29 films in 29 days

February 1st, 2008 by Jamey | Posted in General | No Comments »

Every four years, Punxsutawney Phil grants us an extra day of February to honor the scientific method pioneered by Vasco da Gama and DaimlerChrysler. To celebrate this gift, the Whiteman brothers create 29 short films, one per day, during our elongated month. It’s a long-standing tradition established about six weeks ago or something by the boys. The shorts can be followed at their website along with their other films (feature length and shorter), and the brothers’ writings, both fiction and poetry, can be perused there as well. I recommend giving that link a little click.

PEARL DISTRICT

February 1st, 2008 by Jamey | Posted in Poetry | 1 Comment »

The nighttime cityscape
That soaks the sun up
Is flushed in cascading light

The stars are gone        the moon is gone

The old industrial warehouses
Are now the ashen pearls
Of women with such small dogs

EVERGREEN

February 1st, 2008 by Jamey | Posted in Poetry | 2 Comments »

Ah, the weeks pass
In the morning I am all doves
This morning

A juniper rattles
Its thrushlike thicket

Speak unto me
That my heart will be unbent

I once was young

Yet thrice daily I am of lesser youth
The sun appears, doth rise, then sets

And homes along the boulevard
Draw on brittle morning air
I spy them as I ride into the city

Their windows are thick
With the heat of dreamers’ dew

SCANSION

January 29th, 2008 by Jamey | Posted in Poetry | No Comments »

Poems of some great stature,
built by those largely before my time
(they are long dead and forgotten)
have created me.

Was it Abraham or the Son?

Expatriate of that ground,
grounded somewhere else,
I search through remnants of words that
have been translated from texts lost or
battered beyond readability.

My fathers: innumerable, unnamable;
My mothers: they were barely known.

Or was it Abel’s injured brother?

The buildings lit for night
seem to me playthings from a distance,
but amid the city—perpetual wet evenings
pelting runny colors into one another—
it becomes difficult to travel the misty streets,
to make out the names of even the most familiar places.

ALEXANDRIA

January 29th, 2008 by Jamey | Posted in Poetry | No Comments »

A man wrapped in several blankets
A blustery morning, coat collars pulled high
Above him the archway of the library

Another man, withered, in the second story window
Below, the library and a man nestled in trash
The library books; pages too cold to touch

COVENANTS THAT COME AND GO

January 28th, 2008 by Jamey | Posted in Poetry | No Comments »

Come in unto me,
and make a nation of you
Come in unto me, I hear,
Come in unto me

But for my weary future,
clipped to a generation of dusts,
I cannot tread the sea
Not now, not yet
Oh me of little gall

In the evenings, I fade.
The evenings do not belong to me.
I fade into them; they take me up.
I am another person.

That I could run my fingers through
the hair of nameless women who
will never love me I
would falter,

save for my spirit
…or maybe…

But before the break of sun,
and after those countless lost hours,
there is a fatigue, more or less,
and I am beckoned again to move

TRANSIT

January 28th, 2008 by Jamey | Posted in Poetry | No Comments »

On the bus ride home from work
a homeless man steals my attention
floating on the inner tube of drunken sleep
like jetsam from a sinking ship

And me with an empty book bag
and a woolen hat strapped across my chin

The seaborne dreamer stirs awake
to halts and sighs of rusted brakes
and moans his turncoat crew away
in milky, singsong chokes

      Sometimes I laugh so hard I am left shuddering,
my head between my thighs,
and it is amazing how I go to sleep each night
on the minute, like clockwork, then rise

1

November 15th, 2007 by Jamey | Posted in Fiction | 2 Comments »

When he was seven years old, Ezra saved his brother from drowning. Avery, a toddler at the time, was playing too closely to the pool. The adults should have been watching.

The boys’ parents were throwing a party. There were adults all about the yard, chatting under their breath and guffawing, chewing on hors d’oeuvres, lifting their hands to hide their eyes from the sun. Ezra, feeling shy and young at the large get-together, spent most of that day playing in the trails beyond the back yard. He remembers certain days not by their obvious milestones but by small markers; on that day he had lost his favorite baseball cap, a simple white cap with a blue brim. It was missing when he woke that morning. He found it years later, boxed away in the basement, crumpled underneath a Halloween mask.

Read the rest of this entry »

FIRST ONE

November 15th, 2007 by Jamey | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

hello, wwww

i hope iiii