Fall/Winter 2016



Grant Matthew Jenkins and Timothy Bradford

EVERY EUROPE

     1.
Every golden eye of delicious detritus
Every absolute lack of indigenous blues and jazz tradition—ha! we still have that on you, Europe
Every lunge and lung
Every first time is a last time is a first time, daily
Every first step in European shit, as if it’s different
Every Cote d’Ivoire along the river this or that
Every difference of Europe to the Oklahoman, Arizonian, South Dakotan, Tennessean
Every grand bartender ring of righteousness, R & B licentiousness, and listless abandon
Every welcomeless greeting of solicitude
Every 1916 French military band thinking African American military bands had “trick” instruments because of the way their sounds mimicked the human voice

     2.
Every shy swan of Coole
Every inveterate invitation left unanswered on the line of attrition and derogatory indecision
Every golden hour sunlight shower on the cliffs of Banacooley, oh, my Irish rose
Every Slavic sex worker of Amsterdam, better off, yet still beneath what she’d imagined in her hour of escape
Every undead lead bed bug and shrug of atlas undone and refunded with ethnic tetanus retina juice
Every Naturalia next to Sex Shop next to crêpe stand on the Boulevard de Clichy
Every longing for a center adjustment complete with sleet and mist, hysterectomy, and jingoistic infarction
Every easyjet, nicejet, jetset, jet ski, yacht harbor, underwater, pearl-in-mouth encounter, “I do not think they’ll sing to me”
Every NSA metadata tornado acupuncture tourist indoctrination, elation, and conflation
Every point on the face of the planet, here or there, I’ll be where I be, right, Jeep?
Every incapacitated kiosk of inner satori

     3.
Every outdoor café tradition started in Paris and spreading like syphilis all over the world
Every green of lazy rectitude and solicitous refractory magnetic stone
Every lack of what to say before this frieze, stolen from Iranians, Egyptians, Syrians by “well-meaning” Germans, English, French
Every segregated dance floor hosting schoolgirl uniform-clad sycophants of illustrious biblical precedence
Every site of the worst atrocities ever committed by humankind, so there, Middle East haters
Every woman in an ancient tree séance-inducing seduction slip
Every Europa riding on the back of bull, Zeus, and then, civilization founded on their big, big love
Every long and leaving
Every French airliner cabin sprayed for tropical pests with the passengers on board too
Every corner and crow

     4.
Every Frenchman, woman, child, and hairdo
Every covert and coverlet
Every “I do” when you meant “I don’t”
Every Thomas Paine defending King Louis XVI on moral and political grounds
Every history replete with suffering lice
Every Terror by Robespierre in drag wig and dress, his mouth a blues guitar of persuasion, his logic a trick of instrument
Every redhead
Every heavy blade drop to efficient cut
Every dead monk drafting ecstatic dreams in the conatus of libertine auroras
Every uncircumcised cock

     5.
Every withdrawn ladder of seduction
Every last breakfast on the airline’s dime at Aéroport Charles de Gaulle
Every return
Every NYC “Welcome Home, Poets!” banner
Every cornice of condolence and bodice of martyrdom
Every run to the Parc de Belleville to see vague glimpses of Bastille Day fireworks over pot smoke- haloed heads
Every place to get away from everything
Every local bar of murder shut down, but where will the hairy, beer-drinking women go?
Every calm and laid back actual
Every Pastis on ice at the end of every day of archives

     6.
Every manuscript of angelic rubbish, embossed with sarcophagal pangeas
Every there that isn’t here, what do we care, rejected and rejecting
Every European home of the blues in disguise
Every moon over me that’s over Paris too, and who sees?
Every American makes a great mistake
Every August European vacation that simply isn’t mine, but whose?
Every soldier’s grave is
Every palanquin carried by Slavic women of the Red Army, bearing you home, swing low
Every pretender in France is a man who should have been their king
Every obsession about the spheres of Josephine Baker’s gyrations and influence

     7.
Every leaving Honoria
Every Oklahoma imitating Ireland in its fake brogue and stone-kissing, gun-toting ways
Every being of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Every Euro-Oklahoma porn movie shot in 3D in Prague & Pottawatomie
Every Cole Porter refrain hiding the living of laughing and phenomenological diarrhea
Every apparition of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour in Pawhuska backseat bra fumblings
Every artillery of champagne corks
Every since we do Mon Depot, quoi?
Every weariness of the cleared tables next to us in the café

Every Europe and Asia is being overbearing in the moon on Sunday    

 


Grant Matthew Jenkins, Associate Professor of English, teaches contemporary literature and creative writing at the University of Tulsa. He has published two books of poetry, Joy of God and Other Series (Blackbird, 2003) and, in collaboration with Cheryl Pallant, Morphs (Cracked Slab 2009). His poems appear in Source Material, Used Cat., Birddog, Cannibal, Sugar Mule, Syntax, Action Yes, This Land, and Big Bridge. Other creative projects include screenplays that have advanced to second-round and semi-final finishes at contests like the Austin Film Festival, as well as work with digital flash poetry, image, and sound and can be found online at Turbulence.org and YouTube .

Timothy Bradford is the author of the poetry collection Nomads with Samsonite (BlazeVOX [books], 2011) and the introduction to Sadhus (Cuerpos Pintados, 2003), a photography book on the ascetics of South Asia. Recent work has appeared in ATTN:, No Assholes, Halvard Johnson’s Truck, Atticus Review/Boo’s Hollow, Art Focus Oklahoma, This Land, The Oklahoma Review, and Upstairs at Duroc. He cofounded Short Order Poems in 2014 with Chad Reynolds and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University.

 

 


 

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