Poetry / $15.00
brandon arthur
“Brandon Arthur has the uncanny gift to be both Personist (see Frank O’Hara) and Archetypal (see Robert Duncan) in his works. Looking OUT at the phenomenal, looking IN at the possibly even more phenomenal (but not immediately accessible to others), his poems truly ‘own’ their sound/vision/intelligence. expired Rx is a book unlikely to expire in the coming millennia (given, of course, the survival of writing).” - Anselm Hollo, author of Guests of Space “Brandon Arthur says ‘gravity.’ He says ‘run your finger along the grain.’ It’s the weight & texture of a good particular poem he’s referring to. These poems of his sure have grain to them, American grain, & they have gravity. First the vocabulary catches you. Then notice the ambiguity, how it opens an influence that is magical, even spiritual. A physical space for the unknown & uncertain to enter your life.”
expi ed
- Andrew Schelling, author of Old Tale Road
expired Rx
“expired Rx is a cure for poetic disorders. A remedy for prescribed notions of viewing the quotidian. These poems understand how the ‘street rain became horizontal’ and how ‘an iris cranes to the sun.’ Brandon Arthur navigates the interstices of language and sound: a lattice of ‘disruptive landscape’ against the backdrop of ‘proverbial…shade.’ In an evening that resembles ‘something like loss,’ expired Rx hones our senses, then renders a new world.” - Michelle Naka Pierce, author of Beloved Integer
ISBN-10 0-9826646-4-8 ISBN-13 978-0-9826646-4-3
- Reed Bye, author of Join the Planets
51500
9
780982 664643
w w w. m o n key p u z z l e p re s s . c o m
monkey puzzle press
“In the poems of Brandon Arthur’s expired Rx, words and lines are accordion-jointed and expand and contract to each other, sometimes kaleidoscopically, in tumbling observations, sometimes clipped in dialogic bits of exchange. Though pacing and rhythmic action vary, this is a writing of quick-draw observations on syllable-tight timing, and life is sensed in the movement: a delight of active poetry.”
brandon arthur
expi ed
expi ed brandon arthur
monkey puzzle press boulder, colorado
Copyright Š 2010 by brandon arthur
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief excerpts.
Cover Art by brandon arthur
Cover Design by michael d. edwards
Book Design by nate jordon
ISBN-10: 0-9826646-4-8 ISBN-13: 978-0-9826646-4-3
Monkey Puzzle Press PO Box 20804 Boulder, CO 80308 www.monkeypuzzlepress.com
Contents the armillary sphere section one:
unnamed self-portrait
unnamed self-portrait hands recognize their own animal landscape with burning house throw your mother’s bones over your shoulder one tree consumes another pull out macaques in a steambath before the ants reversed iteration this is shit spurt of emptiness expired Rx the revenant section two:
5 9 10 11 12 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 24
3 months round
3 months round section three:
1
25
through leaves of a plane tree
of what spoke & you fall the yips they said it was narrative sickness in the dislocated limbo the aspect experiment what you see is what is there to be seen don’t forget the key through leaves of a plane tree
41 42 44 45 46 48 49 50 52 53
3 months round
expired Rx
morning
land cracks apart
11 days later evening crows on dumpsters toenails growing over skin, hairs quivering into roots breaking through wood the hymns of combustible engines ascend grinding change on the street
drips down intersections
yielding light
seeping rain drips from SUV bumpers
molded pennies wink in a gutter’s angle bus accelerating to make the light icebergs collapse into oceans
27
brandon arthur
6 days later boiling of carbon & light driveways wide as the pounds of skin one life sheds
page
a
or broken winged bird
turned over spit debris against a fence frugal thunderheads dissipate under thin elms grow honeybees or dry clover, small black ants mapping the balance & reel squirrels throw down seeds space trash burnt upon reentry mellowing crabapples
stocks drop
crow shit on a bike seat
28
the tall cracks of bark guide ants to the ground
expired Rx
gravity tugs hands’ hours the breast-sag of time fat & testes droop seed or fruit every 7 years scratch a new you
wheels of pigeons converse maybe a Honda hits one
29
brandon arthur
Night at the kitchen table an epicenter pulsates. bend elms with limbs, make suns heavy, forgetful
spilling of light from a shade
rain is just as nameless as birth but makes dirt re-appellate itself to mud in its dripping
age clings to the nose of this room
30
expired Rx
early October evening
beak in Good Times bag ½ eaten deflated French fry flapping like a worm
anemosis in the peppertrees, shaking old yellowed currency, pooled on the sidewalk & rushed in vortex gusts across a soccer field. an unseen steeple throbs 9 beads down a rosary
chemical flag bent & nodding under the cottonwoods sifting through ducks & mcdonald’s bags boulder creek water adds in proportion to its subtraction sound of a column of plus minus equals 31
brandon arthur
sidewalk handprints fake blood & band-aids the tall rain bends down over 6th grade words erased on a blackboard, their faded hairs robins clean their nests sprinklers come on
cracking branches a clearing stumps & mud
spine of an open bible (rotten soggy) crumbles on 7th st.
32
expired Rx
days later
dilation & implosion of light through a window
33
brandon arthur
late october evening
wake up, it’s night the tall slow hood of a snail 11:32 distant laughter of girls spread like rain
“we came back” her voice coughed “but the trailer was gone”
bass thumps switched to a limited time offer stand up & brush off constellations waver between powerlines & then found a new Vermont quarter face down in the 7-11 parkinglot none of the machines will take it
34
expired Rx
wheel back clock arms ambulances round the corner of 7th & Edom the days quicken a warm eaten fence the names coagulate into indecipherable spraypaint cats roll in the grand love that spits us all —no, just a dead rabbit the land another nest twisted razor-wire out in the marching heat & metal, calm with wallets, but there’s something moving, quiet yet unsurfaced (like the blue veins of you) looming with the exhaust channels turn static eggs hatch from the pan falling in winding flight a sluggish gull lands in new asphalt of a parkinglot drying puddles & roadkill boiled down bones of campfire soups, or the fissured birth of an iris
35
brandon arthur
Date unknown
snow drifts in like plaguefog
36
expired Rx
Nov. step on the grass, watch it stiffen up alive, pressed but rising “i haven’t seen you in so long i forgot you even existed” unwinding a tight ball magpies pilfer the bent frost drying out each solar loop (you’ve got oceans in your eyes) leaking with each step gutters collect the sluggish drip of age & road closures, sanguinary mandibles tunnels & hives in a slow fall mold accrues in the wainscoting
37
brandon arthur
what’s shed piles planted or constellated the nodding of a compass point the flapping of a dead raccoon’s tail on a median
crows wait at a stoplight 38
Poetry / $15.00
brandon arthur
“Brandon Arthur has the uncanny gift to be both Personist (see Frank O’Hara) and Archetypal (see Robert Duncan) in his works. Looking OUT at the phenomenal, looking IN at the possibly even more phenomenal (but not immediately accessible to others), his poems truly ‘own’ their sound/vision/intelligence. expired Rx is a book unlikely to expire in the coming millennia (given, of course, the survival of writing).” - Anselm Hollo, author of Guests of Space “Brandon Arthur says ‘gravity.’ He says ‘run your finger along the grain.’ It’s the weight & texture of a good particular poem he’s referring to. These poems of his sure have grain to them, American grain, & they have gravity. First the vocabulary catches you. Then notice the ambiguity, how it opens an influence that is magical, even spiritual. A physical space for the unknown & uncertain to enter your life.”
expi ed
- Andrew Schelling, author of Old Tale Road
expired Rx
“expired Rx is a cure for poetic disorders. A remedy for prescribed notions of viewing the quotidian. These poems understand how the ‘street rain became horizontal’ and how ‘an iris cranes to the sun.’ Brandon Arthur navigates the interstices of language and sound: a lattice of ‘disruptive landscape’ against the backdrop of ‘proverbial…shade.’ In an evening that resembles ‘something like loss,’ expired Rx hones our senses, then renders a new world.” - Michelle Naka Pierce, author of Beloved Integer
ISBN-10 0-9826646-4-8 ISBN-13 978-0-9826646-4-3
- Reed Bye, author of Join the Planets
51500
9
780982 664643
w w w. m o n key p u z z l e p re s s . c o m
monkey puzzle press
“In the poems of Brandon Arthur’s expired Rx, words and lines are accordion-jointed and expand and contract to each other, sometimes kaleidoscopically, in tumbling observations, sometimes clipped in dialogic bits of exchange. Though pacing and rhythmic action vary, this is a writing of quick-draw observations on syllable-tight timing, and life is sensed in the movement: a delight of active poetry.”
brandon arthur