In memory of Brice Marden (1938-2023)

“She’s trying to paint me into a corner with her question mark army. She’s wanting to light my pants on fire. She seems super mad at me.“

The 17th series in the ongoing collaboration between George Quasha’s preverbs and Susan Quasha’s photographic work.

Adam, you were the one with brooding eyes and a Cheshire smile.

Ten poems translated from the Greek by Pria Louka.

here the vicious ribbons hiss, swanning
their hypnotic cursive dances, as if were calligraphic curses.
thither the come-hither flickers and quick slithers back.

Darksome, tenebrous, smoked, obscure / the gloam-time, sable-vested, fumid / hour of the witch / the gathering of storms / she wrote poems good as anyone’s / becloud, bedim, mirksome, engloom / when the moon’s dark / caliginous, somber / it’s a blind man’s holiday / eclipsed / embalmed

Farrokhzad speaks as a form hewn to the "line of time," trapped in the earthly realm — her sorrowful longing is one of disillusionment given the unrealizability of divine ecstasy.

By turns intimate and abstract, each poem is a moment of stilled time.

Passing wounds in different studies of light, scabbed on the vast walls of daughters, the world spins inside itself, as a liquid over the plains, over Holy Lands and sacrificial slabs, over citrus peel and sumac-stained hands, over raised sardine fishing boats built with the nails that crucify father to son.

Four poems from Émile Verhaeren’s Tentacular Cities (1895) translated from the French by Jacob Siefring.

Seven poems by Francisco Segovia translated by Katherine Silver, with artwork by Carolie Parker.

A fairground fun, a circus troupe in the moments of repose on the dusty road from one town to the next – clowns and jugglers, carnies and freaks. What we are given to read is a pastime from one show to another. What happens on the margins, in the backrooms, during the show? In the Footnotes?... Well, you know what happens. We do.

Excerpt from Ann Quin’s novel Tripticks, introduced by Austin Carder.

Eight poems with drawings from the chapbook Comes a Time.

“You see this truculent character here, with the curly hair and mustache?” Picasso asked about the Vollard Suite, “That’s Rembrandt. Or maybe it’s Balzac; I’m not sure. It’s a compromise, I suppose. It doesn’t really matter. They’re only two of the people to haunt me. Every human being is a whole colony.”

And on the fourth midnight the new bride slumbered on the stretch of grass * And in the same breath, I was in the newly sprouted leaves * or in the fluttering breeze * and perhaps even in the deep waters * And the breath of the wind stirring little blossoms on the thick tree wailed in me * and bright streams of rain wept in me. *

Poems by Losarc Raal for Tamas Panitz’s Steak Phase

It was on this final line / of descent that Avon brought / her Tarzan poem to a close, / following the message / from the Commander: / “MU-SIC! MU-SIC!”

When I died — a long time ago — I was buried with wolf-fangs and transistor radio. While brain festered in my skull, I pondered negative numbers and the mess I had left: bills, some jottings reminding me to return a phone call from the black side of the sun.