Michael Lally and Brenda Iijima

Michael Lally has had 27 books published, including the 2006 edition of the long poem March 18, 2003 written in protest on the eve of the invasion of Iraq and illustrated by Alex Katz with a preface by Vincent Katz, and the 2000 American Book Award winner It’s Not Nostalgia and its follow up It Takes One to Know One (both from Black Sparrow Press). Just out, the CD Lost Angels, recordings of poems from the ‘70s, ‘80s and early ‘90s set to music with a cover photo by Gus Van Sant. Lally has worked as a film and TV actor on shows like NYPD Blue (playing a New York artist), Deadwood, and as a writer on films like Drugstore Cowboy. Since 2006, Lally has been writing a blog called Lally's Alley covering poetry, movies, and politics, among other topics.

I wasn’t good at a lot of it—
but there were things—
strings connecting me to
music—jazz & r&b mostly—
I could play—I had a feel—
soul some said—like poet
Ralph Dickey who had more
technique but lacked a
certain swinging intuitive
rhythm—and words—mine—
not maybe most original—
but originally mine in ways
that favored reverence for
a truth I never found any-
where else—and movies—
or those serial movies that
are TV—in my time I
made a contribution—whether
anyone noticed or not—
I tried to step back, like
Lao Tsu says, but found it
complicated—more complicated
than I knew how—simplicity
being my mission—my love
for the boy I couldn’t protect
in me back then but vowed
to stay connected to—do you
hear those two-letter words?—
they’re the ones that trip me
up since they removed that
foreign object from my brain
that explains my poetry now—
though it always did—

—Michael Lally

Brenda Iijima was born in North Adams, Massachusetts. She is the author of Around Sea (O Books), Animate, Inanimate Aims (Litmus Press), revv. you’ll—ution (Displaced Press) and If Not Metamorphic (Ahsahta Press) as well as numerous chapbooks and artist’s books. She is also the editor of eco language reader (Nightboat Books). Currently she is working on a body of work titled Some Simple Things Said by and About Humans -- a chronicle of how humans have used animals as surrogates. She is also doing research on women who were murdered in North Adams during the 1970’s when she was growing up there. She is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs (http://yoyolabs.com/).

Four moths, Thuringia

resistance developed quickly 		eaten fields of vapor skyhold no 
clouds thrashing		blinding sunscape nope, sun
	epithelial cells have lyse d	released	un of s
gut cell membrane so when it licks it sickens		sun
sun when opening pathogen	binding affinities
control screen with ravens	set sun			sun
oon-m			noon			sun

at(e) e(m) and you’ll die in(sect)icide

black fly vector		hector		horus	
 so(s)

solubilized in eyes our eyes in vectors		suns

i bore a black beetle active

sun, i wore helmet membranes skin wings antennae

un, i gore (s) abhor	where 	once noose

animal, you’ve

 
phase whore boy your disparagement alpha helices [places]

sunscreen i mean mean [detrimental, mental, ‘mean’]

[cede] pregnancy bait wait pleasure gut cellular

wingless raven welter vector		sun [screens]

i mean i mean i’m a combination

larvae stopped feeding/host gut/tremor

breathing machines form in embryonic fluid, body be (fore) 
circumstance glances whor-ses horses horses
we bet on the plumb winning torso
hooves index a circular track
when they’ll race you naked on the cul-de-sac
insects cheer at your success

liquid replicas
 
living cells are motives like color
to mirror your meat perception
jewelry and volume and canyon
inkling overlaps in image
“a creature”

                     a jpeg the transgenetic cactus 
(that she engineered, considers art), it sprouts human hair

there’s a hare named bunny (and it)
glows phosphorescent green

art envisions

what art envisions

tip a cell this way

—Brenda Iijima