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  Do you want it? You do but you don’t. You don’t smoke anymore but you want to. Cylindrical Pantone 185C appeals. Why did someone bring and leave Pantone 185C in the park? What was that someone thinking? Your first thought is he wasn’t thinking.

  But if he was, what was he thinking? Did he think it was too precise? An emblem of a person he no longer wants to see in emblems? Someone who had hurt him? He doesn’t like to be hurt. So he brought it and left it. Emblems, in poems as in parks, are boring.

  You know this. Why are you drawn to it? You are drawn to it because you look up and there are old women, young women, old men, young men, children, whole families, half-families in the park. They all wear little squares of Pantone 185C.

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR INVIGILATION

  1 Shut the door. lock the door. Wash the students.

  2 Ensure that kindling from previous exams is removed.

  3 Any scrap of confidence, kindness, goodwill, etc., MUST be removed.

  4 Arrange the desks in a panopticonic manner. In the middle, fashion a watchtower out of chairs, Saran Wrap and duct tape.

  5 Existential angst should be instilled in students AT All TIMES. Meaninglessness MUST be insisted upon.

  6 Write the following information on the blackboard:

  Examination date.

  Current calendar year’s Gross Domestic Product of Denmark.

  Number of retirement homes within a three-mile radius of classroom.

  ‘The Internet.’

  7 Look at your exam envelopes. Then look again. And again. Keep looking. look some more.

  8 Students writing deferred exams must be tethered together as a group by a strong rope, preferably a double-braided rope made of polyester or polypropylene. The knot MUST be a Flemish knot.

  9 Hand out exams. Sing the national anthem of Denmark. Wave starter’s pistol in a cavalier yet confident fashion.

  10 The students may now begin and end.

  SUMMARY: HOW TO READ

  TAUTNOTES: PROUD FIENDS

  Proud fiends do prattle, do probe

  not telling one very long moment

  but reified excess, rarified sextets

  seasons of sorrow are not units of exile

  but windows of why I am of write manner

  epistles are simple thistles in the months of stasis

  pulsations are intertexts

  the sainthood has no debt

  to the displeasing anachronism of binary code

  sorry never unmakes; adjectives are nothing

  TAUTNOTES: I LACE WORDS

  I lace words into swill

  rhetoric soothes the pragmatist

  maximally, the individualist seethes

  recreate a creative faculty first

  and steep yourself in hills exactly as in art

  this is half-me

  what does the body absorb

  when the mercurial absolutes retreat

  type and test the autobiography you will never write

  and as austere as you are, you do not know a thing

  let’s agree to one thing in a season of sorrow:

  no fears, so and so

  SUMMARY: IDEOLOGY

  TAUTNOTES: IS THE GLOOMY

  Is the gloomy posturing of signs worth holding vigil over?

  Would you like to take a common holiday?

  Are you parsimonious with signage?

  liberate the object much?

  Have you tasted operational gag orders?

  Do you choke on wine?

  Sometimes drunk Paris?

  Whose brain?

  Whose full stop?

  Are you faithing the critic?

  Have you covered all manner of coverings?

  Whose nation?

  TAUTNOTES: ABHORRENT LADS

  Abhorrent lads abound in gaggles:

  crashing Citroëns, phishing phenomenologies

  eschewing exemplarity, neutralizing nutriment

  melting margarine, slathering semiologies

  politicizing predicates, imploring imperiality

  buttonholing boundlessness

  let this be, here, only a metaphor:

  a motherly earphone

  SUMMARY: CULTURAL HEGEMONY

  TAUTNOTES: HEROINE OF PLEASANT THUG

  Heroine of pleasant thug

  prick up your ears

  sit, self-healing, parasitic wrongdoer

  athlete of merit or whoredom

  now – hot-blooded royalty

  finest fetish, dirt-poor warmth

  neat hothead ovations

  one-sided defeated impression

  crooning heavy-handed

  high-flown

  flaunted lepers do

  tidy deaths

  good reticence

  TAUTNOTES: I’M A HILL! WALTZ IT!

  I’m a hill

  waltz it

  the halo of me

  that often loved alarming

  evaluations of the dupe friendship

  credulous evil jerk impales

  scum thrive on a prankishly

  good day

  SUMMARY: THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY

  TAUTNOTES: CHEAP EXCEL BITES

  Weak

  mode – chewable

  vehement wino

  an ugly, jeering baud

  I’m thick and a wolf

  brawny ace, nice sage

  grow jauntier, analogue

  poet

  TAUTNOTES: BUILD, HURT, JET

  Make a collage of cheap Excel bites

  lure a performative and expel it

  build, hurt, jet, repeat

  SUMMARY: EXCITABLE SPEECH AND PERFORMATIVITY

  TAUTNOTES: COAGULATED, SEE

  Coagulated, see

  that’s what’s bound to happen

  the greedier changes

  not fear-based

  it’s perfect

  heartburns thrill

  not herd, scene

  throned

  TAUTNOTES: ROCKET BROTHERS

  Rocket brothers

  they is no more

  die, diode

  do die do

  SUMMARY: CONDENSATION AND DISPLACEMENT

  GUIDE FOR TAKING EXAMS

  Right Before the Exam

  1 Get a good night’s sleep. If necessary, take prescription-grade painkillers and tranquilizers. You can generally obtain these from a classmate. Do NOT exceed triple the recommended dosage. you can generally find the recommended dosage on the Internet. If not, use common sense.

  2 Eat emotionally. Don’t go hungry. Get angry! Give in to dysmorphia. Everyone thinks they’re better than you.

  3 Gather your supplies the night before: pen, paper, calculator, pocket defibrillator. Lay them out on your bedside table. Whisper pseudo-aphorisms to them.

  The Moment of Truth

  1 Read the directions once and ONLY once. remember: first thought, best thought.

  2 Take relaxing breaths at regular intervals. Failure to take regular breaths may result in death.

  3 Count the number of pages in the exam. Find the square root.

  4 If feeling stuck, daydream! Use the imaginative potential of your mind! Open yourself up to adventurous and erotic fantasy!

  5 Reflect on the failures of your life so far. Divide these into two categories: ‘surface’ and ‘depth.’ If your ‘depth’ failures are more numerous than your ‘surface’ failures, ask to use the washroom or ‘water closet.’

  6 Remain.

  THE REPORT CARDS OF LESLIE MACKIE

  RUBRIC FOR THE EVALUATION OF POETRY. DEDICATED TO MS. CASTRO’S SIXTH GRADE POETRY STUDENTS AT MATER ACADEMY MIDDLE/HIGH SCHOOL IN HIALEAH GARDENS, FLORIDA

  Starting Out

  Words

  To a trusting rowdy

  vagarious nerd

  Amicably sexist

  ravenous

  Chronic prideless

  imprudence

  Roughest, raciest delivery

  tireless fellatio

  Soundsr />
  Truthful ace sage

  jingoist merit

  In derisions,

  off-centre defrauder

  This worthy, shrewd, odd tormentor

  sugarlike, soul-rending dear

  Feelings

  Deafen derisory scum

  connectors noted with what?

  Scenic nosiness

  wrenches smoothly

  It is me

  I’m the merit

  Topics

  Wore it just above awe, truth

  tame my icon, herpetic dad

  A benign lamé

  RUBRIC FOR THE EVALUATION OF POETRY. DEDICATED TO MS. CASTRO’S SIXTH GRADE POETRY STUDENTS AT MATER ACADEMY MIDDLE/HIGH SCHOOL IN HIALEAH GARDENS, FLORIDA

  On My Way

  Words

  I’m a sorcerer’s deathbed

  I mean wow

  Powerlessly

  good acid

  Sounds

  As merry, hot, incontinent posers –

  adroitly charmless

  Rakishly mean

  I’m the twist whose

  Fetishes soothe cluttered semen –

  mine sag

  Feelings

  Now, I’m a sad herocity

  hence the wow art rant

  Fend on

  ache on

  Smothery transmitter

  wimp seethes

  World famous

  overactive saddening

  Topics

  Decent prude –

  crossbred, unvaliant jailbait

  Pathetic, loathsome tameness

  on the tolerant Ferris wheel

  Unusual hoodwink

  if banality agitates

  RUBRIC FOR THE EVALUATION OF POETRY. DEDICATED TO MS. CASTRO’S SIXTH GRADE POETRY STUDENTS AT MATER ACADEMY MIDDLE/HIGH SCHOOL IN HIALEAH GARDENS, FLORIDA

  Wow!

  Words

  Just dither growths

  sputter

  Head mercenarily

  ice cowards

  Sounds

  Secure smooth-tongued

  best saint

  Shh. I’m deft, mother!

  white weakling / hot tyrannies

  Dear me –

  an egotism, ornately

  Feelings

  Now –

  ace nihilist

  prig poet

  Unwelcoming

  in stoic niceness

  soft-heartedness

  Topics

  Strongish, passionate dickhead

  filthy wit

  Employ tolerant splendour

  to a dearer emotion

  Incisive apologetic frostiness

  finer grins

  Sour up, insular us

  oh, strip us

  BLURBISTS

  ‘These supple lines sing the song of joyous forgetting. And deftly so in their deftness.’

  – A. Snyder Pierce, The Madison Poetry & Bridge Review

  *

  ‘Thrumming fiercely with the might of a thousand thrums, Drexler Jr. soars to new heights and delves down to mine the thrumming deep thrum of the soul.’

  – J. Hillis Drexler Sr., Conjun(x)ion

  *

  ‘The thoughts imbedded in these feats of acrobatic high-wire dexterity are dexterous to be sure. And impressive, too.’

  – Rory Gramercy, The Quill Dipper

  *

  ‘A veritable tai chi of the mind! What Glennis achieves is beyond startling. The single most important book of lipogrammatic neologisms of the last ten years!’

  – Paul Feaston Anders, Grand Central Review of Verse

  *

  ‘This book, if it is fair to call it a book, which, indeed it is, ranks among the top books in the category of books I have recently endorsed.’

  – Kim Winton, booksendorsed.blogplace.org

  *

  ‘Here journeys a poet who is not new to the journey, nor is she afraid of the end. What a pleasure to see her still journeying!’

  – Anthony Benadryl, metaverse monthly

  *

  ‘A kindling, then a fire in the form of still life. The perplexities of arrival and departure. The fragmented wholeness. Read and reread. Then read again. Then reread.’

  – Alejandro Berkowitz, scanbooks.to

  *

  ‘The human meme. What Tennant has discovered is the human meme. And long may it last!’

  – X∆nder ∆, Praxis

  *

  ‘The intelligence and emotion here is otherworldly, as though it were imported from some sort of other world.’

  – Felicity Dueck, Prairie Longboard

  *

  ‘Alternative histories explode here in these pages. And how!’

  – Marilyn Brownshoe, The New Querying

  *

  ‘All this beauty achieved with aplomb. One wonders how Masters continues to live up to his name by being such a, well, master.’

  – Braden Leftwich, Field and Stream Poetry Supplement

  *

  ‘Who couldn’t forgive us for falling to our knees and proclaiming that we are willing to do anything to keep this magic from ceasing? No one. That’s who couldn’t.’

  – Noam Grammerly-Wright, pervspective

  *

  ‘This is poetry woven out of the finest threads and concocted in the most exclusive coven!’

  – Alice Feathertop, Wiccan Poetry Weekly

  *

  ‘What resides in minutiae and warmth? The poetry of Giorgio ravolo. Its visions pop in the rough corners of the deftness of his nimble mind.’

  – Costa Nicola, Sicilian Standpoints

  *

  ‘The verse of Sandor Magnolia is, to put it quite bluntly, human-shaped.’

  – Robby Dylan, Poetry, Thunder Bay

  MODA

  No, I don’t want to stay at your place.

  I need time and space and odder hours to deal with

  a spectacular national celebration unequalled

  since Expo ’67 in Montreal. It’s not fair to

  expect me to adhere to your eccentricities.

  No, I don’t want to stay at your place.

  I will have my own. What a city! But no.

  I’m coming. But no. I can’t possibly stand

  a spectacular national celebration unequalled

  since the 1851 World’s Fair in London.

  I found a hotel. It’s cheap. A legacy project. Moda. So

  no, I don’t want to stay at your place.

  Travel, uneasy. Your city, stifling.

  Everyone clamours their cultural capital there, at

  a spectacular national celebration unequalled

  since Deculturation. I will write a poem, meet for whiskey.

  You will bring me a gift and i will get sick and you will insist, but

  no, I don’t want to stay at your place.

  I’m sure it’s spectacular, unequalled.

  PLANNED ADOLESCENCE

  He’s a victim of planned adolescence

  never quite equipped, a shy man

  recursive, explicit, dismissive.

  Training-wheel reason

  and militant obsolescence confirms

  he’s a victim of planned adolescence.

  Drones and drowns in dregs of position.

  He’s a tethering device, a wireless frail man.

  Recursive, explicit, dismissive

  of growth of reason of pleasure.

  The ailing therapist’s notes are clear –

  he’s a victim of planned adolescence.

  A kind of old early that’s best

  synthesized through tropes that sing the

  recursive, explicit, dismissive –

  one red Lego brick, calculator watch, burner (phone),

  commemorative 1976 Olympics tumbler, generic name tag.

  ‘Hello, my name is

  recursion.’

  TENANTS

  An odd dream

  with only characters, no self. Yes, I am

 
; aware it’s not interesting.

  There were three men and one

  woman in a shared apartment, itself

  an odd dream.

  Each of the tenants’ rooms was

  decorated peculiarly, contained its own narrative