The Switch presents poets Chris Ashby, Jamalieh Haley, and Mark Wallace
When: Saturday, Nov. 8, doors at 6:30 pm, reading at 7 sharp. FREE
Where: IPRC, 1001, SE Division, PDX
Chris Ashby is a poet, essayist, and the editor of Couch Press. He frequently collaborates with Nate Orton on his My DAY series, assisting in publishing and organizing the events. His most recent books include
My Day 31: Kayaking from Sellwood to Swan Island (Abandoned Bike), and
After Language: Volume 1 (Couch Press, 2013).
Salt Lover I-V is forthcoming from c_L. Chris lives in Portland, is a member of the Spare Room collective, and works in the forests, grasslands, and cities of the West.
Jamalieh Haley lives in Portland, Oregon where she co-curates If Not For Kidnap and teaches writing. Her work has appeared in
Interrupture,
Sink Review,
Everyday Genius,
Sixth Finch, and she is the author of
Strange Tarot (Poor Claudia, 2014).
Mark Wallace is the author and editor of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Most recently he has published a book-length prose poem,
Notes from the Center on Public Policy, and a novel,
The Quarry and The Lot. He lives in San Diego, California, and teaches at California State University San Marcos.
by Chris Ashby:
from Despite Water
inside society’s fragrant voices
in foolproof authenticity sample
into physician’s saucy imagination
from pataphysical coffee tremors
near laughable prototype signs
for ideal cold transfer
of kinder test marks
except familiar daunting inflection
off rewarding Viking sunlight
during favorable laundry pressure
on zesty smoked capital
down one worrisome treatment
onto farmers’ opportunistic backs
despite obedient shelter catalysis
out here garish imagination
by Karl brewing flarf
outside logic mechanic’s song
beyond generous breathtaking chainsaws
over time town before country side
between indulgent garbage distinction
past Alberta’s burning articulation
beside bronze city eyes
regarding buoyant telephones weeping
beneath bacterial market oxygen
since quiet total domestication
below handy chlorine heaven
through error of weight
behind democracy’s haggard immanence
by Jamalieh Haley:
JUSTICE
The world has angeled some of its horror
for you. Their figures appear serious in the
clouds--they withdraw all your blades from
the wound; clouds--they hold your crimes
hostage; like a battery, clouds--they place a
fire unmantled within; over your face,
clouds--their waterline shows the death
time; clouds asphyxiate that dark look to
become freedom; clouds that further the
expression that does not exist; in you there
are eternities during which lives are spent;
the weapons are shadows, the caves are
sexual perfection, and the clouds--they are
dirty halos for every human touch
by Mark Wallace
from Notes From The Center On Public Policy
Lately
there had been too many accidents. Street against street, plaza roped and
marked, voices stuttered about public space and the rewriting of conditions.
Beyond a sudden turn, or backed against a laser system, electric currents shot
with a momentary stagger, apart from where faces leaned across tables, grasping
for a common thought.
Roles
in the production pyramid exchanged anecdotes about what had happened on
weekends. They’d heard this or that before, claims to insight expelled with
propulsive force across the space of a body locked into its usual deepening
grooves, except where a slice was misplaced, or protests cheered in the mud for
a new totem with reverberations that backed against poles. Maneuvers learned to
trick the trade or trade the trick or utter a clarification three stops past
the last stop, leashed to a time-bound coded familiar, while competing
bandwidths invented ways to look for love without commitment to believing even
the first word.
Secret
phone calls flew between augmented voices, another sublevel of static below the
constant audibility of self-presentation, words holding back or stretched
beyond endurance, a function of what no single knot could admit about itself.
Connections, broken when they shouldn’t have been, carried the aura of
made-to-order wakes, flashbacks to scenes misremembered for ulterior or
surreptitious motives, circumstantial and misled, that tailed off towards new
metamorphoses of what remained unspoken. Oblivion was an assumed priority,
although some preferred it to smell nice.
After
all, who didn’t approve of wit, yet many didn’t, preferring their windows,
doors and bundles standard, segmented against impossible tasks, suffused with
feeling or directness or a clarifying obfuscation, because what could be gained
by looking out? Low level burns were distributed on swift guffaws,
underachieving but occasionally effective in the race to produce a new axis on
demand. Furtive underlings propped themselves against procedures, waiting for an
opening that like a final kick might make them into a landmark. Trances
multiplied, involving armaments always more up to date, shelved instructions on
how to decline politely. From now on the package, a thing the whole world wants
to use.
It
was an old trick to count invented suns, tabloid distortions, figurines against
a backdrop, hollow points with clichés like fate on the accepted range of
tattoos, repeated cries for a drugfest. Methods of belief, sorted in rows for
easier choosing, could earn points towards future purchases. There were highly
touted styles. Double tracked on the multi-layered wall options, fiberglass
alloys imitated observers caught in postures of dismissal, hard against boards,
tossed after weeks of smooth sanding to a redundancy easily carted off.
Quick
shifts in tone could expose years of hiding, while the skyline remained
regular, subject to systematic interpretation. Those who claimed to be without
theories theorized over channels and frequencies, voices enraptured by the
sacred hum of their own repetition. Flare guns were popular, fireworks of all
kinds, images of bodies in naked ecstasy photographed in conventional colors
and poses. Every so often, words on screens would announce that something—a
limousine, a credit system, the abstractions of exchange—was on the verge of
bursting from its own contradictions, while contradictions walking the streets
confused themselves with plunder. Then would come the apparently spontaneous
but usually orchestrated call for a final push, a new misnomer, a spray can for
killing fleas which also contained necessary nutriments.
