4 lowell Liebermann
while everybody has to practice
hand-positions to shed bad habits
(like pressing full-strength into the keys)
& learns to take in all things
car radios spices art museums
reading Moby Dick the freedom
to explore New York on your own
everything else is secondary
you never give up some big performance
& then you wake up to silence
the life beyond that doesn’t include you
gargoyles on spotify roof tiles
& rainwater it doesn’t travel
not what you had in mind at all
this is wednesday you never know
when the next commission will come
recording in the studio
then direct to the dress rehearsal
always something out of nothing
at the rate of one minute per day
nocturne 3: harmonic overtones
4 maggie o’sullivan
some exile angel deprived of land &
language without expectation
performing the world as we know it
dismembered with broken letters
whorls & knots from the scars of history
it could have been anyone’s impairment
orange & amber tracings & foxgloves
a dance of synaptic accretions
three is for riverrun Eve & Adam
or Mountjoy Jail one Monday morning
four is for more than the human world
in & out of audible frequencies
sound clusters sound textures shapes & marks
carried through time in the grain of the voice
the weather on everyone’s lips
wind blows through the pages
sounds out the disappeared
nocturne 4: round about midnight
4 jeanne heuving
It was hard to come back to a habit
& the curse that was always there
there was no way out of that thing
not even with workouts in the gym
the attitude barely filled his suit
monosyllabic cool & surly
no smiles for photographers
but had the zeitgeist buttoned down
it takes courage to play a ballad
pure & elegant & clean
anger turned back to the audience
face bloodied by a racist cop
Robert Hampson
.