Poet as...

Poetry is not a pie chart with a finite number of slices....

Try to poet like this instead...

Upcoming Readings at Blood Jet Poetry Series

Blood Jet Poetry Series at BJs in the Bywater, 4301 Burgundy
Every Wednesday Night, 8PM

All Features followed by the open mic hosted by Jimmy Ross

Coming Up:

Sept. 25: Joseph Wood and The Neighbors

Joseph P. Wood is the author of four books and five chapbooks of poetry, which include YOU. (Etruscan Press, forthcoming 2015), Fold of the Map (Salmon, forthcoming 2014), and Variations on an Innocent Axis (Brooklyn Arts Press, forthcoming 2014). A new manuscript, Broken Cage, is currently a finalist for the 2013 National Poetry Series competition. His poetry and criticism have been published in Arts & Letters Daily, BOMB, Boston Review, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Verse, among other journals. He teaches at The University of Alabama and is book review editor for Atticus Review.

The Neighbors are a collective of writers and musicians who gather in New Orleans to create music and occasionally lend each other butter. As all Neighbors have neighbors, they consist of an infinite number of artists unknown. But here tonight are:
Nathaniel Kostar on lyrics and vocals. Lee Beeacham on guitar and vocals. Justin Hatcher on congas, guitar and vocals.

Nathaniel Kostar is an MFA candidate in poetry at The University of New Orleans. He has been a poetry slam semi-finalist and finalist at the Bowery Poetry Club, The Nuyorican Poet’s Café, and Slam New Orleans. Every Friday for the next few months, his non-fiction travel series will be published on BurlesquePressLLC.com as he continues working towards the completion of his first full-length book, The Renaissance Man Project.  

Lee was born in Louisiana and raised in NC. From a young age his parents forced him to play the piano. Unfortunately this didn't take, but when he moved to New Orleans in 2009 he picked up the guitar. An avid fan of live music and the New Orleans’ lifestyle, Lee spends his free time playing music with friends, cooking, and working towards his MBA at UNO.  

Justin Hatcher was born in Baton Rouge and began playing guitar and singing about 3 years ago. He’s terrible at writing bios, but pretty awesome at playing guitar, so we bring him along and make stuff up about him as we go along. But these are three facts we know about Justin—he enjoys urban farming, chocolate almond milk, and 16oz cans of pbr after a hard day’s work.
Oct 2: Bill Lavender and Jamie Bernstein

Oct 9 Sara Jacobelli and Danniel Schoonebeck 

September Poem: for Gina Myers

breaking cusps/ break corner

-for Gina Myers

an evening of gathered folds

do you recall how water wanders

you say enough in a poem

& then you have said it

what gets knotted is the straight

way we have of lately

still there are mornings of repeat

what did you want most and won least

botched way of making a family

I would say –there’s no real winning

life but then love spills

think about this time as your own Brontëan moor

it killed all the baby birds because it could

you could find no sheltering storm to home

you hold still like dark

you carry secrets, so many you forget

how to call them

this makes you like everyone

you are a true-to-life death

these dolls need an unboxing

if you make a thing once

you should be able to do it again

but that’s not always the case

I was as life-size as I could be

when a one-year old is gunned down

on the streets of New Orleans

what choice do you have

9.3.13

Megan Burns 

WEEK OF POETRY NOLA: Sept 10-Sept 14th

Now that we've made it through August hurricane-free, let's get back into the poetry swing and start celebrating all the hard working poets and publishers in this city. There is so much happening now in New Orleans poetry that we think you should just jump back in with both feet.

Here's a week of events to keep you excited and get you writing:

Tuesday, Sept. 10 at The Abbey, 1123 Decatur, Stella Lithe and Laura Mattingly return with their collaborative music and poetry show, 7PM

Wednesday, Sept. 11 Blood Jet Poetry Series at BJs (4301 Burgundy) , New Orleans newest poetry and music series begins its season tonight at 8PM. The season begins with a book release celebration of the SECOND printing of Laura Mattingly's BOOK of INCORPORATION from Language Foundry. Laura will be reading from her book along with pianist Josh Wexler. Handmade, typeset copies of this book will be available at the show. Poet Chris Sullivan, publisher at Slight Publications, will also be performing.

Blood Jet Facebook Page or on Twitter @bloodjetpoetry


Thursday, Sept 12 TREMBLING PILLOW PRESS BOOK PARTY for
Laura Goldstein's loaded arc 1503 St. Roch Ave, 8PM  free wine and snacks

Laura will be reading from her new book along with special guest JS MAKKOS who will have a new chapbook to release on the world.

Saturday, Sept. 14   COLD CUTS returns for its season at Kajun's Pub (2256 St. Claude Ave) 

TENDE RLOIN's choicest reading series, featuring JS MAKKOS, and visiting poets LAURA GOLDSTEIN and DANIELA OLSZEWKA!

About the series:

Cold Cuts is a poetry reading interested in performance and a performance interested in reading poetry. Each reading will consist of 3 - often on the theme of 2 poets and a 3rd weird thing: the performative. But we encourage all our poets to perform and all our performances to poet. We like to showcase our TENDER LOIN writers, and we like to showcase local artists. We also like your butt.

As always, stay for karaoke...Facebook Invite

Blood Jet Poetry Series in New Orleans

Blood Jet Poetry Series will begin Sept. 11, 8PM featuring music and poetry every Wednesday night at 8PM followed by a limited open mic at BJs in the Bywater. Co-curated by Megan Burns and JS Makkos, Blood Jet encourages collaboration between musicians and poets as well as space for new performers in New Orleans. Throughout the year, Blood Jet will be hosting national poets as well as book releases and special performances.

Contact Megan Burns at meganaburns@aol.com for information on readings.

BJs in the Bywater is located at 4301 Burgundy.

Visit the Blood Jet Blog or follow on FB or follow on Twitter @bloodjetpoetry

Poem for August

August

for Laura Mattingly

“there are so many ways to be held prisoner”  -Anne Carson

ribbons of sun

dusky breath over this horizon

shimmering outlines of branches

screened like a mid-day suffering

each breath, reckoned

throats of ash, throats of wander

distant shade a sprinkling

photographs of nude bodies in black

and white, a scrolling of sex

at the fingertip

tipping displays to match grain

to groove, a warren for memory

at the hardest edge: have you gone

blurry        gone unnoticed

scalded faces lap up injustice

what choice do any of us have?

there’s only one path to disclosure

one sure foot graced for escape

we turn over ancient metaphors

a type of joy we solder: why does love

happen? we keep asking

the silent hours

8.17.13

Megan Burns

Lil Wayne's "God Bless Amerika" shot in Hollygrove

Link to the official VIMEO video: http://vimeo.com/70374545

I don't forgive Wayne for his lack of NOLA love, but I do love the faces in this video and that it was shot in Hollygrove. And this is one of Wayne's better songs that doesn't rely on his cheap misogyny.



I just don't understand how Lil Wayne consistently seems to have the worst PR people in the world.

This is the behind the scenes video that has people up in arms about the flag being on the ground and him stepping on it.




So instead of any mention of New Orleans and its people or the point of the song in relation to this video, the media and every commenter is instead arguing over whether Lil Wayne intentionally stepped on the flag and what that means.


That's all we are getting out of this video.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Fathers: A Breaking Gesture

Goodnight, Moon

when a woman disappears

it’s a permanent stake

under night, this sky, bodies in a slipping

what you wrote: a secret is a way

of pulling a person apart

pour in like a poison, you feed it

poor excuse, a just score

a domestic failing

pulled force abutting angles

so we dropped a degree of fencing

made adjustments in parallel confines

braided down this writ

this work of medium thumbprints

I put palms to each side of your sweet

face & pretend to be of a gentler nature

absconded, a beauty of break, do you

know what a parade is for?

it’s a way of walking around grief

about in dressing down

a nimble prosthetic footprint

try to rendezvous this lesser

try not death comes like a desert

you my most thirsty, I was coming along

remember once the children huddle

three a bed where we lullaby

and they ask questions I have no answers

mother is a new “never-was”

if he wants a bed time story

tell him I have no feeling for you

Copyright    Megan Burns

5.30.13

Wrist & Hoof: Poem for another year in

Wrist & Hoof

-for Desiree Dellagiacomo 6/4/13

love is a type of drifting

there will always be a doubting

imagine this is how you grow older

how the world wonders

don’t you remember this is a place

built on disappearing no stable landing

what are you supposed to do

besides what you have to

think about how hot a fire

must be to burn on water

I know how to construct such

tinder-hearted we live before we die

simple bargains now a dusking

I think there’s fear

there’s a fear & eventual

writing against the content of our content

let’s talk about how the heart changes form

over time through people

let’s talk about its opening & closing

the way it can never be stopped but how we clutch

this is how we carry/ this is how we buck & spar

I have come to consider futility

the heart & its want/ desire & defense/

speak and break speech

a raining down of what we hold hard

against us, once you are strong

you can never not be/ the unbreakable

source of language is chary of cohesion

any animal loves attention

runs from danger/ can’t always see it coming

these are matters of form

poetry is a type of canoeing

in a small lake

love is a bare question

it scatters, the best trick is believing

the world wanted you, we row

out uncompassed cramming up the dead

mouths, this: no end of lettering 

Copyright: Megan Burns 

Day 29: 30 Days of Weezy for National Poetry Month

this one
this one
this one
this one
this one
                                                            Here is a neat problem in poetic logic: if the Dactyl Cyllenius is an alias of Hercules, and Hercules is the thumb, and Titias is the fool's finger, it should be possible to find in the myth of Hercules and Titias the name of the intervening finger, the forefinger, to complete the triad used in the Phrygian blessing.

once you vivisect that best laid
you picture this anatomy a dangling at best
this is not really happening

                                                           Paulus considered. 'I am rather rusty on mythology, my dear Theophilus, but I seem to remember that it is made of the bones of Pelops.' 

so you girl a dragon fire
time yourself so the endings come
each begins & then all storied in the last

                                                           The king is being warned of his ritual death. A Moon-priestess has come to meet him: a terrible robed figure with one arm menacingly akimbo, as she offers an apple, his passport to Paradise. 

when are you 

when are you gonna change

when you change 

                                                         In mediaeval times a garland of periwinkles was placed on the heads of men bound for execution. The flower has five blue petals and is therefore sacred to the Goddess, and its tough green vines will have been the bonds she used on her victim. 

say you are the stories you recall

say you lean in to the where you walked

say you were invisible but then no, you said, no to that

let them bleed