MY NEXT HEART

NEW BUFFALO POETRY

EDITORS: NOAH FALCK AND JUSTIN KARCHER

EDITORIAL ADVISORS: TOM DREITLEIN, PAIGE MELIN,

RACHELLE TOARMINO, AND EVE WILLIAMS

MANAGING EDITOR: AIDAN RYAN

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry
Eds: Noah Falck and Justin Karcher
Copyright 2017

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

Cover Art: Chuck Tingley: Somewhere in Shennongjia, China, 2011
(acrylic, ink, and pencil on stained wood).

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-290-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017956156

BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Introduction
Noah Falck and Justin Karcher

A HEARTBEAT YOU CAN HOLD

My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry is a collection of poetry from young

Buffalo writers.

It is a 200-page moving picture of a living culture like a .gif that changes,

subtly, every time you view it.

It is a single sea-surge of a thousand individual pulses. It is a community of

communities.

The poems in this anthology capture the energy and creative output from
the citys thriving slam, alt-lit, spoken word, language poetry, academic, and
publishing communities. These communities often function separately, they
have their own spaces and vocabularies, and their contributions to the
literary and language arts are radically different but as different as they
are, the young poets in this collection are enmeshed. They trade places and
ideas, share stages and projects, and support each others endeavors. The
poets in this collection have a few simple commonalities that bind them:
young poets who inherited a language shaped by a city, theyve gone on to
shape a citys language.

It is a book that hopes to explore that city and that language.

Language as history. Language as community. Language as lack and

limitation. Language as politics. Language as poetics. Language as heart.

Some of the poets in this collection write in their heads as theyre standing
watch in parking lots or wiping down bar counters at the end of a long night.
Others are writing poems while putting together lesson plans or worrying

15
about budget cuts and school board elections. Some are spinning soliloquies
on downtown stages. Others are reassembling bodies in emergency rooms.

They are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. They are fighters and
believers; they are protesting, performing, professing, prophesying. Their
poems nod to the past, and nod to tradition, but also work to address the
now and the tomorrow.

They are page poets. They are slam poets. They are widely published, and
have not published at all. They were born here and never came back. They
are transplants that will never leave. They are thinking about Robert Creeley
and Susan Howe and Ani DiFranco. They are thinking about Lucille Clifton
and Ishmael Reed. They are reading poems for their closest friends in
crowded living rooms in winter, and on warped wooden porches in the citys
humid summer nights. They are performing monthly at Pure Inks Poetry
Slam and representing Buffalo at Nationals. They are teaching at the
University at Buffalo, Canisius College, the Just Buffalo Writing Center.
They are from different backgrounds, different schools, they generate in
different styles; but sometimes they are sharing the same story, and in some
ways, they are writing the same poem.

Given such energy and diversity, its easy to have a fantastical vision of
poetry: armies of tired poets trudging through fields of timeless mud, writing
epics on the clean walls of microbrewery bathrooms, yelling their poems on
tops of construction high beams, putting on scuba suits and swimming to the
bottoms of Great Lakes to collect all the fish and pirate bones and use them
to construct ossuaries of the beautiful. But that would be misleading. What is
happening here in these poems is simpler and more vital.

It would also be easy to say that these poems are antidepressants or

antidotes for the tough times we live in but again, that would be
misleading. The times have always been tough. There have always been
struggles. There will always be struggles.

16
Poetry has always been the one constant we turn to when we feel like our
backs are up against the wall. It is a map that we clothe our vocal cords in so
we dont drift aimlessly into the silence. These poets are not silent. Their
poems work as a diverse symphony of megaphones.

This collection is working to magnify the current energy of this community,

and to archive some of the poems that tell its story. Its a collection of the
moment, a snapshot, a bridge. It is a new heart. It is beating in your hands
right now.

Listen.

October 2017

17
Hyaline Treasury
Venezia Appleby

The hiding places of my childhood were lined

And decorated with romantic fabrics.

Reading dusty, antique books

Beside french pocket doors.
Heavy baroque detailing;
A brass, copper, or iron object
Peeking from the center of its doily
At me with placed atop brocade tapestry.

Lace, cashmere, silk, chiffon;

All these safe and lovely textures
And of course, the exquisite red wine
Velvet chair made for statuesque sitting.
There we could be silent and motionless.

Thunderstorms outside always soothing

Compared to the ones inside our homes walls
And I learned to think of
My crying body as sacred.
I was worth so much more that way.
All shaking, drenched, and electrified.

As an adult I realized
No one cries outside of home.
No one shares willingly their diamonds and silk.
Only their iron dust and their sneezing.
Nothing to worship.

Once a tree sweetly stirred me

Until every cell hummed and flowed
Like the last time I was in love. Knowing then
I was born to be a spring stream.
A rippling mirror of bark and buds.

21
This frozen morning a rich rose gold
Dawn dazzles my bare skin.
But its not the sort of jewel that can afford rent
Heal a bullet wound, or cure cancer.
So whos life can I save but my own?

And how can I ever find

Strength powerful enough
To bear such sorrow as a life of flesh
When loving this way left me so beautiful?
Naked and dripping with moonlight.

22
Useless (Atmeh, Syria)
Elias Attea

There are times I think of mother with me,

no more words to speak,
just the holding. Folding
into her heart, anything
precious, near
though those pieces may be
useless now:

There are the pebbles under the sand, like old currency
And the rusty chain links that create palpable places.
But overhead a vulture is passing through,
beating its wings as hard as it can,
believing in its work, still
refraining from laughter

Some days the sky will be clear

with only one cloud
not blocking the sun.
how useless, I whisper.
My mouth is dry.
My mothers must be, too,
holding everything precious
with no words.

23
COMFORT
Woogee Bae

Sometimes you want to work. Set the table

Yourself

When it moves forward, what choice

from the outside you are

(and want to)

the in and the out you remember

the bombing

Girl hands shafting to taste

24
In another city, she is memory. A body behind.

When someone sits down. When people stare.

Touch her face. Touch her eyes. Poke pokepokepo

When they drive off

There are directions to take

When you pass the station and

She is

again.

25
And her body in her place

take the blows the least you can do.

Wrap her arm in cloth to cover

Maybe one day youd laugh about it

from a hard peach

bruise

ha hah har her

remember that time

Thattime you were ?

26
 They talk
about
merry is
bore
almostfour

together

years

would you

ending

call it

child

27
But a tongue so dried up it knows neither this nor that
The inflections that make up the characters that disappear

You ask about the war. Call it temporary

Every day there is threat of missile fires.

28
They agree to re-move the statue. Call it triumph
8.3 million respect/co operation

say

Fuck your cunt

and they fuck your cunt

when

bodies cramped

where
crane peeking

water

pull out seaweed

pull out soapy hair

29
againthe opening sweet, a moment

blunder

turning
your map
but I,

(to ask)
repeat

30
Queen City Fractal
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

A whole world
stacked in a garage,
a gauge. Birds at the
feeder, a gauge.
Someone walking a
Buffalo beach on
Christmas, waves
way beyond the
piled
tremors of ice.
That person
is married now,
done thinking of the
minute.
The sum of all birds
at the feeder
bird plus two bird
plus four bird plus
bbbbirdddd
better expressed as
!"#$ !!

!

& what did the

savvy knight
demand but one
penny for the first
bird, two for the

31
 second, and four for
the third. He
demands a single
gauge boson: the
carrier of forces,
feather alone that
flies.
He uses the
feather to decorate
flight alone,
requests only a
strength carrier.
First birds one
penny, two the
second, four for
three, celebrated as
bird over bird over
bird to take as his
reward.
That
persona is wedded
now, made to think
minute. Somebody
that walks a Buffalo
beach on
Christmas walks the
way of waves
beyond the
accumulated

32
 vibrations of ice.
Enter a worldly
garage. Birds in
the feeder, another
meter. That person
marries now.

33
our city has no poor people
Marina Blitshteyn

this isn't a man wrapped in paper

a woman with paper in tow
a woman lining the car with blankets
a trail of paper at her feet
an old man filling up the car with paper
so thick a young girl gags in her seat
or another man jangling his pockets
more paper stuffed into a plastic cup

when you visit this city you won't see

a man dressing himself in paper
lying on a wooden bench like paper
draping his paper over the seats
or on the corners of every street more
and more paper piles
making themselves comfortable
women holding up paper signs
women making paper fires
women walking on thin sheets of paper

there are no homeless people here

in our beautiful city
there are no hungry people here
in our beautiful city
there are no newspaper leaves
tracing the pavement with wings
there are no prop babies
there are no wide-eyed baby cries
no worn guitar cases carrying paper
no paper beds for men to sleep on
no dogs with paper in their eyes
we built our houses on paper
we show you our paper faces first

34