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Public Domain - Mónica De la Torre
Public Domain
Public Domain
Mónica de la Torre
Copyright © 2008 by Mónica de la Torre
ISBN-13: 978-1-931824-30-9
ISBN-10: 1-931824-30-4
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008935480
This book is dedicated to Bruce Pearson
Cover image: Holly Zausner, stills from Unseen, 2007,
Super 16 mm film. Total running time: 16 minutes, 32 seconds.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to the editors of the publications in which earlier versions of the some of these works were first published: Achiote Seeds, Belladonna, Pierogi Press, The Portable Boog Reader 2, Tin House and Words Without Borders. Thanks also to Michael Scharf for inviting me to develop a collaborative project with Sujin Lee for a reading in conjunction with the exhibition How Soon Is Now?
at the Bronx Museum of the Arts on June 20, 2008.
My deepest gratitude goes to The MacDowell Colony for providing me with invaluable resources to complete this work.
Roof Books are distributed by
Small Press Distribution
1341 Seventh Avenue, Berkeley, CA. 94710-1403
Phone orders: 800-869-7553
www.spdbooks.org
This book was made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
Roof Books are published by
Segue Foundation
300 Bowery, New York, NY 10012
seguefoundation.com
Table of Contents
Is to Travel Getting to or Being in a Destination
The Crush
The facts
More facts
Letters Are What Is in a Name
Ten Steps to Follow the Sound
Found: We can learn from a tree how to exist in ecstasy.
Green & Franklin
Hearsay
A Way Out of the Negative: Attempts at Communication
Telephone Cryptomessage
Nice to Meet You: Kill Your TV
Exterior, Day
I’m So Lonesome I’m an I
Nothing to Do
Imperfect Utterances
Plosive Letter
Deflation or Sibilant Sibyls
Cease to Stutter, Singsong
Monolingualism of the Other
Target Language
Strangled Speech?
The March Papers
$6.82
Selfhood.com
Doubles
Is to Travel Getting to or Being in a Destination
1. The next poem was inspired by something I overheard at the Buffalo Bill Grave & Museum in Lookout Point in Golden, CO. My partner and I were on a road trip to the Grand Canyon and came across a sign for the exit to the grave, so we decided to check it out. All I knew about Buffalo Bill came from The Beatles’s song. Show biz wasn’t off the mark: on display at the museum were films and posters advertising Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World,
featuring cowboys and Indians, Mexican vaqueros, Arabian riders, Japanese soldiers, Irish lancers, South American gauchos, and Russian Cossacks engaging in marvelous feats, sports and pastimes.
A group of tourists was standing next to me. Miren hijos ¡nuestros paisanos!
the father said to his kids. He was happy to show them pictures of his countrymen.
Buffalo Bill died in 1917. The poem, called The Hanged Man Game,
is a couplet made of nineteen letters in the first line, and seventeen in the second.
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2. This next poem is called A place is a container of places.
For this road trip I was telling you about we had a very good map of