.

— Nicca Ray, writer

Puma Perl writes with dagger to the heart directness. Dreams merge as she borrows from pain to understand her strength and purity. This warrior leaves me grinning and a little wiser.
— Zoe Hansen, writer / artist

Puma Perl and Rick Eckerle

Hurt (Johnny Cash)

video courtesy:  Puma Perl

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Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.