Poem

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New Poem by Geoffrey Nutter!

To prepare you further for the New York City Poetry Festival, we are excited to present a new poem by another one of our readers, Geoffrey Nutter. To hear more by Geoffrey, who will be reading with B. C. Edwards and Paige Lipari, don’t forget to join us on Governors Island Saturday, July 21st at 2 pm at Chumley’s stage.

These Great Sentinels

 

These great sentinels

have been here so much longer than you,

bare as January, January bees,

bare as rain or boats of commerce snarled

on the highly trafficked waterway,

as the bowsprit of the Dutch fishing pink

(one of many curious boats)

or the Malay rigging of the Bombay yacht

(another one of many curious boats)

and the lights along the turrets of the cliffs

along the harbor basin shined.

 

And Mrs. Hannah Glass set her cliffside house

in order. It was a house of glass.

And out above the water burst

the Roman candles of July,

the apple-green meister-singers,

the long fire of an open secret, aquatic trees,

and the cerulean brothers of Jupiter, of love.

 

And these great sentinels have torn

a page of strange remembrancy

from your endless calendar

to let the cool wind charm you

(the cool wind of July–for a fragrance

of jasmine drifted over from the palace, from the forest).

For each season has its delights,

as each key unlocks a door–but the key

does not tell you which door it opens,

nor in which building you will find it.

 

Geoffrey Nutter has written three books: A Summer Evening, Water’s Leaves & Other Poems, and Christopher Sunset. The Rose of January will appear in 2013 through Wave Books. He lives with his family in Upper Manhattan.

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New poem by B. C. Edwards!

In anticipation of the upcoming New York City Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island, we are posting a new poem by one of our featured readers. Please join us on Saturday, July 21st at 2 pm at Chumley’s stage. Can’t wait that long? You can also hear Carter read on Friday the 13th at the H.I.P. Reading Series at Bar on A (170 Avenue A) at 7 pm.

Like Everything Was Already There

Joshua,
I am making a list of the things we need to buy
A bathroom scale
A weekend vacation house for the bathroom scale to live in
and keep occupied during the weeks that we are in the city.
A blender to keep the bathroom scale company. One of those nice ones
That can grind rocks into sand. That if we leave it too long
Will grind sand to dust. Dust to whatever comes after dust.
Pots of various sizes
and colors if possible
A vacuum for the dust and what comes next.
A couch
Two couches, actually, unless your sister has a spare
Mine does not. she has no extra couches
She is flush all out
but my sister is lousy with beds
We do not need any extra beds
we have between us five beds possibly more
we could each spend almost a week
every night in a different bed
and not sleep with each other once
A dry bar.
A shower curtain.
Stools for the dry bar.
A shower curtain liner,
but to be honest I don’t know what those are for
They just seem to get in the way, dangle on the wrong side of the tub at all the worst moments
I only added it to the list so that you wouldn’t think that I was one of those brutes that grew up only having a shower curtain and not the liner, which I was, in fact.
A dishwasher, because we should be honest about this, neither of us is going to wash the dishes. Probably not ever.
A maid. Mostly to deal with the dust, what comes after and also take the dishes out of their washer.
We’ll need a bedroom as well.
or really just the walls to define the bedroom.
because we kind of already know where the bedroom is
but haven’t told anyone
and without the walls there, no one will know that it’s the bedroom
but, as I said before, we’ve got plenty of beds for it.

B.C. Edwards lives in Brooklyn. He is the recipient of the 2011 Hudson Prize put out by Black Lawrence Press which will be publishing his collection of short fiction, “The Aversive Clause” in 2012 and his collection of poetry “From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes” in 2013. He is a regular contributor to BOMBlog and his work can be found in Red Line Blues, The Sink Review, Mathematics Magazine, Hobart and others. His short story “Illfit” is being adapted into a piece by the Royal Ballet of Flanders. He is also a Literary Death Match Champion and has the medal to prove it

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FAMILY OF MANY ENZOS by Paige Lipari


Family of Many Enzos

“In Family of Many Enzos, Paige Lipari conjures a night kitchen that pulses with memory and fantastical incident. Volcanoes provide the heat, while “the red moon only comes out on the nights we stuff artichokes.” The cooking, too, is hardly homey: “enemies/ will be picking/ bones from their loaf,” and be sure to look for the “young American cousin in/ the sweet dumpling squash.” Smartly posed dilemmas of self-knowledge are entwined with strands of a generational saga, obliquely told yet vivid. Lipari pries at the connections that link all things sensual—food and pleasure (“Make me a feast out of the/ the brains you’ve lost in bed”)—to render felt intimacies, as well as the starkness of isolation: “Where are the candles kept?/ I am alone on this ceiling,/ and wasn’t even born timely to.” In Lipari’s night kitchen, the flame burns low but steady.” ~Albert Mobilio

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Book Release Party with Edwards & Lipari!

Finally, something to do Monday, February 20th if you live in the New York Tri-State area! Augury will be around to heartily celebrate the release of its three new titles. B.C. Edwards and Paige Lipari will also be there to read from their startlingly beautiful new chapbooks.

Also, music by Alicia Jo Rabins of Girls in Trouble! Cupcakes! Drink specials! Poetry! Books!

RSVP on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/272806632784695/

And we would be remiss if we didn’t thank everyone who supported Augury during our fundraising process. We made our goal! Thank you to donators, well-wishers, word-spreaders, hand-holders, and everyone else.

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A Poem by Finalist Lily Ladewig

More Like a Compass

this hat gives me a direction.
There are occasions for hats
and a hat for every occasion.
But this is just the opposite.
I wake up naked and put this hat on
my head before deciding
what the day will wear.

 

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Lily Ladewig’s poems have appeared in Conduit, Denver Quarterly, H_NGM_N, Salt Hill, and SUPERMACHINE. She is the author of the chapbooks You Are My Favorite Person of the Year (Mondo Bummer Press, 2010) and, with Anne Cecelia Holmes, I Am A Natural Wonder (Blue Hour Press, 2011). Her first full-length book, The Silhouettes, was a finalist for Augury Books inaugural Editors’ Prize and will be published by SpringGun Press in 2012.

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Big News: Chapbooks by B.C. Edwards & Paige Lipari

We have fantastic news! Following hot on the heels of our announcement that Patrick Moran won the Editors Prize for the Book of Lost Things, we are pleased to announce that Augury Books will be publishing two chapbooks this Winter/Spring. Take a moment to meet our attractive new authors B.C. Edwards and Paige Lipari.

B.C. Edwards lives in Brooklyn. He is the recipient of the 2011 Hudson Prize put out by Black Lawrence Press which will be publishing his collection of short fiction, “The Aversive Clause” in 2012 and his collection of poetry “From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes” in 2013. He is a regular contributor to BOMBlog and his work can be found in Red Line Blues, The Sink Review, Mathematics Magazine, Hobart and others. His short story “Illfit” is being adapted into a piece by the Royal Ballet of Flanders. He is also a Literary Death Match Champion and has the medal to prove it.

Paige Lipari is a poet, music maker, cartoonist, and cook. She lives and works in Brooklyn, and was previously an editor at A Public Space.

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Poem by Finalist Mark McKain

Chameleon

 

puffs its red throat-fan—
a warning stolen from the burning cane-fields.

 

My love and I pose
beside a wall of wrought iron and hibiscus.

 

I hold a ball of string. A wild dog sniffs the gutter.
Kite made of palm ribs hangs on thorns of a lime tree.

 

A hurricane of scents—sweaty skin,
spitted pig, bleeding fish—bathes the island.

 

We suck on oranges. Juice runs down chin
and stings the corners of mouth, sea-rain

 

and seared flesh streaming through hair.
A maroon centipede undulates.

 

Sugarcane ash falls on skin.

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Mark McKain’s poetry has appeared in many literary journals including The New Republic, Agni, Subtropics, The Journal, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook Ranging the Moon and teaches screenwriting at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida.

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A Poem by Finalist Rachel Moritz

Pilot

Someone who tunnels down and away was other

My mother said, you’re going where I can’t be with you

As a glass idol fills its own presence with lack

The stairs down into each self—how one door

opened where the man was let in

Public as flame, the self with no interior

One hadn’t hearing for doubt in that place seen as clear

With him on the street, my spine was agent a world

extended into, sweeping a path

Sometimes coming back in dreams, that other kind of transparency

How our safety felt unreasonable, like I was doing something wrong

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Rachel Moritz is the author of two chapbooks, The Winchester Monologues (2005) and Night-Sea (2008), both from New Michigan Press. Her poetry has been published in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Free Verse, HOW2, typo, 26, and other journals. She co-edits poetry for Konundrum Engine Literary Review, and also publishes a poetry chaplet and broadside series, WinteRed Press. Moritz lives and works in Minneapolis.

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From the Archive with Ray DeJesús

From the Archives of the Dancer-cum-Singer-cum-Actress Recreation Project in Progress

as is an undone bow-tie dipped in a well of M.L. Ciccone’s
antiseptic pomade for brunettes
gone blonde genteel.

From the Archives of the Great Potamkin
Blowout

The stretched pleather gloves reach to the Peconic of yr
lap like Cadillac
hubcaps

*

Kindly that she endures
an uproarious Cantiflas
laugh

 

From the Archives of the Case of the State of Florida vs. State of Florida

an argyle
v-neck
of
geese

 

why does the hunter follow with
delta airline
units

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Ray DeJesús was born, raised, and still resides inBrooklyn,NY. A first generation Nuyorican, Ray is a graduate of The New School (MFA, Poetry, May 2010), and he currently teaches writing atSt.FrancisCollege.  He has had the privilege of reading at the following: 169 Bar, Rose Live Music for the Earshot Reading Series, The New School Faculty/Student reading (May 2010), Cornelia Street Café, and Flying Object inHadley,Massachusettswith the fine folk at Maggy Poetry Magazine. His poetry has been published in The Best American Poetry’s Blog, Maggy Poetry Magazine (Issue 2), and Literary Chaos. Poems in G(o)BBet magazine (UK), Gondola Journal, Peaches and Bats Journal, and an essay on Hüsker Dü in Jackie Clark’s Song of the Week are forthcoming. Ray was also guest blogger for Best American Poetry, June 22-28. He can usually be found shielding his ears from the awful, shrill sound of church bells on a daily basis in his neighborhood of Bay Ridge,Brooklyn. Ray is currently working on a collaboration: A chapbook long project with poet Christine Kanownik. In addition, he, along with Jeff T. Johnson and Claire Donato, produce Vampiros Documentos Presents, a video online journal. His current mantra: Sometimes things is just things.

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A Poem by Jim Behrle

I Go Forth Blurbless
America needs more
mosques & less fear
“The post office freaks
her out” / I kissed
a boy and it tasted
like the New York Jets
I eat phonies & crap
out copies of Catcher
in the Rye
Put yourself in debt
forever to write like
the poets you like
Turns out I didn’t need
a therapist, I needed
an exorcist
I want to fail worse
I still don’t have
health insurance
You can get along just
fine on boredom &
despair
“Hold me closer, tiny
gangster” / I’ll never
win a Pulitzer unless I
get cancer Stealing your best lines
—
“The poem / does not lie to us. We lie under / its law”–John Wieners, “A poem for vipers”

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Jim Behrle’s latest chapbook, IT SERVES ME RIGHT TO SUFFER, is due out soon