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Poem by K. Silem Mohammad

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome K. Silem Mohammad (pictured) this Friday. When I was speaking with Charles Bernstein in London a few weeks back, he recommended his work to me, as being among the most interesting, and funniest, contemporary American poetry being created today. His work, which will strike some British poetry readers as merely rebarbative, is precisely so, aimed at taking poetic language out of the realm of a discourse that validates mere craft or the well-made. Instead, here is language writing in uncomfortable zones, disconcertingly able to inscribe the usually unsaid, unwritten. Plus, it's zany.

K. Silem Mohammad is the author of Breathalyzer (Edge Books, 2008), A Thousand Devils (Combo Books, 2004) and Deer Head Nation (Tougher Disguises, 2003).

His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including New American Writing, Fence, Bay Poetics, and The Best American Poetry 2004. He maintains the poetry and poetics blog Lime Tree and the film blog Lost in the Frame.

With Anne Boyer, he edits Abraham Lincoln, a journal of poetry. He teaches creative writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland.


Picasso

I am not a whore but many of my friends are
it is an ugly time but they should look at me and vomit
and then probably commit suicide

at age 45 a woman in her early thirties
was very important to my stupid twig bones
under the gaze of that elusive hard-on Picasso

each time you fly you kill a bird
and also you fail for being a little bandwagon
and hating RuneScape

if only I wasn’t such a dowager
done up in murders
just like the Babylonian

and as for this white power nonsense
I spent about a year on that game
baby got big and she’s gonna get bigger

“but whore’s the lodge?” demanded Miss Maria
“hero ma’am” replied Dorcas
these tastes pop and vanish in my mouth

everything on this planet
every toothless polar bear
the name of the blog hasn’t changed

reload this page look at me
I am a stupid man
I have nothing

no one cares about my work
I have wasted my life
I guess you could combine spam and football


poem by K. Silem Mohammad
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Comments

Unknown said…
Hmm. I confess that I do like that very much. I'm off to find more.
Sat Jun 21, 08:12:00 pm 2008
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