Small Flowers Crack Concrete: Issa's Sunday Service, #24

d.a.levy (foreground)

It's hard for me personally to believe that 24 weeks into this little music project and this is the first appearance of the sensational Sonic Youth but there you are. They will be back. What you get with this song, "Small Flowers Crack Concrete," is a true blend of poetry and rock, recitation and cosmic noodling, that fans of this band frankly can't get enough of.

I'm not sure how anyone who has a problem with strong language could have found their way here but, if that is the case, you are duly notified that "Small Flowers Crack Concrete" has some outstanding examples.

At the center of this song is Cleveland poet, d.a.levy, mystic, prophet, and cosmic cowboy with Beat sensibilities, an idealist who burnt as fast, hard, and, relatively, as brilliantly as Morrison, Hendrix, James Dean and many another counterculture figures of the Era of Change. I've written about levy before, back at the old Beneath Cherry Blossoms blog (beware of pop-ups). A piece on a book plus dvd on levy, d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution, which I wrote for The Small Press Review and was reprinted by the outlaw poetry and free jazz network, may be read here (the review follows a brief intro by Ken Petrochuk).

Hope you enjoy this week's Litrock selection at Issa's Sunday Service.



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This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review #35, which was an "All Women Issue." This poem by, the fine poet Belinda Subraman (who runs a great series of interview/podcasts with poets), snuck in even though it broke the ten line limit rule.

Eve La Nuit

she was a sculptress
who felt eaten by men
gobbled up in their world
beaten
licked
her most famous piece
was an abstract view
some think of a bird
hungry
with a gaping mouth
or else a cock split open
or perhaps a serpent
who could tell an apple
from a woman

Belinda Subraman

dewdrops scatter--
done with this crappy
world

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don