Photos by Robert Reichert - Click for gallery

 

BARBARA MALOUTAS

V1n4
Fall 03

 

from th:IS about logic

 

MALOUTAS

 

II    MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND THE PERNICIOUS EFFECT
       OF UNNATURAL DISTINCTIONS

For The Wind

About the society of curves in
Biningen there is nothing crafted
that is straight.

A curve is not a circle nor
virtue a matter of gender. One
savant employs an idle pinwheel.

These resistances to flow. These sought-out
contrayervas conspire to
chaos. There is no mind at home.

Leaned

Leaning back works on porches.
Leaning back requires balance.
Leaning back’s about now.

Some species went from four
to two and typically straightened
the knees.

To ask where the origin of
any duty is ensconced:
A chair lends itself to grammar.

A Little To

which is simply to have nothing
to do, but listlessly to go
they scarcely care where

So half of mankind chained
to rock bottom will undermine
either from right or left?

And dislexia is exactly
like shouting sinistra
for a simple left-hand turn.

Dirt Road

Sweet Mary (some cal’ed her a whore,
some shut to the door
) a dirt road
down to the sea.

Five thousand sailors in
side by side hammocks take
pleasure in monkey wrenches.

The seventh fleet above all has orders
to lay at alert. Expecting to turn
distaff to muskets.

Right Down

The future of womenkind is excellent
post-menses: vastness or not
mere dolls . . . fitting drapery upon a smooth block.

They know enough not to care that
private virtue is the cement
of public happiness.

At last they turn into their own
north wind blighting all but that
which wants affection.

This Height

Veni vidi (con)vici.
They came saw and convinced themselves
they were equal to anything.

If Thomas never doubted the rights
of Guillaume’s revolution at telles degrees,
then Mary got off on the hyperbolic.

Of course consider that
getting off on was meant to be
taken with a grain of salt.

 

Barbara Maloutas is a winner of the New Issues first book in poetry prize in 2003 for In A Combination of Practices. She also won the Diagram/New Michigan Press 2003 Chapbook contest for Practices. Her poems and essay will appear in the next issue of Aufgabe. A graphic designer and college administrator, she lives in Los Angeles where she completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Otis College of Art and Design in 2002.