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Nico Vassilakis

 

 

from FLAT OUT

 

Makes Voice Without                           

 

The next tether is close at hand. It’s not about being different; it’s about being alone. Forever. A configuration makes sense, but geometries shift. Slash through familiar quotations. The coupling is confusion, an elongated misunderstanding. Back pages promote the sheer fabric of protects you from staring. Those diabolical underpinnings. These sojourns of sadness amuse someone. Who peels back their misshapen frailties? No one is better than another. Water is relentless here, but the smell forgets and keeps you away. Double or nothing is how we see all of nothing. The delicious parts of history. Facing the painting like never before. I don’t even prefer that anymore.

 

The air, a moment rushes against it and nothing remembers its name. Blind-sided, blinded, the monsters emerge. A pile of board games at the thrift store. Pieces missing. Seeds caught in the shirt’s cuff. Torn lengthwise, an improvised poster. Eyelids lowered, the night of your drink enters. The dispatcher has been out for weeks.

 

 

Shavings                                       
in the world / the one obvious distinction / a palace of fever of dementia / also there is the finicky wobble 

X / THE DESTRUCTION / A WAREHOUSE LEFT IN DISARRAY / MARBLES ACROSS A DESERT OF FORMICA / AN ANIMAL’S OBSCURED DREAM / REGARDED AS A GROUNDED PRONOUN / DRAWS ITS OPPOSITE / X

 

 

A SYMPOSIUM ON LOVELINESS                                

invisible notations. the nearest distance. a prediction. intends the practical drift of color, verging on something gigantic. inside the small. a frantic dampening stick. one hundred bells, one hundred bricks, one hundred remembers whatever will surface. little alphabet parts. the genius of the thumb. delightful shaft of electricity. the mayhem turns on you. as change finds you. frolic is sewn into a hat. you wonder where gravity is. the forms of communicating. a foray. a foyer. aforementioned.

 

 

Language Is An Accident                        

 

Language is an accident / As the balloon / Gets lost / In the newest thing / A mother speaks to her baby / A balloon / Her head is a balloon / Across the street it’s hello Gregory / Her babies are balloon headed / There is history / Something naturally occurring / It’s orange im thinking of / Her mission in sight / Her momentum assured / Her head looks like mine / I must be hers

 

Poems on this page © Nico Vassilakis 2005-2006

 


 

 

 

 

Nico Vassilakis lives in Seattle. Absent minded incursions. Two recent chapbooks are SPECIES PIECES (gong press) and STAMPOLOGUE (Runaway Spoon Press). “Paid to forget, I recall more.” He’s currently working on a play about Morton Feldman. Nico’s work involves concrete/visual poetry as well.

 


P R O F I L E

What's your favorite poem that you've written? Care to share it with us?

from IN( )BETWEEN

the formalities
receiving
I think


What is your favorite poem by another poet?

from Robert Mittenthal's 'Value Unmapped'  Paid to forget, I recall more.

What's your pet-peeve in a poem?

the word azure

What's your favorite print journal and why?

BIRD DOG. It's from here, the northwest, and it's editor brings emerging experimentation into our starving region.

Do you have a writing ritual? Care to share it? Do you ever break this ritual for artistic reasons? If yes, how does it change or improve your method?

Letting time, experience accrue. Ideas to actualize - become material. Honing the drive, the approach to the page, then learning when and how to pull back, to extinguish. Applying an amount of instinct to the entry and exit of writing - allowing the bulk, the middle, the process to explore itself.

 



 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



















 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

www.mipoesias.com

Guest Editor