Guest post

MÉNAGE À TRIOLETS, by Heidi Czerwiec

Posted on by

A [PANK] Blog guest series for National Poetry Month

WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/29/3d-print-sex-toys-ups_n_6240784.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-sex

 

UPS redefines package delivery:
betting if you build it, they will come,
they’re providing a new service (for a fee).
UPS redesigns package delivery,
equipping 100 of their stores with 3D
printers (used to make sex toys by some,
but then, UPS defines “package delivery”).
If you build it, they will come.

 

***

hauthorpicHeidi Czerwiec is a poet, essayist, translator, and critic who teaches at the University of North Dakota and is poetry editor at North Dakota Quarterly. She is the author of three chapbooks, including Self-Portrait as Bettie Page, and the forthcoming A Is For A-ké, The Chinese Monster. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Waxwing, and Able Muse, and you can visit her at heidiczerwiec.com

MÉNAGE À TRIOLETS, by Heidi Czerwiec

Posted on by

A [PANK] Blog guest series for National Poetry Month

VALENTINE’S DAY BREAK-IN AT FUNERAL HOME

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2015/02/13/3564129_homeless-man-charged-with-necrophilia.html?rh=1

I like how we don’t need to talk.
Sometimes sex just leaves you cold,
you know? And women usually mock
how I don’t really want to talk,
but you, I’d place on a catafalque.
There’s not a lot who fill your mold.
I like how you don’t ever talk.
Sometimes sex just leaves you cold.

 

***

hauthorpicHeidi Czerwiec is a poet, essayist, translator, and critic who teaches at the University of North Dakota and is poetry editor at North Dakota Quarterly. She is the author of three chapbooks, including Self-Portrait as Bettie Page, and the forthcoming A Is For A-ké, The Chinese Monster. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Waxwing, and Able Muse, and you can visit her at heidiczerwiec.com

MÉNAGE À TRIOLETS, by Heidi Czerwiec

Posted on by

A [PANK] Blog guest series for National Poetry Month

ONLY CONNECT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/hook-up-apps/

 

With the newest, latest App
there’s many ways to make a connection:
with Tinder, Grinder, and 3nder, you’ll tap
(with the newest, latest App)
every horny lovelorn on the digital map,
and with Hulu, proof you’re free of infection.
Without the newest, latest App,
how’d we ever make a Basic connection?

 

***

hauthorpicHeidi Czerwiec is a poet, essayist, translator, and critic who teaches at the University of North Dakota and is poetry editor at North Dakota Quarterly. She is the author of three chapbooks, including Self-Portrait as Bettie Page, and the forthcoming A Is For A-ké, The Chinese Monster. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Waxwing, and Able Muse, and you can visit her at heidiczerwiec.com

MÉNAGE À TRIOLETS, by Heidi Czerwiec

Posted on by

A [PANK] Blog guest series for National Poetry Month

 

I’m a poet with a confession to make: I love writing in form. I know that seems conservative and tame, but verse can actually be quite subversive. I love the way the language presses up against the constraints of form’s corset, the heat it produces. As I’ve written elsewhere:

 …I prefer restriction in my diction,
meter’s mastery, the subtle friction
of stress at work, the language modified.
You would not imagine how straight-laced
I am, inside my bedroom, verse encased.

For my April guest column, I offer you a series of triolets about interesting sex titbits in the news. The triolet is a French tickler of a repeating form that’s like a compressed villanelle, a fun amuse-bouche for these short-takes on recent risqué events. Enjoy! Continue reading →

Pictures of You: Kathy Fish

Posted on by

“For Tom,” by Kathy Fish

 

Fullscreen capture 3302015 80555 PMWhat I remember: eating dusty sandwiches in the car, my brother reading to me from “Chariots of the Gods,” the way my other brother had been so uncharacteristically silent on that trip, the motel beds that vibrated if you paid a quarter, the long walk to the municipal pool and the man wearing big black shoes who asked me to sit on his lap. I remember the tire swing on my aunt’s farm and the uncle who unfolded himself from a rusty Volkswagen in full, military regalia, who saluted us, and our father asking him where he got the costume. I remember green popsicles and a chicken getting its neck wrung and slippery, gray hotdogs on slices of bread and a cousin who climbed a tree and threatened to kill us all with a hammer. It was no small comfort to see there were people in the world poorer and crazier than us. Continue reading →

Pictures of You: Seth Fischer

Posted on by

“Smurfs,” by Seth Fischer

 

Fullscreen capture 3252015 125806 PMSometime in 1983, a rogue photographer caught me covering my father with tiny plastic Smurfs. This transgression was so incredible to me when I made the photo album—by the looks of the tortured D’Nealian cursive, probably eight years later—that I wrote “I can’t believe dad let me” right below the photo.

It’s no surprise I couldn’t believe it. Dad is no fan of being the butt of shenanigans. Sure, he’ll put napkins on his head and call it a hat with the best of them, and when I was little, he was always down for a tickle war (as long as he won), but you should see the fight he puts up when my younger sister tries to boop his nose.

Really, though, what’s important is that this was not a good time in any of our lives: my parents were separating, my mom was mid-job search, my dad was up for tenure. I still hear the fights in that house sometimes, all these years later; because of the heating vents, I heard every word. Soon, I’d be bouncing back and forth between their houses, moving more than an Army brat, never feeling like I had a real home until, at the age of 15, I told my Dad I wouldn’t be moving anymore, the same year his parents died, his best friend committed suicide, and he had twins.

I broke his heart that year. Continue reading →

Pictures of You: Erica Hoskins Mullenix

Posted on by

“Commuter Marriage,” by Erica Hoskins Mullenix

 

Fullscreen capture 3252015 125250 PMI am not throwing back that far with this photo, but then again, my marriage didn’t last long enough to become a truly historical event fit for circa dates and carbon dating, so here we are with a picture of my husband and me from 2007. Always a long-distance relationship or a commuter marriage, ours was a pairing of sex and errands whenever we were in the same city. This photo was taken the day Q, my husband, helped me clean our pre-marriage apartment from top to bottom. We started with my disastrous closet filled with unpacked boxes from three of my previous moves, then hit the bedroom. Once we were able to see the floor, I broke down in tears, happy and bewildered that this boy could see me at my worst and still want to be with me. Two years later when he left me the first time, it turns out, according to the note he left behind without leaving behind much else of our stuff, my shit being all over the place was one of the things he “couldn’t take” so he wasn’t as much helping me out of my abyss that day as he was building a case against me, but that weekend, it was all love and fucking and the scent of Pine-Sol and clean Berber with us having sex in each room as we went along. We finished with this self-timed shot in the kitchen. Continue reading →

Pictures of You: Andi Werblin

Posted on by

“Happy Birthday to My Love in Barcelona,” by Andi Werblin

Fullscreen capture 3252015 124202 PMThe box contained new Converse sneakers (too large), a cassette tape with The Spinanes on one side & Liz Phair on the other, & a thrift-store dress that fit, which was surprising.

There was a letter too that said in its way come back & also don’t, because I’m sleeping with someone else & we broke into your storage locker so she could borrow your bike.

The dress said he is very guilty. The sneakers naturally said run.

The cassette tape was all, remember his cool taste in music. You guys are so connected.

The letter didn’t say he was fucking her from behind. I read that later when I broke into his inbox.

I wore the letter to the party. The dress came too with its drab color.

The wine gave me cheekbones & my new friends gave me more wine.

The bottle said the night is young. You belong here. Stay.

 

***

ANDREA WERBLIN is the author of one previous book of poems, Lullaby for One Fist (Wesleyan University Press). She works as a freelance Copy Director, and writes about neuroplasticity, amateur pastry-chef adventures, and stretch pants. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/WERSUN.html

Pictures of You: Pia Z. Ehrhardt

Posted on by

“The Merry Miler,” by Pia Z. Ehrhardt

Fullscreen capture 3222015 93954 AM

When I was in Grade Ten, we moved suddenly from Alberta, Canada to Mississippi, driving the Merry Miler across wide, empty provinces, and traffic-filled states. There were six of us: my younger sister Nance and me, our parents, and two tiny new sisters.

My mother scouted out the next RV Park in a giant guidebook. She and my father listened to serious music on the radio. They were both musicians.

At night Nance and I sauntered around the grounds, thinking we were brand new. When we found boys our age we skipped the shyness because even if you never saw him again, hitting it off was better than standing there, tongue-tied and wishing. The next morning Nance and I would beg for a later departure, another sortie, but our father would start the engine and we’d ride off like cowboys on fresh horses.

Our mother kept things up in The Merry Miler like she did at home. There were petunias in a vase she’d super glued to the Formica table, fluffy towels in the water closet, Irish linen curtains on the windows. Continue reading →