PLEASE HELP

Via Eirean Bradley:

In the interest of staying open and honest with our community: Tonight during the slam, The pointy house (where Eirean, Robyn, Brian, and Bryan live) was broken into and robbed. Thankfully no one was hurt and the lovely house that we call a home was not vandalized or damaged. The big deal is that the portland poetry slam fund was stolen as well as every laptop in the house. That is over $7000 dollars. 

We will be putting up a kickstarter page in the next 24 hrs. Please help us continue the work and community we have fostered. It takes more than one person to break us, we have hundreds to build us back up.

Love,
Eirean

======

Dear Pipe Dreamers, 

The Portland Poetry Slam community has been my haven. I owe so much to these beautiful, talented, and giving individuals. Please show your support and love in this time of dire need. I will keep you all updated on the kickstarter page.

Again, share this message with your friends and help this community.

Thank you,

L.R. Dalby

HIATUS TIME

(Because L.R. Dalby sux dix.)

(And is on school crunch time.)

(And has procrastinated. A lot.)

(So you should check out PD’s archives, because, man oh my oh man, there is some talent up in there.)

(PD will be back up soon, never fear. Das finals week is rearing its ugly head, but I shall slay the beast!)

(<3) 

OF COMMUNICATIVE MOTION THESE DRUMS

FELINO A. SORIANO

======

-

PAUL MOTIAN

-

Agone the

elongated rendition a

smallish diversion excavated

climbed as the vine interprets winged commotion

this

speed of complex blurred thread

architected smoke twirl of the motional debate:

dance within an against

stance of multilingual understanding these arms and wooden minds

erupting into tangents of structural undulations.

-

ART BLAKEY

-

Distant aptitude heard

scare of thunder’s ululation

soil-tone-covered example of burgeon

silk the woven shadow

cylinder

spiral

web of the spider’s articulating patterns

tall

spectrum of mesomorphic motility

hybrid of space and recursive demonstration

tackling of pound with bivalent fistfuls of

musical meaning.

-

JAMIRE WILLIAMS

-

Crystallization the glass’ fractals (retaining distinguished curls of spiking color)

combining

rhythm of river’s

desired flow this

occultation of dexterous competition—

of or when

the

this

certainty of effort coalesces across face of the listening’s

occupied fascination

serial collaboration with sound and devout

foundation of spatial transcending.

======

Felino A. Soriano has authored 50 collections of poetry, including Of oscillating fathoms these nonverbal chants (Argotist Ebooks, 2012) and Analyzed Depictions (white sky books, 2012). He publishes the online endeavors Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press. His work finds foundation in philosophical studies and connection to various idioms of jazz music. He lives in California with his wife and family and is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities.

For further information, please visit www.felinoasoriano.info

STYLE RITUALS OF PURGATORY

PETER MARRA

======

(The devil dolls were singing

about Françoise Dorleac lying amongst the midnight

flowers fondling her memories

after the Renault pyre.)

-

She and I hid in our room

we watched as

her face described sumptuous

polychromed interiors where

she had reveled in public disgrace.

-

She made a statement:

“I have a surprise for you!”

-

(“We’re not going to leave this room at all, are we?”)

-

A faraway voice begs:

“Make a sacrifice: a halo or a disembodied heart.”

-

Symmetry will be

a desire we no longer need:

a woman’s torso bent, slightly warm.

-

We watch each other

while she watches us;

always a caustic comment etched in plaster,

crackling with sensibility.

-

(Vandals were guilty:

wanton, wide open, oversexed,

and they took photographs, while speaking of

the functions of a verb.)

-

Leaking fluid out of a warm window,

into a cul-de-sac

always licking puddles,

shot from behind. She smiles.

A drool.

-

She will sit and warm

herself with the fire

from the pews.

-

(She licks quivering lips as

female bats discuss flight.)

-

These wounds seem right

as a door of significance.

She left them to be entered and catalogued

in the museum collection,

-

we strolled outside,

feeling so relaxed

and slept in the grass,

-

while listening to the passionate moans

that were emitted from the practitioners

that are attracted to

the current social order.

“Make a sacrifice: a halo or a tarot card.”

-

The snow, slight and cold,

opened her eyes:

-

A specific reflex. A pure form

devoid of people.

-

Her silver cluster became the air

as we needed and we removed

desires with a higher image

this was in their design

-

a trip to sin island for

a sticky, brown paste,

enjoying the morphine curves

of any woman’s body

an empty feeling

it was almost destruction

the TV ordered us

instructions stuttered reminiscing about

those prescription days.

-

She stopped filling that

prescription days ago

images sliding in

a shooting gallery

sulfur and smoke

so much that she has trouble breathing.

-

(Wheeze.)

-

Needles dancing

the overhead fluorescent

has a smell of skin

those prescription days

she strokes her fur

feeling the shock

something new for her fingers

-

a tingle

a magic number

on a gurney sliding

a treacherous dance

at the end of the white hall

the tiny people are waiting

descending horns slowing down

she touches time’s spiked collar

something new for her fingers

-

a yen

for a pain exercise around the corner

-

watching

waiting

watching

-

further information:

a

dog

barking

-

to stop the transmission we opted to walk

she cried because she was stammering.

======

Peter Marra lives in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Among his many influences are Arthur Rimbaud, Tristan Tzara, Paul Eluard, European art films, Edgar Allan Poe, Russ Meyer, and Roger Corman.
He has been published in amphibi.us, Yes,Poetry, Maintenant 4, Beatnik, Crash, Danse Macabre, Caper Literary Journal, and Clutching At Straws. He is working on his first collection of poems.

FICTION 01

DANIEL J. CALFO

======

It’s where all my big ideas come from, dreaming.

Their heads were slightly bowed but not so much as to hide their eyes. All the feelings of fog and rain but nothing of the weather. No setting; it’s not missing, just pale in comparison, frightened with the weight of it all. They knew that I knew. I was getting up from something. I’d been fighting something the way somebody fights something quietly, sitting, in clothes clean and pressed and they remain that way through the dirt and scraping and that eventual first breath, which happened to be, for me, this dream.

They kept knowing, growing with it, knowing I wanted them to know desperately we were friends and they knew; us, copies of each other discovering the fact. They became more me, I more them, the result a balance, symmetry, precision.

It was looking into a dozen mirrors, it’s all one person, he’s a stranger, blink, she’s the quiet girl with the glasses in the back of English class blink he’s the pastor you admired as a man, hated as a theology blink she’s mom blink the first dead person you ever saw blink she says I Love You, you say nothing and the back of your eyelids are no longer black; they called it seeing the light.

They stare back. Think about how well you have been able to go through the motions of living until this point, the audacity of the love it took for these versions of you to watch you kick around, so blind. How they waited for you to look around, living with you, so closely.

======

Daniel Calfo writes out of Portland, OR.  Daniel was a member of The Sparrow Ghost Collective’s first Slam Poetry Team of 2011and competed with the team in Portland’s Northwest Regional Slam. In the coming months, Daniel will help represent Lewis and Clark College at both the ACUI Regional Slam in Portland, OR, as well as at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational, this year held in Los Angles, CA.Daniel has been a featured poet in the Portland Poetry Slam’s Encyclopedia Show and in Portland’s staple poetry open-mic, Word Out! A Poetry Open Mic. Some of his work is published in print in The Sparrow Ghost Collective’s first anthology of poetry and digitally via Pipe Dream Publishing. Some of the author’s other work, including original photographs, appear at (http://danielcalfo.tumblr.com), while the majority will be available in his first collection to be printed in the coming months. For questions or comments, address notes to DanielCalfo@Lclark.edu. 

THERE WAS A MAN

ZACK N. LOPICCOLO

======

With a red rusted Honda civic

and house that both had leaks

when it rained and neighbors

that would impulsively fight

loud enough to break diamonds

and bleed-out ears that made

him too scared to call the police.

-

There was a car-crash look

in his eyes when he attempted

to confront the festively-plump boss.

Sweat rolled down his forehead

like oily-fish-skin-nervousness;

all slicked up shiver rainbow drops.

-

There were two pens in his front pocket,

a red one and a blue, both Bic

and a surveillance camera above

his mouse-squeak desk whose sound

made him quiver every minute of every day

to the point he would freeze like Otter-Pops

waiting for the last thud of the clock.

======

Zack Nelson Lopiccolo is a recent graduate of California State University, Long Beach where he stole a B.A in Creative Writing and Literature. He is one head of the Cerberus that runs Bank-Heavy Press and owns a poem farm to help lessen the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. This is in hope to make poetry a high demand alternative fuel. His work can be seen in Indigo Rising Magazine, ¡Vaya!zine, Short, Fast, and Deadly, Crack the Spine and forthcoming in Contemporary American Voices. He currently resides in Long Beach, CA and works as a Drywall Hanger and Taper. He also loves canned green beans.

More of his thoughts may be perused at rejectionnotice.tumblr.com

APATHY

MICHAEL ALLEN

======

Dawn displays the obvious perfection of a world where only humanity feels incomplete.

Androids of impulse our two eyes often separate the one vision from another.

Running the opposite direction the globe is spinning pursued by ghosts of defeat.

Who clings to its mind like a starving child still clings to the body of its dead mother.

======

Michael Allen is a local Portland poet.

QUOTES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS OF STILLETOS

PETER MARRA

======

Living life as a guinea pig in

a 3-headed dead-pressing

touting the leather clothing,

a disease with the appearance

of a dagger most comprehensive.

-

Patent leather reprisals

split them in two

-

deeper into relaxation

deeper into silence

they stared at each of us

-

voyeurs hounded by a street light

as we passed by,

an exposure ignited then detonated

not sure when

automatic knives flavored the evening.

-

That clicking sound was repeated over and over

it made us feel guilty

-

tissues locked

-

friction — assess the material when needed —

inject the eggs without any scientific basis

we never spoke at the dinner table just yells and tears

torn from the headlines: I drink your blood I eat your skin.

-

We sought after such instruments of pleasure by legislation

-

fungus-like or a characteristic more realistic

than real: extremely rare fermented juices

the human use of a slender blade

tapering to a rapid dispersal more sexual

than the angel that it punishes.

======

Peter Marra lives in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Among his many influences are Arthur Rimbaud, Tristan Tzara, Paul Eluard, European art films, Edgar Allan Poe, Russ Meyer, and Roger Corman. He has over 100 poems published in print or online and is working on his first collection of poems.

ALSO,

I’ve included a link in the side bar to the space in the internet where I used to write about cool things for about a week and then just started reblogging funny pictures, Doctor Who, and Sherlock. It’s under “l.r. dalby reblogs and rambles”. Once in a blue moon I put deep shit on it. But usually it is dedicated to the BBC, animals wrapped in blankets so they look like burritos, and food shaped like not-food. 

There is nothing wrong with me.

It’s like if my mind had a glove box where you shove all the little things that will make it embarrassing and difficult to find your vehicle registration information when an officer of the law pulls you over…that would be this.

This is an effort to give you the chance to get to know me (or at least my obsessions), and if you have personal bawgz you’d like me to check out you should put them in my ask box. I have the good fortune of being part of a wonderfully close knit community of slam poets, writers, and artists here in Portland. I’d like to extend that spirit of camaraderie to the PIPE DREAM internet community. Sharing our art is one of the finer things, and sharing stupid funny memes, jokes, and pictures of obese pugs makes it just a little bit sweeter.

PIPE DREAM will remain unsullied by said dumb crap that I love oh-so-much, don’t worry. But hey, let’s get to know each other a little better, eh?

Also, here is a joke that my girl, Becca, told me:

Q: What do you call an alligator in a vest?

A: An investigator!

In instant retrospect, clicking “create post” is probably a bad idea, because a bunch of you probably think I’m rad and artsy and shit. Whoops.

I regret nothing,

L.R. Dalby

Founder