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Philip Gallo is a typographer-poet, or "typoet," and his work depends on the careful alignment of simple words for its effects. "untitled" makes reference to the concrete poetry of the middle of the twentieth century. Diter Rot, whose name serves as the central text of this poem, was famous for a number of rigid typographical poems, including one that played with the letters "t" and "u" to produce, in varying ways, the words "tu" (you) and "ut" ("do" on the musical scale). Gallo's poem also appears to allude to "ping pong" by Eugen Gomringer, another early concrete poet.—Geof Huth More About Visual Poetry >>

The story is written, the slip of a girl is loosed And her life folds over. Against the cold, the waiting For the what will happen. The next. Wonderful Awful. The blonde in a chemical bath. The story keeps on being written As a woman who waits for never to happen As an empty wall waits for light to form a bridge And under it, a mass of open eyes, Waiting for the awful eventual. Now? And yes is what is said. Then here it is, the box We live in where the crazy face of the day looks back At the closed eye of the night looking in. A boy of four comes in as an example Of where the door of life is left open for a moment. Time tumbles hour after hour until it's morning again. Some glass is for looking through, some is for seeing back. Every outline is a cage one way or another.

children grown— dust accumulates on half the kitchen table

boat me around gently. whoever i'm with i'm seeing only you. diplomacy has wounded us. pierced us. smashed us. is there something in the turning of this river's head that will mend our dislocations? your eagle drives my ego. there is ice in your thighs. take the buoys of light for your thighpaths whose eyes night has darkened.

derek beaulieu often works at the edges of language, using isolated letters to create visual, instead of verbal, patterns and deconstructing found texts to tease out hidden meanings. His "untitled (for Natalee and Jeremy)," produced for two of his friends, is either a visual poetry epithalamium or simply a joyous celebration of the physical beauties of lettershape and writing. The resulting poem, which is created with press-on type, gains most of its effects from the repetition of identical letters, visual poetry's equivalent to rhyme, consonance, and assonance.—Geof Huth More About Visual Poetry >>

Speciously individual like a solid piece of spit floating in a cuspidor I dream of free bravery but am a social being. I should do something to get out of here but float around in the culture wondering what it will grow.

when shall your wounds welcome their scabs? daily your kingdom squeaks and leaps to the starlight it wants all of you you of all and the music of the pastures of midnoon a little boy's kaleidoscopticon you are the one the music has chosen and whom strings call twilight moans behind you all you are you are all it is the boy in black talking how civil is the civil war?

1 She would sigh, if she could think of anything intolerable. her numbers fold, in planes she can not describe. Does she close her eyes for that faint red of processes? Come to me, by instinct or for mathematics’ sake. 2 She moves in a metaphor of action. Heaven, she says, is hell remembered. Outside her gaze, I’m stranded on fraudulent heights. No tune I know is far enough out. 3 Man is a matter of walking upright, but she suggests happiness. Her whole power is one the side of vagueness. Everything I need to know about her is just before me. What can I learn that is not already gone? 4 Mountains rule the world because she’s from the hills. When she stands perpendicular to the sun’s rays, her light is confined. If she turns, the objective weakens. We shall not all rise, but all be modified. 5 I see her long after she has gone away. There are whole systems she doesn’t respond to. If you look long enough everything is hydraulics. Out of a series of partial images, she is the one that detaches. 6 If I could remember her, we might build. Will my words be fan- tastic enough to count? Whatever happens now, we have been opposite. Please believe me, I would seek you if I had the distance. 7 Given time and invention, she will surface. She will scratch, meditate, and some story will suffer. I refuse to believe things unsupported necessarily fall. She deprives my dreams of un- reality. 8 The hardest step to take is always the next. She is written across her face. We are what we are, momentary coincidence. She is body, speaking through body. 9 She will claim, for instance, King Solomon planted baobabs in India. And it may be true. A fine long rain penetrates farther than storms. Food is necessary and also logic. 10 Sometimes I’m angry, and not at anything in particular. She has seven divisions, but no borders. I could change your name, since you always wanted to be fictional. Another unsolved dream, under the bridge 11 She has, it would seem, no natural inclination to rise. She is whatever I cannot get rid of. She’s whatever refuses to be information. She is my absence, my only secure reference. 12 Just when I’m ready to let go, satisfaction is satisfaction. Curious text, where we’re commanded to acquire Nirvana. Nothing but impatience could prompt our abrupt recognition. she says virginity of the mind can be restored. 13 Let me not praise her past her due. She is a heap of pebbles in exquisite random. Her laughter rings empty, where there were crowds. My arms around you, my love, are phantoms. 14 She appears sometimes to be talking about other data. It is as if she knew a separate category. I tell her, weeping’s no proof of the resurrection. All of her is curved and alters. 15 She can only be pictured as catastrophe. She con- fuses concepts with irony. Her thought spreads, like children running home. She finds comfort in the most outrageous limbs. 16 The moon, according to her, is a symbol for shine. Residues provide the passion of thought. Her reflexes condition my mythology. She is the energy of my indexes. 17 When she snarls at me, my senses sharpen. Who could expect her, without lying? She is a color outside the octave. Her rituals divide my life from its labors. 18 She makes the right answer sound foolish. The righteous glory in their un- certainty. Two nuts represent us in divination. The only thing she comes home in is twilight. 19 She sits in the street, making detours. Her history is rich in in- decisions. She is present, inclusive, untransformed. I do not pretend to know how the flood came. 20 A hymn describes the monotony of her expectations. She was created from the sweat of peacocks. Children defend themselves with shame and experience. All her objects answer to the same name. 21 Better a blank wall than simple dark. The play in her muscle de- termines where my eyes focus. She sleeps at the curve of my spine. She wouldn’t believe me, if I were to tell her.

Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken. I don’t see anything objectively. I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist. When I speak passionately, that’s when I’m least to be trusted. It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight. In the end, they’re wasted— I never see myself, standing on the front steps, holding my sister’s hand. That’s why I can’t account for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends. In my own mind, I’m invisible: that’s why I’m dangerous. People like me, who seem selfless, we’re the cripples, the liars; we’re the ones who should be factored out in the interest of truth. When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges. A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers. Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas red and bright pink. If you want the truth, you have to close yourself to the older daughter, block her out: when a living thing is hurt like that, in its deepest workings, all function is altered. That’s why I’m not to be trusted. Because a wound to the heart is also a wound to the mind.

Unused baby blood and this is how you motion with hands clotty leaving You have your apparatus being the Frog Husband and I burn your frog skin to keep you in the shape I prefer Chimes   You wrote in your apple box   Elegant neck I tried to glue the ripped paper back to the religious art but it doesn't work Making a mess of it Wasp friend landed on my shoulder sparkle to say     This place we are in            is a place Broil the asparagus Frog heart apparatus Wash towels and rags on Wednesdays