the room 22 chapbook
TRANSCRIPT
2
The Room 22 cordially invites you to join us for our first poetry reading,
on June 12th, 2011
at 712 de l’Épée, Outremont.
The readings will start at around 19h.
Feel free to enjoy the buffet of desserts
and bring your own wine.
Picture by Richmond Lam
We drove out behind Cabaret Les Amazones, and booked the room in the Motel St Jacques. That night we jumped on beds. How we jumped! It was a broken lampshade
kind of room, and we contributed to those cigarette holes. It was a noise complaint kind of night, but then again we were staying right above some drug trafficking gun lords.
The Room 22 was born that night, in some kind of ritualistic way we bathed in inspiration and an urge to come together.
That year we organized art shows, videos; we hosted a few events, live performances, photo-shoots. The next year, we met Dutch; we did the whole weekly party thing at le bisou,
with MadKids (Prince Club) and tin-foiled the basement for pictures. We got raided in August and moved locations onto Rachel. We had a gallery there for a month, and then the
downstairs neighbors got us kicked out for some chi unbalance and a nervous cockatoo. We kept going, and soon we were 6 more. Now, we focus the blog on writing, and the
process of it. After a year of brainstorming, we present to you our first of many readings. I hope you enjoy the food and drinks, and, of course, the music and poetry.
This chapbook highlights the work of Athena, Devin, Guillaume, Nicholas, Olivia as well as my own and that of our guests for the evening, Mr. Jacob Wren, Mr. Jacob Spector
and Mrs. Ashley Opheim.
The Room 22 is Athena, Devin, Guillaume, Nicholas, Olivia, Clara, Anthony, Zach, Linny, and Megan.
Love,
Marie Jane & The Room 22
www.theroom22.com
3
Sailors
in big blast of wind
upon dry land
Sail
the freight
when
many
work dry land.
Sappho
translation by Anne Carson
If Not, Winter: Frangments of Sappho
i
Dry lands, ripples of sands, dunes of you.
Dry earth, throats coarse voices drowned in nightly gushes of wind.
grass-less grounds, perhaps it is in you that births the thirst, the longing for sound, the waves.
These new affections are bare, and in their frailty they breathe pink skinned, lucid dependence.
You, work the road, pearling sweat upon lips wide and awaiting.
Fulfilling most of the ideals,
your beauty
makes for even more.
Lands of thirst, and they stretch and they exhale this heat
as the pearls dropping onto them
blossom into fields.
4
ii
Morning storms, inundate the soil in warmth,
the streams race down in such precision,
while the rivers respond in waves
June air spits back to us, as we embrace.
There is breeze now,
imbedded in fresh pollen,
and waving grass upon our knees.
June air smells of humid wood, as time remains slow.
the stillness of a home,
as the wood swirls under the light filled rain, birds scream at the sun seeping its way
back into place,
the sounds that we know well,
the air is still filled of water and it slips upon our faces.
Today, June tastes like a forest.
Marie Jane
June 2011
Drawing by Tommy Jessome, 2009
5
Love Letter N.9
S—-
[mid-afternoon to late morning: when the bad news was delivered and I held you in my arms]
Little flowers line the gravesite of dead fortunes, and I‟ve been picking.
I‟ve been picking and cutting some to replant elsewhere. Perhaps in and around
your landscaped hopes.
It was Erasmus who reminded me to bring a pair of each so they‟d still find their
ever-important love lives. Love: they so rightly deserve. What else springs from
shit to such lovely colours and scents?
You see, your grants have run out and you‟ve been writing for fortunes
well-earned, but this time they aren‟t going to give you any.
I‟ve got a little money saved up here and I‟ll let you have it.
I‟ve been picking and cutting to replant these little unfortunate flowers elsewhere.
I‟ll let you have it. I will let you have it all.
a.i
Nicholas Lindsay
June 2011
Leah and Caleb, Picture by Marie Jane, fall 2010
6
I am on MDMA let me give you life advice
my thought process is an art form
and self-love is a mental state
I can only reach through severe confusion.
out of necessity I have diagnosed myself
with emotional attention deficit disorder
and to survive I had to train myself
to feel anxiety in all situations,
making me unable to distinguish
feeling anxious from feeling normal,
„what would my ass do‟ I taught myself to think.
my ass would feel shy when being observed
and would say think like „calm down, sit down‟ then cry.
the word „shitty‟ often roams around
in my head, what gets me out of my head
is actively avoiding conversations with shitty people,
who have dissociated themselves from willpower
and are excuse-driven. I am willpower-driven
and MDMA-driven also. I will address all my issues
in my head, which is invisible, then do MDMA
and read the most emotional emails in my inbox.
Guillaume Morisette
winter 2011
Picture by Marie Jane, summer 2010
7
A list
Pain, crime and sadness.
Tears, stupidity and failure.
Violence, light and charm.
Crime, wisdom and more crime.
Bitterness, love triangles and just getting by.
The peculiar, the odd and much, much more.
The polymath, the dictator and true love.
A good joke, a bad joke and a neutral joke.
Slim chances, great wealth and poverty.
Witch trials, public television and melancholy.
Permission, psychosis and the average.
Ambition, fame and regret.
Longing, talent and a lack of talent.
Sexual greed, average lust and plenitude.
Decision making, scarcity and whatever‟s left.
The similar, the opposite and the word “yes”.
Again and again and again.
Jacob Wren
March 2011
Picture Laura Lynn Petrick, winter 2010
8
veuve cliquot : stats moves n evolution.
know your mine unassumed
now that paying dowry is illegal.
the dimple has got me going off unaccountable you bet.
the most revered augur is dying for my case,
always willing, attempting with feet bucked,
so i polled him for instruction he was paid.
my bestloved,
she was waiting for me behind the white washes of santorini,
the bestloved that knew my point of instigation.
seeking traditional love poems i wrote to keep up,
worried that my worth at her table was a soupcon at best.
at this party we meet closing on impersonal ground
not city hall. Just little kids with veuve cliquot,
i won‟t let down.
Devin Charitonidis
June 2011
Chloe in Water, Picture by Marie Jane, summer 2010
9
KD (from the series 666-Sophisticated Poultry Humiliated)
The sun rose into clouds over Montreal
and Deckard and walks to the corner store
and it rains. He goes to buy Kraft Dinner-
for dinner and sits at home all day, alone
and Rachael gone, days.
It‟s different in Montreal. You wait at home
And smother ketchup over everything you
Eat. Rachael comes home to a mess and you
Sleep the day, alone. You think of L.A. and
if it worked.
You are completely dependent on everything
but you, Rachael (thank heavens) and work
(A drag.) And it rains and Montreal cloud
covered and Kraft Dinner again, and alone,
the dishes, drunk, waiting to be done.
Jacob Spector
June 2011
The Room 22: Main-Bound, Picture by Emanuel Botello, summer 2009
10
I FED THE ICE OF MY REGION
to your telephone all winter.
hunched statue, tongue thick with silt:
my heart is and is buoyant under
a flap of my skin. your voice a plume
over my head, skull helmet.
metal receiver to a metal tongue:
from far away you tell me that
The Moving World belongs to me.
you tell me what you would do to my thin arms
do to my tongue, my winded corset,
flat pink roses if i were in Your Bedroom.
the sky is stretched like a brown
strand of hair taped between
a door frame and a door:
suspicious and sacrificial.
taut, the sky is an axe: mythically large,
and under its expanse, i feel wooden.
a ticking begins somewhere
in my sternum. your voice
dissipates and whitens.
i remember that it is never really
winter where you are, southern-state.
fucking forty degrees, your ice drips
on my shoulders, axe in the eye,
to the line where the buildings huddle
and melt into the on-ramp. the horizon
is most clear where it vanishes.
Olivia Wood
March 2011
Teeth, Picture by Olivia Wood, winter 2011
11
esper
put it together. give it shape and bloom
when everyone is shadowing.
follow the artificial scent of longing,
the invisible track of networks.
gps/fur around her neck.
in patterns, the wings of creatures
wallow rhythm and reverb moonlight.
settle for her song of ghost light—
it‟s memory stretched across aperture.
with lace eyelash and wing,
she whispers webs when
the fog gathers around bell ankles.
with your lips, weave a secret.
figure eight like a ring with no boundary.
threaten it with extension.
draw a line in the sand and
separate the land with a
fallen feather and throw the memory
to the hollow dens of your antler feelings.
all there is the light and the dark and isis
and the quiet chaos and
the breaths of esper.
sap the lap of husky tongue.
speak to her, then. fall apart
shying into shadow tree map.
whirl-pool my heart, little flame—
take a chance and
settle your hands around the circular.
sky like you mean it.
Ashley Opheim
June 2011
Feathers, Picture by Clara Palardy winter 2009
12
Poetry today
Butt cheek to cheek
It‟s nice to meet him-
He eats me out good
Pleasure is all mine.
I don‟t know what smut is
But i do know
that my dirty fingers
Smear my moleskin daily.
I circle the filthy stains in pen
And annotate the lover.
That silly simile
Poets use
About their eyes
and egg whites
is not half as good as
the one he uses
about his knotting
our satiated condoms
like a 3-year-old‟s
first lesson
at the yacht club.
You don‟t know how
to tie your shoe-laces,
I tell him,
watch the Tedtalks video
might change your life.
he says to
write a poem about it
might change my life.
Some dude pulls up,
starts work at 5am apparently.
naked pretzeled bodies go unnoticed
Thanks to tinted foggy windows.
13
So does the bowline on the pavement.
A volvo has never smelled so sweet.
And neither have nuts.
Pleasure wasn‟t all mine finally
Because really,
poetry is about sharing
I watch him through our steam,
I tell him: Wait. Before you go.
Show me how you do that trick
That makes me scream.
Athena S Delimanolis
June 2011
Drawing and Picture by Marie Jane, summer 2009