https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
 http://offcourse.org
 ISSN 1556-4975

OffCourse Literary Journal

A journal for poetry, criticism, reviews, stories and essays published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998


 

Poems by Mark Young.

 

A line from Mamie van Doren

I cannot host the Little
League baseball Asia-Pacific
Tournament because mold
is growing in my home. May

be a software issue—the
site's robots.txt does include
a vision quest. Perhaps it's
a parasite spread by cats.

But either way, comes very
close to the scene in my
book, Living with the Dead,
that spells out exactly why

democracy is necessary for
Disneyland, & just when
you should visit your vet
about erectile dysfunction.

 


 

Piath

It is midnight
before I 
get out to do 
my lunchtime 

shopping. Dogs
follow me. In the
streetstall under
the peppertree

a single-engined
beggar offers
me a Piaf CD 
autographed

by the singer
herself. I
buy it with no
regrets & sign

my name
immediately 
below hers. The 
supermarket

calls me Al. I
don’t care. We 
are in love,
Edif & me.

 


 

geographies: Mount Palomar

The research is still
in its early days; 
but, based on 
thermal imagery &
a very close affinity 
between the anthropo-
morphic & zoomorphic 
characteristics evidenced
here, it would appear
as if the only extant 
satyr play of Euripides
was the first object
to be put into a sun-
synchronous orbit.

 


 

uncools

His
translations of
Apollinaire reek of

formaldehyde when it's
absinthe we're
after.

 


 

 The geographical speaker

She said: I am
moving to the
west. Stepped
to the left.

Changed her
orientation.
Facing south
not north now.

Said. I am 
moving to the 
west. Stepped
to the right.

The cardinal 
point is that
she knows the
cardinal points

intuitively. A
compass in 
her head. En-
compassing.

 


Mark Young has been publishing poetry for nearly fifty-five years. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. He is the author of more than twenty books, primarily poetry but also including speculative fiction & art history. He is the editor of the ezine Otoliths.  He lives on the Tropic of Capricorn in Australia.

Recent work has appeared or is to appear in Moria, Fact-Simile, The Last Vispo Anthology, Eccolinguistics, Cricket Online Review, 3 a.m., E·ratio, Cordite, Quarter After, & BlazeVOX amongst other places



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