Brad Vogler

Six Poems from my radius, a small stone

:

here device wants for sure(ness)

footed

contain/ed/able

                                     map/ped/able

this                                                       leads                                                       there

a line

where want want(s) goes/                                         to go
go to

this broken rush
          I broken
                  this rushed
              on/over

some called way

:

:

this learning/re
                                    learning

an otter came before others (hedgehog)
                                                                in your liking/looking

an order of sorts

other of place today

haunts

mudded boots
                           the earth does/holds

boot direction
       and desire

depth of such words

:

:

too much to hold/

a want for telling
some uncontained way/s
                                                 /word/s

saying dear is not enough

dear become [ ] (not erasure)

mapped and
                                 uncontained/able

too afraid of/
                                 too quiet of

attempt/s
                                              naming

a vocabulary
sings
                [ ]

:

:

surfac(ing)
 re              ing

urge              shore      ward

shore/coast          shift

ed/ing
                                                              ground
                                                                           /coast     ing
                                                                           re          worded

line:
                                                                           [ ]
                                                                           intricate ship
                                                                           thing well
                                                                           in my heart

:

:

an unsteady mapping
           the inevitable surrounds

it’s easy to consider destination
           a desired pointplace

but [ ]
                      unsteady as water/
                                                      \
sea
                            an endless movement of record

recorded

[ ]       outlined/
                     not empty

name of all the words I’d write

:

:

sounds a closeness/
                                 closing

hold
there are problems

a spelling implies stasis

a voicing fluidity

[ ] name/s/d
    one spells stillness

sounds
                surprised each after and other

time

[ ]

:

Author’s note:

The poems here are from a project called my radius, a small stone. The [ ] appears in Kate Greenstreet’s “case sensitive,” and as she notes is from the correspondence between Zukofsky and Niedecker and indicates “…a signal of deep caring for which words dare not and need not be found.” The italicized “intricate ship / thing well / in my heart,” is from Alice Notley’s “Alice Ordered Me to be Made.”

Brad Vogler’s poems have appeared in places which include: Free Verse, Versal, Barzakh, and Word for/Word, and he has work forthcoming in Volt, Jacket2, Dear Sir, and Bestoned. He builds and maintains the website for Delete Press, and is the editor/web designer of Opon. His first chapbook, “Fascicle 30,” was recently released from Little Red Leaves Textile Series.
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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.