Thomas Fink & Maya Diablo Mason



POOR TRAIT


Have you ever seen a 200
pound man who thought he
was a butterfly? A caterpillar
who thought he was
a moustache?

Some species
have bad taste in music.

Why wear glasses
if you don’t have eyes?
Some faith in things science
can’t prove can prove
tenebrous, and to think
a caterpillar thinks
is to think
recklessly.

I am only an intellectual
when I’m not in the bathroom.

                              SLOPE


     Spine 90 degrees, bones melted, from decades of 
    intensive prostration, intensive nothing,  some see it 
   as a wind-up  doll to which it delights at having 
 been seen at 
all. It perceives 
spilt coins, 
blackened                                                  
jewels (chewing 
gum), stamped-
out smokes, birds 
  reduced to 
   droppings. 
   An empty 
     jar: 50 
     years. 
     Head 
     bent—
    in gratitude. 
     
    For what?

Thomas Fink is the author of 8 books of poetry, including Joyride (Marsh Hawk Press, 2013) and a book of collaborative poetry with Maya Diablo Mason, Autopsy Turvy (Meritage Press, 2010). Beard of Bees will publish a chapbook, Former Sestinas, Fink and Tom Beckett’s collaboration. Fink’s work appears in The Best American Poetry 2007 (Scribner’s). A Different Sense of Power (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2001) is his most recent book of criticism, and he is co-editor of Reading the Difficulties: Dialogues with Contemporary Innovative American Poetry, forthcoming from University of Alabama Press . His paintings hang in various collections.


Maya Diablo Mason, co-author of Autopsy Turvy (Meritage Press, 2010) with Thomas Fink, was published in The First Hay(na)ku Anthology (Meritage, 2006) and her collaborative work has appeared in Otoliths, 21 Stars Review, BlazeVox, Of(f) Course, Long Island Sounds Anthology 2008 and 2009, Marsh Hawk Review, and EOAGH. She is a student at Brown University majoring in English and Visual Arts.
 
 
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