The Room 22

A Chapbook

The Room 22 cordially invites you to join us for our first poetry reading, on June 12th, 2011 at 712 de lpe, Outremont. The readings will start at around 19h. Feel free to enjoy the buffet of desserts and bring your own wine.

Picture by Richmond Lam We drove out behind Cabaret Les Amazones, and booked the room in the Motel St Jacques. That night we jumped on beds. How we jumped! It was a broken lampshade kind of room, and we contributed to those cigarette holes. It was a noise complaint kind of night, but then again we were staying right above some drug trafficking gun lords. The Room 22 was born that night, in some kind of ritualistic way we bathed in inspiration and an urge to come together. That year we organized art shows, videos; we hosted a few events, live performances, photo-shoots. The next year, we met Dutch; we did the whole weekly party thing at le bisou, with MadKids (Prince Club) and tin-foiled the basement for pictures. We got raided in August and moved locations onto Rachel. We had a gallery there for a month, and then the downstairs neighbors got us kicked out for some chi unbalance and a nervous cockatoo. We kept going, and soon we were 6 more. Now, we focus the blog on writing, and the process of it. After a year of brainstorming, we present to you our first of many readings. I hope you enjoy the food and drinks, and, of course, the music and poetry. This chapbook highlights the work of Athena, Devin, Guillaume, Nicholas, Olivia as well as my own and that of our guests for the evening, Mr. Jacob Wren, Mr. Jacob Spector and Mrs. Ashley Opheim. The Room 22 is Athena, Devin, Guillaume, Nicholas, Olivia, Clara, Anthony, Zach, Linny, and Megan. Love, Marie Jane & The Room 22 www.theroom22.com theroom22@gmail.com

Sailors in big blast of wind upon dry land Sail the freight when many work dry land. Sappho translation by Anne Carson If Not, Winter: Frangments of Sappho

i Dry lands, ripples of sands, dunes of you. Dry earth, throats coarse voices drowned in nightly gushes of wind. grass-less grounds, perhaps it is in you that births the thirst, the longing for sound, the waves. These new affections are bare, and in their frailty they breathe pink skinned, lucid dependence. You, work the road, pearling sweat upon lips wide and awaiting. Fulfilling most of the ideals, your beauty makes for even more. Lands of thirst, and they stretch and they exhale this heat as the pearls dropping onto them blossom into fields.

ii Morning storms, inundate the soil in warmth, the streams race down in such precision, while the rivers respond in waves June air spits back to us, as we embrace. There is breeze now, imbedded in fresh pollen, and waving grass upon our knees. June air smells of humid wood, as time remains slow.

the stillness of a home, as the wood swirls under the light filled rain, birds scream at the sun seeping its way back into place, the sounds that we know well, the air is still filled of water and it slips upon our faces. Today, June tastes like a forest.

Marie Jane June 2011

Drawing by Tommy Jessome, 2009

Love Letter N.9 S[mid-afternoon to late morning: when the bad news was delivered and I held you in my arms] Little flowers line the gravesite of dead fortunes, and Ive been picking. Ive been picking and cutting some to replant elsewhere. Perhaps in and around your landscaped hopes. It was Erasmus who reminded me to bring a pair of each so theyd still find their ever-important love lives. Love: they so rightly deserve. What else springs from shit to such lovely colours and scents? You see, your grants have run out and youve been writing for fortunes well-earned, but this time they arent going to give you any. Ive got a little money saved up here and Ill let you have it. Ive been picking and cutting to replant these little unfortunate flowers elsewhere. Ill let you have it. I will let you have it all. a.i

Nicholas Lindsay June 2011

Leah and Caleb, Picture by Marie Jane, fall 2010

I am on MDMA let me give you life advice

my thought process is an art form and self-love is a mental state I can only reach through severe confusion. out of necessity I have diagnosed myself with emotional attention deficit disorder and to survive I had to train myself to feel anxiety in all situations, making me unable to distinguish feeling anxious from feeling normal, what would my ass do I taught myself to think. my ass would feel shy when being observed and would say think like calm down, sit down then cry. the word shitty often roams around in my head, what gets me out of my head is actively avoiding conversations with shitty people, who have dissociated themselves from willpower and are excuse-driven. I am willpower-driven and MDMA-driven also. I will address all my issues in my head, which is invisible, then do MDMA and read the most emotional emails in my inbox. Guillaume Morisette winter 2011

Picture by Marie Jane, summer 2010

A list

Pain, crime and sadness. Tears, stupidity and failure. Violence, light and charm. Crime, wisdom and more crime. Bitterness, love triangles and just getting by. The peculiar, the odd and much, much more. The polymath, the dictator and true love. A good joke, a bad joke and a neutral joke. Slim chances, great wealth and poverty. Witch trials, public television and melancholy. Permission, psychosis and the average. Ambition, fame and regret. Longing, talent and a lack of talent. Sexual greed, average lust and plenitude. Decision making, scarcity and whatevers left. The similar, the opposite and the word yes. Again and again and again. Jacob Wren March 2011

Picture Laura Lynn Petrick, winter 2010

veuve cliquot : stats moves n evolution. know your mine unassumed now that paying dowry is illegal. the dimple has got me going off unaccountable you bet. the most revered augur is dying for my case, always willing, attempting with feet bucked, so i polled him for instruction he was paid.

my bestloved, she was waiting for me behind the white washes of santorini, the bestloved that knew my point of instigation. seeking traditional love poems i wrote to keep up, worried that my worth at her table was a soupcon at best.

at this party we meet closing on impersonal ground not city hall. Just little kids with veuve cliquot, i wont let down.

Devin Charitonidis June 2011

Chloe in Water, Picture by Marie Jane, summer 2010

KD (from the series 666-Sophisticated Poultry Humiliated) The sun rose into clouds over Montreal and Deckard and walks to the corner store and it rains. He goes to buy Kraft Dinnerfor dinner and sits at home all day, alone and Rachael gone, days. Its different in Montreal. You wait at home And smother ketchup over everything you Eat. Rachael comes home to a mess and you Sleep the day, alone. You think of L.A. and if it worked. You are completely dependent on everything but you, Rachael (thank heavens) and work (A drag.) And it rains and Montreal cloud covered and Kraft Dinner again, and alone, the dishes, drunk, waiting to be done.

Jacob Spector June 2011

The Room 22: Main-Bound, Picture by Emanuel Botello, summer 2009

I FED THE ICE OF MY REGION to your telephone all winter. hunched statue, tongue thick with silt: my heart is and is buoyant under a flap of my skin. your voice a plume over my head, skull helmet. metal receiver to a metal tongue: from far away you tell me that The Moving World belongs to me. you tell me what you would do to my thin arms do to my tongue, my winded corset, flat pink roses if i were in Your Bedroom. the sky is stretched like a brown strand of hair taped between a door frame and a door: suspicious and sacrificial. taut, the sky is an axe: mythically large, and under its expanse, i feel wooden. a ticking begins somewhere in my sternum. your voice dissipates and whitens. i remember that it is never really winter where you are, southern-state. fucking forty degrees, your ice drips on my shoulders, axe in the eye, to the line where the buildings huddle and melt into the on-ramp. the horizon is most clear where it vanishes. Olivia Wood March 2011 Teeth, Picture by Olivia Wood, winter 2011

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esper put it together. give it shape and bloom when everyone is shadowing. follow the artificial scent of longing, the invisible track of networks. gps/fur around her neck. in patterns, the wings of creatures wallow rhythm and reverb moonlight. settle for her song of ghost light its memory stretched across aperture. with lace eyelash and wing, she whispers webs when the fog gathers around bell ankles. with your lips, weave a secret. figure eight like a ring with no boundary. threaten it with extension. draw a line in the sand and separate the land with a fallen feather and throw the memory to the hollow dens of your antler feelings. all there is the light and the dark and isis and the quiet chaos and the breaths of esper. sap the lap of husky tongue. speak to her, then. fall apart shying into shadow tree map. whirl-pool my heart, little flame take a chance and settle your hands around the circular. sky like you mean it. Ashley Opheim June 2011

Feathers, Picture by Clara Palardy winter 2009

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Poetry today

Butt cheek to cheek Its nice to meet himHe eats me out good Pleasure is all mine. I dont know what smut is But i do know that my dirty fingers Smear my moleskin daily. I circle the filthy stains in pen And annotate the lover. That silly simile Poets use About their eyes and egg whites is not half as good as the one he uses about his knotting our satiated condoms like a 3-year-olds first lesson at the yacht club. You dont know how to tie your shoe-laces, I tell him, watch the Tedtalks video might change your life. he says to write a poem about it might change my life. Some dude pulls up, starts work at 5am apparently. naked pretzeled bodies go unnoticed Thanks to tinted foggy windows.

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So does the bowline on the pavement. A volvo has never smelled so sweet. And neither have nuts. Pleasure wasnt all mine finally Because really, poetry is about sharing I watch him through our steam, I tell him: Wait. Before you go. Show me how you do that trick That makes me scream.

Athena S Delimanolis June 2011

Drawing and Picture by Marie Jane, summer 2009

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