Putnam & Schirmann 1/10 7:30 p.m. IPRC

From Singapore to PDX, they're coming to blast you off to a new year of poetry:

  C.E. Putnam     Kelly Schirmann

When: Friday, January 10, 2014, 7:30 pm FREE

Where: Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC), 1001 SE Division St., Portland

In 2012 C.E. Putnam’s back catalog was published by P.I.S.O.R Publications: The Papier-Mâché Taj Mahal (1997), XX Elegies (1998), Spaces Where Spaces Are (1999), Transmissions from the Institute (2000), Maniac Box (2001), Things Keep Happening (2003). He is also the co-author of Crawlspace (2007) with Daniel Comiskey. He has recently completed the first three years of a four-year posting as Poetry Attaché for P.I.S.O.R. (Putnam Institute for Space Opera Research) in Singapore, Singapore. His text, image, and Halloween themed mild-melting audio mashups (P.I.S.O.R. SCARES) are stored at: http://www.pisor-industries.org & http://pisorinstitute.tumblr.com/

He’s going to be reading work from “The Bunny Manuscripts” (forthcoming).

Kelly Schirmann is an artist, musician, & poet living in Portland, Oregon. With Tyler Brewington, she is the co-author of NATURE MACHINE (Poor Claudia, 2013), & the singer for Young Family, whose EP King Cobra is forthcoming from Spork Press. 

She is also the founder of BLACK CAKE, a web-based record label for audio-chapbooks of poetry. You can find more of her poems, songs, collaborations, & visual art at kellyschirmann.tumblr.com.




By C.E. Putnam:

Winding River

Drop of water to drop of water
dragonfly leisure and vagabond
buzz debt barging up river and down.
Thirty more years wearing flowered
shirts conversing with the bodies
they want. Add temporary
works: a knot of roots under
a parking lot, an egret in its egg
wondering what its wings are for.
But who is going to purchase that?
Subtract phase rewards: we must
write all our animals now. I revolve
in the gravity of spirits above
the sea electric with Napoleon
below on that prison island beating
the air, flightless and stupid. Red
cranes spoil the beaches, and then
my isolation feels so mechanical.
I am following a single water
bugs’ total circuit from truck bed
(10 PAX) to pink funnel to yellow
work boots. Lizards in the stairwell,
ants in the walls. There is a deep,
deep distance I feel it out there,
an internal ocean, tiding up beyond
any horizon. I need to see our planet
in the water, the white flower does
not stop going down. 


By Kelly Schirmann:

HOLY OBJECTS AND OR SHRINES

my letter to you was a mouth
& I want it propped open

I imagine you under
the planet I am under
so we have something to discuss

where your lovers went
when they discovered their aliveness still intact
is none of my business

I am under oath
to not sound so strange

when I feel strange
I put on black & start to whisper

when I speak
I am watching the sky
so it sounds like crying

I can't seem to focus
without essential oils
or my hand on your aura

once during a bad winter
I indexed cloud formations
until everything once more resembled
a great tattoo

I proclaimed this booth of ours
a winter booth
& you, mine

I felt for your knee
in the booth
& looked for something significant

feathers are found in the street
with startling regularity
& this helps me immensely

god said turn around
but it was a cruel joke

good one, god, I said
but the sun didn't set

when the moon came around
I confused it with our planet
& felt burned

when I couldn't help being in love with you
I walked down a long road
with a stick of dynamite

I wore a cheap dress
I imagined you complimenting

we can talk about the sun
now, I said
but nothing happened

just ghosts of me
loving my body
& not knowing anything else