The Lawrence Welk Diaries * The Hallucinogenists, John Colburn

Our first poem-as-play. Colburn's The Lawrence Welk Diaries is a poem in four scenes featuring conversation between Lawrence Welk, Michel Foucault, Eartha Kitt, and Sam Shephard. The poem/play is followed by a "detour through a flaming hoop," or Colburn's poem, The Hallucinogenists.

An excerpt:

LW: In North Dakota I heard a pony
count handclaps through dirty teeth and
I understood, the gayer the lights, the
better the luck; we were all tripping
on that tour. I don't see getting drowned.
I don't see looking unlovely. It's mother's fault.
The hundredth bang, very sore, it makes
me smaller, I'll live on, I'll nude, I'll
swerve notes until the old Greek scales
fall from our eyes. As the pumping organ
cannot speak, I can guarantee you love.


JOHN COLBURN is originally from Mantorville, MN. He is a publisher and editor at Spout Press and teaches writing at the Perpich Center for Arts Education and at Hamline University. His first chapbook, Kissing, was published by Fuori Editions in 2002.

Elizabeth Robinson, The One Big Secret

The six poems in Elizabeth Robinson's new series meditate on the violence of the "briefly animate" body taken and taken apart. With their stripped-down line and chilling delivery, these are haunting poems.


An excerpt from "Creature"


The afterlife is its own dunce,

furred, stupid with bewilderment So

who did it--from or to us--

mixing sebum and

grime into a paste: briefly animate The

ground beneath us is slippery with it, cruel and

puling runt So life goes



ELIZABETH ROBINSON is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Apostrophe from Apogee Press, and Under That Silky Roof, from Burning Deck Press. She lives in Colorado and co-edits 26 Magazine, EtherDome chapbooks, and Instance Press.