July 30, 7 p.m.


Steve Abbott 


at MOTR

​STEVE ABBOTT was a founding member in 1984 and continues as a co-host of The Poetry Forum, now the Midwest's longest-running poetry reading series. He received an Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award in 1993 and an OAC residency in Provincetown, MA in 1994. He has published five chapbooks and a full-length collection, A Green Line Between Green Fields.  He edited the anthologies Cap City Poets (2008) and Ohio Poetry Association's Everything Stops and Listens (2013). A Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Columbus State Community College, he also edits OPA's annual journal Common Threads. His collection of ekphrastic poems, A Language the Image Speaks, will be published in September.



Launched by poets Mark Flanigan and Jim Palmarini in 2014, Word of Mouth  was inspired by the late Cincinnati poet Aralee Strange. Poets of all stripes are welcome to show up, listen, and mouth off.

MOTR Pub, 1345 Main Street, Cincinnati  

---

aughterhouse Worker, South St. Paul, 1962
a photograph by Jerome Liebling
 
 After a while I become line and texture.
The arc of cleaver and knife leaves my forearms
matted crimson I see as black or blue,
a bruising baptism every day,
chopping block’s stains an abstraction
the danger never allows me to imagine.
Slicing to the bone, the blade is my brush
defining flourish or stroke, gristle or fat
as excess, a negative space to be trimmed.
From across the floor, I’m mechanical,
a form in motion, and the pigment layered
on my apron is my great-grandfather’s face
when the settlers killed his horses
and rain waited too long to arrive.
Sure, there’s blood on my hands,
but I’m not ashamed of this
skilled butchery, or that someone’s dirty
work, or mine, keeps each of us alive.

                          #   #   #
 
 
Killers on TV

The killers wear suits,
and they play for keeps.
They smile for the cameras
and talk into microphones.
They are well-spoken
and invoke the forebears
and God, as needed.
They want you to believe
what happened yesterday
never happened—what they said
last week, you imagined.
 
The killers go to church
and pray with their families.
They sit at shiny tables.
And talk into microphones.
They lie on the channels
you always watch, never watch.
 
The killers are looking out for you.
They offer free downloads,
cell phones in purple,
satellite radio 24/7.
They raise the invisible hand
of The Market, its middle finger
a salute to you and you and you.
 
The killers name The Enemy.
Next week they’ll want
someone to wear a uniform
in a desert, in a jungle.
They pose with their families
who don’t wear uniforms, ever.
They hope you’ll vote
for song and dance on TV.
They want you to watch
The Big Game, and argue statistics.
They know who wins
doesn’t matter.
 
The killers wear suits.
They smile for the cameras.

​                            #   #   #

Ringtone Pantoum
  
Whenever her cell phone rings
she's clawing at her purse,
desperate to not be out of touch
no matter what she's doing.
 
She's clawing at her purse
during meetings, in the shower,
no matter what she's doing.
Her friends reach out and grope her
 
during meetings. In the shower
she doesn't think it strange that
her friends reach out and grope her.
Even when she's breathing hard in bed
 
she doesn't think it strange, that
Lady Gaga ringtone chirping loud.
Even when she's breathing hard in bed,
she just can't let it go, be in the moment.
 
Lady Gaga ringtone chirping loud?
It's music.  It's a drug.  It's her life--
she just can't let it go.  Be in the moment?
Someone who is bored is more important:
 
it's music, it's a drug, it's her life
all tangled up in every other life. It’s clear
someone who is bored is more important,
more than anything she does or loves,
 
all tangled up in every other life.  It’s clear
she's connected to everything but herself,
more than anything she does or loves,
a perfect slave who embraces her chain.
 
She's connected to everything but herself,
desperate to not be out of touch--
a perfect slave who embraces her chain
whenever her cell phone rings.
















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Launched by poets Mark Flanigan and Jim Palmarini in 2014, Word of Mouth  was inspired by the late Cincinnati poet Aralee Strange. Poets of all stripes are welcome to show up, listen, and mouth off.

MOTR Pub, 1345 Main Street, Cincinnati