a new book of documented wanderings by
CAConrad & Frank Sherlock
CAConrad & Frank Sherlock
cover photo by Zoe StraussTO ORDER PLEASE CLICK HERE
FOR REVIEWS & INTERVIEWS CLICK HERE
for reading EVENTS click HERE
this book is published by the good people at
Factory School as part of the Heretical Texts series
BOOK SAMPLE:
"I had wrist surgery
so I wouldn't have to
cut them myself."
—Allene Steinberg,
poet & friend
if I removed
my shirt to
hide their
bloodstains I
don't remember
Love and
Revenge
have no
separate
lists of
gods
can you
remember
September 10th
2001?
it's chaos
who gets the
earmark
never the
Daily
Beauties
a LOVE
where each
human cannon
breaches fear's
illusions
near the bank machine
feel cameras
focus overhead
he says I have
a problem with
authority
my mother
winks and
smiles
I was happy
Matisse was
a painter when
my friend could
pay her rent
selling hot
dogs outside
the show
watch them
purchase those
homosexual
home essentials
as though
Stonewall and
other American
Revolutions
were fought to
guarantee
purchase
power
funny how
everyone who
tells me they'd
rather live in
centuries
past is
rich
and
white
dare to compose
a terrible LOVE
for constitutional
stay of execution
dare to compose
a terrible LOVE
for those in
the song
with you
and to
see finally
from a sudden
pair of stilts how
"could've been"
never served
us once
So the attempt
to reduce us to
seductive packaging has failed Now what
In each body
rests every sin of the world that translates as shots
off the
mark
I am here to be new to
the city that birthed me & new to
this case that has carried me through
Red
petals on a
red rug
blur
the dialectic but
bread doesn't usually come in
primary colors
Meanwhile here is a theater
for the archivists to test
their nerve
Stilted figures
play-act mass
acres Slick
effigies return
as mock enter
prise models
burning
before a crowd of silent
witness
An acting troupe addresses
ethnic cleansing in the waning
nights of the Fringe Fest. "Of
course they talk about genocide.
They're Polish." The show ends.
Everything burns. A new set
is built for tomorrow.
Great & Greater Satans
follow our movements from behind
the glass that houses the Wooden Shoe
The smell of warring
fundamentals that cook themselves
is all over the magazines
Their pain Our pain I thought I
might be they Do they know
they might be me Nothing says
terror like a boy
w/ a black eye
I recognize the cover
photo of Clamor Magazine
as the work of Greg Fuchs.
It's an elegant portrait of
his elderly neighbor Delores.
I know I'm too young
for her. Will I be forever?
We get our vitamin D
in the sunlight
frozen in
this absurd act of urban planning (also read as big kids
taking a walk)
Conrad lets the water
ice girl pick his
flavor I poke a hole in the cup bottom
leaking mine Lug
ice around
long enough it will
become liquid
An essential
return tempts me
to take a nap on
the sugar-water pavement
A portrait of a rebel leader
double-crossed in rugged terrain is captioned
REMEMBER
& I remember again that
everything has an anniversary Like today
A wish is
caught off
the milkweed & blown way
---------------------------
CAConrad is the recipient of The Gil Ott Book Award for The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009). He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), and Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006). The son of white trash asphyxiation, his childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. Visit him online at CAConrad.blogspot.com or with his friends at PhillySound.blogspot.com
Frank Sherlock is the recipient of the 2009 CAC Sexiest Poem Award. He is the author of Over Here (Factory School 2009) and a collaboration with Brett Evans entitled Ready-to-Eat Individual (Lavender Ink 2008). Other publications include Daybook of Perversities & Main Events (Cy Gist Press 2007), Wounds in an Imaginary Nature Show (Night Flag Books 2007) and Spring Diet of Flowers at Night (Mooncalf Press 2006). He is a co-founder of PACE (Poet Activist Community Extension) and a native Philadelphian. You can visit him online at FrankSherlock.blogspot.com or with his friends at PhillySound.blogspot.com
Frank Sherlock (left), CAConrad (right)
reading The City Real & Imagined
for NEXUS Radio
reading The City Real & Imagined
for NEXUS Radio
