Jeffrey Jullich
HARD TIMES
The street light stays the same color
for so long repairmen
drive up in trucks, set up ladders.
Their tools come to a point.
The Venetian blinds tilt, weighted
on one side by paint chips.
So this is Venice at last, a home.
Hot air balloons descend
to the level of mere mortals
plummeting through the floor.
Some clutch their chests in pain
to grow vestigial limbs.
The only hiding place that’s left
large enough to hold clouds
opens at the touch of a hand.
Enter through the keyhole.
X-rays show coins in a stomach.
Mouths stretch wide, filled with coins.
We poor people can’t sell our time,
use pebbles as jewelry.
PHYLUM
Let epsilon equal emotion
Fusillade: oblique semi-colon
Marginalia jotted wherever urge
To cry overwhelms speed-reading
Fool-proof encryption (“Get a grip!”)
For corrupt crapshoot rapture
               Strategem: Michael on
Folding sofa bed, spewing phlegm
abysmal “Absalom! Absalom!”
echoes from asylum basement cellar
In margin of criticism book, let pi
stand for poetry/poem Greek to me, too
Rapacious demand for the slightest
Clue whatsoever as to author’s life
ASCII FASCISM
awake before dawn, black
outside except for mounds
of snow, the words “geek”
and “virus” in snowdrift
awful left-over take-out coffee
from yesterday tastes brackish
damn hackers awake prior
to sky blackness out of doors
yes terrible headache
dooms mood to dysthymia relapse
               foretaste of intercepted
               signal pulsated on
               cheesecloth and wire hanger proto-
               computer screen ante-
               dating invention of p.c.
               coat hanger antenna
               Peanuts character Linus
               with blanket in ad for Linux
adventures through the looking
glass in bathroom mirror
spunk liquid in sink
child-proof cap on
bottle of prescription
pills becomes prototype for
damn dawn through
bedsheet curtain
POPULIST CULTURE
Pre-Raphaelite fresco redivivus as
biomechanical hurdygurdy,
                          asterisk
               seen in a glimpse of
               stereoscopic, three-
               dimensional full frontality (plenitude)
rotates on its
access nerve,
burlesque biomechanical lampoon of
lissome Coppelia coryphées, as they
pirouette in unison, virulent.
The Damocles obelus that
                              follows
after at the bottom
of the—buff? ecru? slightly beige
acidified page
on the post office wall
               *
appendages at the base of
petioles,
small, paired
stipules
at the base of the leafstalks
of the rose, where the leaf clings on,
inspiration for
the climax when
Nijinksy bounds—leaps—vaults through
casements of the French
window,
               in the the role of The Rose
VOLUME II: 1939-1962
                         The weight of a thin stem
                         supports, for
                                                  example, its
Romanticism,—or
                         how often, for instance,
                         apart from
the same three credit subject they’re
studying, barely out of their
teens and so no
                         older than
the flower in question, relatively
speaking: up the wall to the roof, fewer
               flowers this round.
               Vines, hedges,—raw
meat of palimpsest the bumblebee
scrapes down to its historical
precedent—
                    ideation of plaything
                         as a pre-Oedipal poetics
                         locked shut airtight
Jeffrey Jullich has two books of poetry published: Thine Instead Thank (Harry Tankoos Books, 2007) and Portrait of Colon Dash Parenthesis (Litmus Press, 2010). His poetry, criticism and translations has been published in a variety of literary journals, including Poetry, Fence, New American Writing, and the Boston Review; and audio recordings and videos of him reading from his poetry are included on the Poetry Foundation website and Youtube. Videos of American Lit: The Hawthorne-Melville Correspondence, composed by Jeffrey Lependorf and premiered by American Opera Projects, an opera whose libretto he wrote, are also available on Youtube. He was publisher and editor of the literary journal Logopoeia. Links to his on-line work can be found at jeffreyjullich.com. He has poetry recently published or forthcoming in Boog City, The Equalizer, Nerve Lantern, and the St. Sebastian Review.
previous page     contents     next page
HARD TIMES
The street light stays the same color
for so long repairmen
drive up in trucks, set up ladders.
Their tools come to a point.
The Venetian blinds tilt, weighted
on one side by paint chips.
So this is Venice at last, a home.
Hot air balloons descend
to the level of mere mortals
plummeting through the floor.
Some clutch their chests in pain
to grow vestigial limbs.
The only hiding place that’s left
large enough to hold clouds
opens at the touch of a hand.
Enter through the keyhole.
X-rays show coins in a stomach.
Mouths stretch wide, filled with coins.
We poor people can’t sell our time,
use pebbles as jewelry.
PHYLUM
Let epsilon equal emotion
Fusillade: oblique semi-colon
Marginalia jotted wherever urge
To cry overwhelms speed-reading
Fool-proof encryption (“Get a grip!”)
For corrupt crapshoot rapture
               Strategem: Michael on
Folding sofa bed, spewing phlegm
abysmal “Absalom! Absalom!”
echoes from asylum basement cellar
In margin of criticism book, let pi
stand for poetry/poem Greek to me, too
Rapacious demand for the slightest
Clue whatsoever as to author’s life
ASCII FASCISM
awake before dawn, black
outside except for mounds
of snow, the words “geek”
and “virus” in snowdrift
awful left-over take-out coffee
from yesterday tastes brackish
damn hackers awake prior
to sky blackness out of doors
yes terrible headache
dooms mood to dysthymia relapse
               foretaste of intercepted
               signal pulsated on
               cheesecloth and wire hanger proto-
               computer screen ante-
               dating invention of p.c.
               coat hanger antenna
               Peanuts character Linus
               with blanket in ad for Linux
adventures through the looking
glass in bathroom mirror
spunk liquid in sink
child-proof cap on
bottle of prescription
pills becomes prototype for
damn dawn through
bedsheet curtain
POPULIST CULTURE
Pre-Raphaelite fresco redivivus as
biomechanical hurdygurdy,
                          asterisk
               seen in a glimpse of
               stereoscopic, three-
               dimensional full frontality (plenitude)
rotates on its
access nerve,
burlesque biomechanical lampoon of
lissome Coppelia coryphées, as they
pirouette in unison, virulent.
The Damocles obelus that
                              follows
after at the bottom
of the—buff? ecru? slightly beige
acidified page
on the post office wall
               *
appendages at the base of
petioles,
small, paired
stipules
at the base of the leafstalks
of the rose, where the leaf clings on,
inspiration for
the climax when
Nijinksy bounds—leaps—vaults through
casements of the French
window,
               in the the role of The Rose
VOLUME II: 1939-1962
                         The weight of a thin stem
                         supports, for
                                                  example, its
Romanticism,—or
                         how often, for instance,
                         apart from
the same three credit subject they’re
studying, barely out of their
teens and so no
                         older than
the flower in question, relatively
speaking: up the wall to the roof, fewer
               flowers this round.
               Vines, hedges,—raw
meat of palimpsest the bumblebee
scrapes down to its historical
precedent—
                    ideation of plaything
                         as a pre-Oedipal poetics
                         locked shut airtight
Jeffrey Jullich has two books of poetry published: Thine Instead Thank (Harry Tankoos Books, 2007) and Portrait of Colon Dash Parenthesis (Litmus Press, 2010). His poetry, criticism and translations has been published in a variety of literary journals, including Poetry, Fence, New American Writing, and the Boston Review; and audio recordings and videos of him reading from his poetry are included on the Poetry Foundation website and Youtube. Videos of American Lit: The Hawthorne-Melville Correspondence, composed by Jeffrey Lependorf and premiered by American Opera Projects, an opera whose libretto he wrote, are also available on Youtube. He was publisher and editor of the literary journal Logopoeia. Links to his on-line work can be found at jeffreyjullich.com. He has poetry recently published or forthcoming in Boog City, The Equalizer, Nerve Lantern, and the St. Sebastian Review.