Newspoem.

Newspoem 4 May 1999

Variations on the New York Times

1. Grdelica

(consonant trigram omitting some repetitions)

strangers Belgrade-to-Skopje
highway bright red-white-and-blue structure
"bastards" through interpreter
sights Blegrade supply
deaths "exclude instance"
trucks earth movers highway
three transparent spring electrical melancholy
watching northwest checkpoints brought bombs
bombs 11-month-old daughter
mongrel stroking sunlight streaming rubble
children's stamps socks hundreds earth bombs
explosive shrapnel yards child's softly shrugged
Albright Smiljkovic described growth
attacks midnight Orthodox shrapnel blown
earthen embankment shrapnel bombs
socks weirdly branches neighbor Ognjen
bombs light describing grandson granddaughter
"bombs frighten" neighbors tightly

2. Death of Scent, Fury of Sound

(filter: reversed subject & object within quotes)

The train attacked the bastards. Go away.

English doesn't want to hear me anymore.

Another atrocity.

Are you scared my doll?

Are you scared my sweetheart?

Should he shoot me? He can't.

Can this imagine passing through you?

The cow is dead but the calf is alive.

Should the calf shoot me?

.

This cow and calf and dog care more about me than anyone in the world cares about Clinton and Albright.

 

There is no military objective here that can think about anybody.

 

We will not scare their bombs. We will frighten no man.

.

American or Brits won't talk to me.

They won't talk to me.

They don't want to look at me.

.

I'm sorry, but please just go away.

 

{a convolution of "At Sights of NATO Accidents, Scent of Death, Sound of Fury," New York Times 13 April 1999, by Steven Erlanger. }


 


Newspoetry at Spineless Books