This Saturday, March 25th: Ron Silliman & Selah Saterstrom -- 8:30pm, Internationalist Books

Who: Ron Silliman; author of Under Albany, Xing, Tjanting, and many others; mind behind the popular Silliman's Blog; gave them the idea to put cod genes in garden tomatoes.

Who: Selah Saterstrom; author of The Pink Institution; artist in residence at Warren Wilson College; can two-handed reverse jam blindfolded from half court with only one sneaker on.

What: Desert City Poetry Series: a very serious series. Seriously.

When: This Saturday, March 25th, 8:30pm -- **Note the new time: 8:30pm!!

Where: Internationalist Books, 405 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC, where Roy really means King.

How much: A $2 donation requested to support the readers and series.

Why: "The meaning of medicine. Three boys fishing by a small dam, right by the polluted water sign. Blue thread enters the skull under the hair line, pulling the red wound shut." "Once during the war Azalea sent Willie a photograph. / It was not Easter but she was wearing her Easter best. / It was an effort, for the war."

See you there.....

Upcoming reading:

April 22nd, 8pm: Emmanuel Hocquard & Rosmarie Waldrop -- Final Reading of the Season!!

*Internationalist Books

*Ron Silliman
and more.

*Selah Saterstrom
and more
and more.

The Desert City is supported by grants from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Orange County Arts Commission and generous donations from anonymous individuals.


from Demo
by Ron Silliman


This is a test.

The hammer of birds (rabbits) secure in the deficit garden, fog along the coast.

Water hammer, rock board -- recurrence as key in phlegmatic analysis (fellaheen hurdling custard pie into the face of Bette Midler).

Friends are perpetually "going to get it together," jobwise: the coast is altered one quarter inch.

Just like that.

The window conceived as a form of torture, through which a century is expressed (blue hands, the chartreuse of a tennis ball): dobermans of delight crowd the sun.

Met against metaphor (I want white rooms): the cast is clear.

Up against the woolite, desire for narrative condemns millions -- French bread hard as a rock.

Nouns aver facts (pinched nerve at base of neck): a terrycloth sweatband is an insufficient monument (dress for excess), specific as the smell of chalk.

Words row.

The sun, backlighting your blouse, reveals all, newlyweds at a Grateful Dead concert, birthmark of the surgeon general.

Birthright of way: foghorns and a rooster counterpoint hazy morning.

The outer wall of the prison is yellow, the inner one green (old paperback bought at a garage sale).

Verb is the eye of the sentence (world stylized for efficiency's sake): dogs bark.

Dog barks -- there is another way to compute the tides.

Eminent ptomaine.

Poets propose sky, only to fall back on cannibalism (downhill on a skateboard).

Crudley mechanical, an adjective grinds meaning from a noun forming the perfect countenance of Elvis on black velvet.

My pockets are a jungle.

High heels grind pavement into paste (memory of color scheme popular in past war) -- the construction is not parallel (taster's choice), pruned tree's new sprouts.

My hand on your thigh in a dream (not expected): if critics had ethics...a suburb without sidewalks.

Flat country with clear conscience.


from The Pink Institution
by Selah Saterstrom

Willie lay in bed. Through darkness he made out a figure standing in the doorway. Willie realized it was Death. Death entered the room in long, swooping strides. He walked past Willie's bed and entered the adjoining children's room. Willie followed. Death picked up a child at which point Willie began to assault Death. The two entered a wrestling match. Willie won with child in arms and Death defeated, got up to leave, but he brought his mouth close and said, "You'll see me again." Death looked like the popular renderings.