Author Archives: Mark Kerstetter

Cut

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

What a thrill— —Sylvia Plath Oh boy a second’s slip & instead of bread a slice-shear off years of careful tread. Nonretractable that switchblade switchback second repeats & repeats, oh, you’ve done it right! Yet back & forth on the … Continue reading →

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The Arms of Man

Posted on April 17, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

Strong men, upright and bold will provide continuums of care for the likes of a Florida man, older than his years, past his prime in a job serving up a blotched face to noonday eaters. Hear their spurs and song, … Continue reading →

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Reading in Bed

Posted on April 16, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

The man on the park bench reads in his bed: everything wrinkled, worn, and yellow, ill-fitting pants lined at the seam with buttons, once silver, shoe blown out, cigarette burned to the butt, the book held not selected, my angled … Continue reading →

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Down the Banks of the Susquehanna

Posted on April 13, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

That day I’ll be in step with what escaped me —Seamus Heaney, ‘Squarings’ It must be a blessing to believe that one will one day, if in a moment, be able to measure and thus erase The degree of slippage … Continue reading →

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Turandot

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

1 Aches and cries born in blood rise with the moon. Shouts and sobs give way to silent tears. Liù appears, faithful to a smile. Calàf knowing and not knowing her love in the moon’s silence, Unmoved by death or … Continue reading →

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Dante

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

Jacopo placed his hand flat on the wall as a writer on a ghost-white sheet places his only pen to join energies from Ravenna outward through embattled Florence and down through the pages and dust forward and back in candlelit … Continue reading →

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Three Walking Riffs for Bukowski

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

1 I’m walking home from work and as I approach the lake I see the woman wrapped like a pig-in-a-blanket parked in her chair and she’s raving screaming at the whole world and she probably has good reason to be … Continue reading →

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A Quick Call

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

Quick headspace all together hate in the eye crybaby sabotage angry Babe quick Hi Babe quick call head space virtual all together I am here inject hijack poison problems of your own crybaby girlfriend look me in the eye without … Continue reading →

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MERRA

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

He began speaking. He was right. Who is not right? —Samuel Beckett I am interested in the mechanization of the graphic procedure. —Richard Serra It may be that there has always been a visual art based on a relationship with … Continue reading →

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Details on Page 97

Posted on March 12, 2024 by Mark Kerstetter

On page 97 of Mark Stevens’ and Annalyn Swan’s de Kooning: An American Master (Knopf, 2004), they state that de Kooning and Arshile Gorky met in 1929 at a social gathering at Misha Reznikoff’s studio. The two quarreled and almost … Continue reading →

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