urban blight
conundrum columbum
olly olly income free
ghost duck not space duck
enter vain tango, ha

tango tango aqua zen
allez beer, beer allez
sects bifurcate your alter ego
will you marry me?  you’ll get a huge diamond
& a peony dress sewn with vines

an affilative gesture
elephants put the tips
of their trunks
in each other’s mouths
& swirl them about

it’s a marriage exam
dead black-eyed susans
look good covered with snow
the tango pit’s covered with egos
i wish the untouchable skeletons were geraniums

plant panthology
love is easier than you think
possibility vs. probability
a pre-verbal sensation
i didn’t know what i could do

but then i had a dream
i saw i knew more than i thought i did
watershed!  away!  ouch!
the tip of your trunk hurts a little
& tree-trunk borers become whale-bone borers

olly olly ocean free
can you name what you desire?
hell-o sharknado, bi bi old id
i began to love you 30 billion years ago
but what did i know?

***

Jennifer Karmin’s multidisciplinary projects have been presented at festivals, artist-run spaces, and on city streets across the United States, Japan, Kenya, and Europe. A founding curator of the Red Rover Series, she is author of the text-sound epic Aaaaaaaaaaalice.  Her poetry is widely published, most recently in I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women, The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing, and as Bernadette Mayer’s assistant on The Helens of Troy, NY.  She teaches in the Creative Writing program at Columbia College and at Truman College, where she works with immigrants and refugees.

Bernadette Mayer lives in upstate New York and has been a key figure on the poetry scene for decades. She is the author of more than two dozen volumes of poetry. Her most recent book, The Helens of Troy, NY, was published by New Directions this past spring.  The Sexual Organs of the IRS & Other Poems, a collaborative chapbook with Jennifer Karmin, will be released by Convulsive Editions in 2014.