I'm at Everyday Genius today!

http://www.everyday-genius.com/2010/09/christine-hamm.html

The Rival

My mother got a flying baby. She already had four cats and two dogs. When I came in on Saturday, the baby was tied to a banister, flying up around the ceiling. Mom, you need to keep that ceiling fan off, I said. The baby smelled funny, its diaper was sagging and its skin looked loose. It had orange and yellow hair all over its hands. A baby is a lot of responsibility, Mom, I said. I snapped my fingers at the baby, trying to get it to fly down to me. The baby didn't even look, just kept fluttering its sticky wings and bumping into the walls. It doesn't look right, I said to Mom. I feed it every day, she said, and spray it with water, they said that babies need a lot of water. I asked my mom, Where's its bottle? She said, Somewhere, somewhere. She dug into the pile of soaking dirty dishes in the sink. She was wearing her t-shirt with the embroidered reindeer on motorcycles. Why are you wearing that? I said, it's not even Halloween yet. She fed one of her toy poodles something from the sink. Have you thought of a name yet? she said, I asked you for a name. I heard the baby bump into something in the hall, its wings whirring like a blender. The baby started to make a sound -- something between a toy fire engine and a bark. I think the baby's crying, I said. Oh, he will stop on his own, my mother said, he always does.

Crush


Smashed ice in a waxed paper cup.
One translucent pea hen flowing after
another, or an orange shadow

shifting on the baseboard. Orange
my safeword. Orange I said
Orange when we swam. My breath's

unreliable that way. Why is it
orange? he said. I wanted to try
something new. Do you like it? I said.

Curtains drawn, the day humming
outside like a fire engine on pause.
Orange ya glad to see me? The pea hens

trying to talk. Working on some kind
of clotted harp in their throats. Orange
I said Orange. I buy him a pile of them.

They disappear by the next morning,
leaving a smear on the chair. It's not
something I would normally

say, I tell him. That's why.
Corn syrup, then food coloring, two kinds.

from The Handmade Castle

Section 1. (instead of breaking their hands, one after the other, while someone tries to reach for the phone)

Tonight you make up a father, an ordinary, sad one, smarter than anyone realizes, who reads the history of the Quarter Horse over and over again, making pencil marks in the margins, who drives his 80's Toyota slower now, since his left eye got so bad; tonight it is this father who calls you, this father whose smoke-stained voice you hear by the window as pink light leaks from the satellite dishes cupped like ears towards the grimy sky, this father who sounds distracted, who pauses until you say hello again and this father who coughs twice as he tells you about the plane crashing, about the girl he can't remove from the wall.

Saints & Cannibals is back on sale! Sorry for the SNAFU

First Draft

How to Make a Person-Bomb
after Gloria Fuertes


Start in the backseat.
Add shoes with laces that trail.
And a broken knuckle.
A ring that keeps sliding off,
bracelets that catch on the furniture.
A stick of butter.
A stick of butter.
A cup of hot, black pepper.

Put it in the crosswalk.
Put it in the doorway
of the boarded up hotel.
Send it swinging in an empty schoolyard.
Give it a book with no pages, give
it a chair with a broken leg.
Show it how to teach a dog
to heel, then give it a talking dog
who says nothing but bark, bark.

Are You Going to Eat This?
after Lynn Emmanuel

Start with a dog. This dog. This dog wanting out

of this dream. Then I see my eyes, blinded by windows, a bobby

with a talking gun, more butter and more, smearing the box,

the bureau.

Stuffing her mouth, a servant, still. We tell the dream. We tell

the maids and waitresses, we don their black aprons.

I want to ask the stove, the glaring succotash, the hated

cot. Light, even

light is a dreary guest. I see that first.

_________________

This draft was written as part of my first assignment for my first packet at NEC -- an imitation poem. This poem is an imitation of Lynn Emmanuel's "Dream in Which I Meet Myself". The title and last sentence of the poem are taken directly from Lynn's piece.

Fantastic review of Saints & Cannibals today on The Feminist Review. She compares me to Lorde and Forche -- me! This is going to make my month.

Silver

The sandals I stole from Kmart.
The lighter you used on the ivy,

the dumpster. The padlock on the
refrigerator after Sara's fight with

Mom. The polish Sara dabbed
on her nails, and Mom's seashells

in the top shelf basket. The pit bull's
collar as he dove against his chain, little

grunts, trying to get at us, our arms full
of oranges. Your hair, after she sprayed

it with sparkles for the fourth of July party.
The life guard's capped tooth as he lifted

you from the pool. The rings clotting your
fingers as they tapped and tapped. The sun

after you dared me to stare for a full minute,
the shining hole left in everything after.

Like a Fat Gold Watch

ALL SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE JULY 15TH!!

submit to ceehamm@gmail.com

Like a Fat Gold Watch: I am collecting an anthology of poems and more that celebrate Sylvia Plath’s life and work, but do not fetishize her suicide and death. Please submit your poems about Sylvia Plath for an anthology to come out in Fall of 2011. All poems must be either a response to her work, or her life, with one caveat — they cannot be about death or suicide. Work will be looked at more favorably if it responds to, for example, The Bee Poems, rather than “Daddy” or “Lady Lazarus”. The book will be published through Fat Gold Watch Press. Authors will get reduced price copies.

Please send three to five poems as either an rtf or doc attachment. I cannot accept docx. For the subject heading, please write, Sylvia poems, your name. For the cover letter, please include a short bio — 150 words or less, and describe how your poems are a response to her work or life. If there’s a particular poem you are responding to, please tell me its name. Submissions are due July 15, 2010, and you should hear back by September 15. I am also considering essays, shorter than ten pages (double spaced), and black and white artwork.

The anthology will not be published if there is an insufficient amount of submissions.

Send submissions to: ceehamm@gmail.com.

Ramona the Fallen


Crooked, rectangular eyes.
The stench of the horses

we knit ourselves to. Her ears
clotted with gold/diamond circles

she tugged until her scabs opened
their mouths. Hurling down her

shining silver pony, she broke
the fence with her collar-bone --

the poles banging together
with a sound like wooden bells.

Faint stars where she went into
herself with an exacto knife, a stapler:
I break everything to make it fit.

Tuesday, Chico


The hotel swimming pool,
full of floppy children and
chemical stink. The fly
dying on my nightstand.
A quarter and magic fingers
for two minutes. Orange
diamond, black diamond,
orange -- the bedspread reeks
of bleach and violets. I need
to understand some things,
you said, some things involving
her. This time, I left.

July is listless and self-conscious;
I'm avoiding the beach,
my bathing suit has an
embarrassing hole. The ceiling
fan weeps rust every so often,
and I wonder what happened
to our bug-eyed goldfish, the red
potato, pierced with toothpicks
and string, that was sprouting
in a glass by the kitchen window.

I'm studying the way people use
space, you said when we first
met, at the party in the house
without electricity. I fell down
the back stairs and you watched
me, then offered me a hand
when you saw I was done.

I'm trying out some new images for the cover of my next book, "Echo Park". Here's a close up and then the big picture. I'm trying for a wallpaper motif.

Big:

The Big Picture:

Lines Excised from the 5th Poem About Your Death

Then you said, I'm not really your mother. How, when you took off your shirt, I saw your black-winged bra cupping your freckled breasts. The Wednesday when you told me you couldn't answer my call last night because you had someone's cock in your mouth. The script you wrote for me for valium, so you could get some yourself. The part where you kept your fingers under your eyes to stop the mascara from running. How your hair got in my mouth on the ferris wheel. How you were supposed to engaged, but the obituary said single. The part where you were a pole dancer. The part where you fucked the hospital janitor. The pink lampshade with the feather trim. Your son's pencil drawings of rats on your refrigerator. How you cried every time in the same monotone when your boyfriends broke up with you. The matching bitchy cats under your sofa, your sink. The poster of a pastel garden just above your toilet that appeared to be painted by an extremely depressed grandmother. The part where your pregnant patient hung herself. How you counted to three in a voice as sweet as any hypnotist to get your son to put his video games away. How he has your enormous bronze eyes, the eyes of a busy victim. The sickly yellow light above your stove, how it made us all look bloodless, dying. How we looked in that polaroid from the party, curled up on the black velvet sofa, the white of your big teeth matching the backs of my hands. The dislocated, sudden shadows a flash makes. How in all my dreams of you, you are wearing a yellow flowered scarf around your head, although you never wore a scarf. How you swoop slowly down from turbulent clouds as if you are riding a floating dinner plate. What you really said to me. How you made me my first martini, and I was disappointed. The part where you came on to my psychiatrist and he turned you down. How your insides ached afterwards, as if you'd been hit with a shovel in the stomach. How I tried to pretend to sympathize. The drugs we shared on that couch. The kiss we nearly shared on that couch. How you said you were worried about the stereo speakers, Is sound coming out, or going in? Are we being recorded? How I told you to close your eyes and it would soon get better. How you wanted to ride the bumper cars three times in a row. How you hit my car so hard my elbow dislocated. How it didn't, eventually, get better; none of it.

Dream Dog

Barking bangs from the corners of the garage.
Drool pools in your lap. Face the size of the

horizon, scummed puddle eyes, muzzle and grey
gums. Black hide, burned at the elbows and chin

to pink. Your snot-smeared hands, struggling
with the rope. Paws scrabbling like falling pigeons.

The reek of his tongue; he has been eating something
dead from the trunk. Out-of-tune horns, cellos, from

the front lawn; he whines a pinkish nursery song.
His face is your horizon; eyes the size of scummed

pools, red muzzle and gums, teeth grease-smeared,
like your struggling hands. Drool puddles in your lap.

Beaver, Cat, Clam


Think of it as a small
tender beast. With large
deformed paws. With a razor-
wire necklace. Think of it
as your mother once she's
drunk, when she has forgotten
her second language and can
only swear at you in Russian.
Think of it as a cop
on a Segueway, as a cop on a
Segueway in shorts. Think
of it as an attractive sky,
blasting in your face. With
the moon, sun and stars all
jangling at once. Think of it
as the pink and black sow
you bit at the petting zoo
when you were five. Think of it
with hooves, with hands.
Think of it as the mouth
of an old Mamacita after
she's removed her teeth
for the night. With the scent
of her last whiskey-rich coffee.
Think of it as a drowned girl,
long hair covering her face,
by the side of the pool. Think
of it as her lips, her throat
with your breath inside, your
breath, your breath. Think
of her coughing once, waking
up with her hand on the back
of your head.

Rewrite of old poem

Birds Clearly Don't Understand Glass


you stood near the winter
swimming pool, like a little
mother, but with fur,

a lightweight skeleton,
hollow bones, the age-old bell
on the collar,

your large palms
spread with shelled peanuts,
sunflower seeds, red millet,
white millet

After the Accident


seatbelts hanging us upside/down
can’t feel my right wrist

still a little stoned on teenaged sex
and the fight about the cupholder

a branch nods through the windowshield,
the car ticking like a wind-up toy slowing/down

shattered safe-tee light in my hair,
I unfasten and fall to the ceiling

crimson and clover/over and over/crimson and
still on the radio

(you crawl as if you had lost something small)

a slow volcano bump begins on my forehead

leaves fluttering down from the tree
we crushed

voices outside

a shouting like children in sprinklers.

Great series of portraits of the people sitting opposite of Marina Abramovic. Some of the faces recur, some of them weep. Some people can only stand it for a few minutes.

Fragments II


How she learned to ride the subway by herself.
How she wouldn't tell anyone but him how she lost her thumb.
How he checked the websites for new girls each night when he thought she was sleeping.
How her ankle wouldn't heal.
How she walked as if she almost shook apart with each step.
How the lenses in her glasses were as thick as a finger.
How she celebrated her 18th birthday.
How the cake tasted sweet but grainy, as if sown with colored glass.
How he took her to see the dolphins at Marine World.
How she leaned over and one held her hand in its mouth without breaking the skin.
How he was saving up for a pair of skis.
How he kept his money in the bottom of an old boot under the sink.
How she got the night shift at the 7-11.
How the manager called her a retard to her face.
How he forgot his meds.
How the dog ran away when he was trying to walk it.
How he couldn't make her understand.
How he hid his beers behind the bookcase.
How she started to find things out about him.
How she couldn't sleep next to him anymore.
How the plastic daisies lit up the kitchen.
How he washed all the dishes all at once, the water
so hot his hands were red for a week.

Equinox


The street buckles under her feet. Her purse
swings like the sun on fast-forward. The glitter

of dimes in the gutter, on her knees.The German
shepherd charging, restrained. Apologies whispered,

shouted. Restrained twice. Hot breath builds
its own atmosphere on her cheek. A high tin

sound like an angry cook at the sink: clatter,
clatter. Her hands at the sides of her head,

in her butter-colored hair. The sky before her
a jerky, old-timey film, eyelids fluttering up.

I started a new art blog. Haven't had time to finish any poems, tho' I started quite a few. AWP was fun, but not a life-changing event.

The First Symptoms


No, I'm the monster, he says. Eyes
behind round tortoiseshell glasses

shift left, then up, redden. But
broccoli, she answers, I like broccoli

on my toast. Her purple lips
exactly match her fingernails.

He asks about their child,
part pony, part cat. The cop

looms over them, tall as a rosebush;
they try to ignore him. Her husband

loosens his tie, its bathing
beauties waving from the shore.

She pets the hem of her black silk
slip and tells it, I love you. The cop

clears his throat. She reapplies her
lipstick and her husband says,

I hit a swan on the way home.
It was crossing the Caulfield's pond.

Allergies? she asks. Everyone smokes
outside, he replies. Out in the parking

lot, next to the violet rosebushes.
The cop lights up and starts to cough.

The swan was my mother, he says
as the smoke enters the lace curtains

touching the window and drifts
into her hair. No, I'm the monster,

she says and kisses the cop's eyelids
as he flutters them obligingly.

Me and my tattoo are up at Tattoos Day. As part of national poetry month.

I just got into New England College's Low Res MFA program! Who-000-eee!

A poem in two parts:
Mousy Blonde

My cat drags a movie star onto my feet while I'm sleeping. Under the covers, on top of my feet! The movie star is wet and still. My first thought, octopus under my toes, then I wake up shrieking. The cat shrieks in response and plummets into a wall. When I turn on the lights, I can't see the movie star; she's under the covers. So I make that quick ugh, ugh, sound you make when you don't know what something is, but you're sure it's disgusting. I stand by the door and rip back the covers. The movie star lies there curled up, covered in creamy suede and cat snot. Oh Christ! I yell at the cat. What the hell is wrong with you! I see my window's open and slam it shut; that's probably how the movie star got in. I go to the kitchen, cursing at the cat, to get some rubber gloves so I can haul the movie star from my bed. The cat jumps up on the sink and offers me his cheek to kiss -- he thinks if he pretends, we can both get beyond this.

The grey and white cat crouches
on the roof in the snow, watching
me through my kitchen window
as I add pepper to the rigatoni.
I talk to it in a high-pitched
voice -- the voice I use for babies.

Why is the past always lodged
in my teeth? Milk in glass bottles
balancing in unstained aprons.
Red-checked tablecloths hanging
from a clothesline. I had hoped
to escape through the oven,
crawl through to the library
made of chocolate, to the fields
of redeemable coupons.

See that woman? If I open
the window it disappears under
the trees . You'll never know
what I felt for her, the go-carts
filled with exclamations points.

How you love cheddar,
everyone keeps exclaiming.
How large your front teeth are,
and how small your hands.

Hey y'all,

I'm thinking of starting a link list of places where you can send your poetry books for review, kind of like here at New Pages, and here. I think I'll probably post it on word press, because you can't start new pages here on blogspot? At least I haven't figured out a way. What do you think?

Genesis 1


a barefoot girl leads a speckled pony
into her room, the pony looks over
his shoulder, constipated or sad

she slowly spreads lotion over her knuckles,
trying to get out the blisters, the bite marks,
listening to women breathe on the other side of the wall

she pretends not to notice his scars,
the way his hair catches in his wine glass,
the way his mouth can't close on one side

she offers him her silk hem, and he chews,
his broke jaw working sideways, until her whole
dress dissolves

until she is naked, until the entire dance floor
vanishes, the stars like little forks, pricking and pricking,
until they are alone and married in the snow

THE BOOK HAS ARRIVED!

I'm looking for reviewers -- if you have a journal/website/etc. where you regularly write reviews, please let me know, and I may be able to send you a free copy in exchange for a review.

Here's the whole flyer of info for the book; spread it around!

BUY IT HERE.

Description
A fierce book of poetry based on historical and mythical saints and cannibals, including Saint Claire and Hansel & Gretel.

Reviewers say:

"it's hard to tell at times who are the saints and who are the cannibals... Hamm explores the boundaries of the body in exquisite detail; puberty, cancer, eating disorders, and the lure and horrors of modern medicine escalate into fertility rites, witches, and the heartbreaking loss of childhood. These poems do not dally in Victorian daydreams or ruffled pinafores. They are feral. They shriek and bite and get under your skin."

Rebecca Loudon
Author of "Cadaver Dogs"


Sample Poems


In This Dream, The Sky Signifies Memory


I’m standing in my blue flannel nightgown
at the window. The tops of the California oaks
shimmer below me in the wind. I’m walking barefoot
down the center of a gravel road -- I’m sweating
and my nightgown pinches at the armpits, the neck.


I am getting a baby out of a drawer. The baby
is the color of fog: he is sleeping or dead.
He is too heavy to carry, so I leave him
by the side of the road. I am spitting out persimmon
seeds into the cup beside the TV.


I am climbing a ladder over a hedge made of old
keyboards and kites. I am waking up; I am not
wanting to wake up. Someone is calling my cat.
My cat purrs and spits into my eye. She has
gathered tigers around me. I put on my pointed
leather slippers and climb on to the back
the biggest one. We go searching for my baby.
The sky is the color of water, falling.




Modern Maid


Joan of Arc works at the Gap.
Her armor, nearly invisible under
the florescent light, catches on the sweaters
she folds, so that cashmere threads
follow her everywhere, a crimson cape.
She can't remember how she got here:
most days, can't remember her name when she gets up,
but knows where her keys are,
and what bus to take to work.
God speaks to her sideways,
flickering reflections in the
napkin dispenser at the diner,
upside down when she licks
the ice cream clean from her spoon.
Joan sees pinions behind her when she uses the ATM.
There's angels, sometimes angry and frightening,
often white, and always in her dreams.
They smell like straw and milk...
Joan is sixteen. She's always sixteen.
She's so blond her eyebrows disappear.
She has freckles and is serious,
chews off her lipstick.
She'll heal you if you ask nice,
and go back behind the 501s with her.
Her name means "God is gracious."
Sometimes when she's stacking the perfume
called heaven
she remembers this is true.



About the author:

Christine Hamm is a PhD candidate in English Literature, specializing in 20th century poetics. She won the MiPoesias First Annual Chapbook Competition with her manuscript, Children Having Trouble with Meat. Her poetry has been published in The Adirondack Review, Pebble Lake Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, and many others. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and she teaches English at CUNY. She has performed all over the country, and was one of the featured poets in the Poetic Voices Festival of Hartnell College. The Transparent Dinner, her book of poems, was published by Mayapple Press in 2006. Christine was a runner-up to the Poet Laureate of Queens.

For poetry samples, go to: chamm.blogspot.com

SAINTS & CANNIBALS

82 pgs

Ships in 1-2 weeks

Pathogen I

Skinned rabbit on a pile of tires
next to the filling station.

Bright bugs around our faces,
lit orange by the falling sun.

You reach into the wet gears
of your bike, your knuckles huge,

bruised the color of soft avocados.
What kind of street is this, I ask --

you are caught in the bike chain,
in loosing and refastening its teeth.

Red-faced men in baseball caps
drive their mustard pickup next

to a pump: the bell rings twice.
The blue woman in the florescent

glass booth nods to herself, reading
intently, doesn't look up. You fall

back on your ass, gasping. Above us,
a moth clinging to a bulb opens its brown wings.

Pics from my lasting reading at CROWD in Brooklyn: