Rodrigo Toscano (USA)1964
Born in San Diego in 1964, Rodrigo Toscano moved to San Francisco in 1995, where he lived for four years, working as a social worker and labor activist. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York, working in Manhattan at the the Labor Institute.
Toscano’s first book, Partisans, was published by O Books in 1999 to great acclaim, and when his second book, The Disparities, appeared he was recognized as a significant contemporary poet. Since then he has published three further collections. The most recent, Collapsible Poetics Theater, received the National Poetry Award.
Toscano has read his work across the country, and has won several awards, including inclusion in the 2004 Best American Poetry anthology and in the Criminal's Cabinet: An Anthology of Poetry and Fiction.
Artistic Director and Writer for the Collapsible Poetics Theaer, he has performed his polyvocalic pieces at the Redcat Theater in Los Angeles, the Ontological-Hysteric Poet's Theater, and the Poet's Theater Jamboree.
Toscano now lives in New Orleans where he works for the Labor Institute on educational and training projects that involve environmental and labor justice, health and safety issues, and immigrant worker rights.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Partisans (Oakland, California: O Books, 1999); The Disparities (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2002); Platform (Berkeley, California: Atelos Press, 2003); To Leveling Swerve (San Francisco: Krupskaya, 2004); Collapsible Poetics Theater (Albany, New York: Fence Books, 2008); Deck of Deeds (Counterpath, 2012); Explosion Rocks Springfield (Albany, New York: Fence Books, 2016); In Range (Counterpath, 2019); The Charm & the Dread (Albany, New York: Fence Books, 2022); The Cut Point (Counterpath, 2023)
╬Winner of the PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English
2005-2006
dream-construct of a dream constructed
dry trees
bronze sky
iron earth
come down
nutritious rain
lone plotted figure
loping
taser at the side
a satchel of I.D.s
tulips looking on
the house cannot get in
the house cannot come in
the house cannot stay out
the house cannot get out
standing outside the reach
of grapes
and cannot
shorn hand
shorn ear
(alternate translation:
something about "the brain itself
had shrunk")
look afar
transport class B ship
undocks
globonians
still greeks
in eclectic clouds
—and away!
they shall eat
of your
eating of their
fruits
in the middle of all nations
bear the mockery
gray figure
"loping"
"splotches"
be on your roots now
the very air's
dismayed indifference
broken stones amassed
agit-pebbles
they prop up the house
and get into it
all the time now
beyond "uncomfy"
disclosure-discourse
behold!
a newer row
of figurines
a buzzing and buzzing
flies buzzing all around
figure 1.
stands on the stair elevator moving upward modernity
descending is civility's staircase next to it
befallen
corpulent
book-quoting
figure 2.
looks up at
dead trees, so many
slugs would be coins
dropping
abyss city
as was before
encircled—compositional
be not
too dashed
rows of chairs—no "figures" in them
stab you in the throat—post-verbally—
profile of an old clan
profile of another
and another
and another
que muera la raza
images to all sides repeat
splotches legacy
s'gray all around them
s'green somewhere beyond
white, next image, scrollback
sheep, cattle in jaws of
moonlike-colored mandibles
and the barley stalks, yellowy swerve
line goes across and the crowd above it—a minimalist image
penciled-in hash marks—"hope"
well then, pink figure, well then, at first, then
get to more pinker goin' on red
purple beyond red
fading into black
so much for the collectivist principia
volucris
horrible sand surrounds
hunched
gray
devourers
slanted figures looking on
behind
behind the wall also
devoured
secret gray slab
and a shadow
and now
two crimson trees
to 7 in an arced golden
hand in hand
circle
collapsed
the old stone pissing-wall a-shattered on either side
the dome of ball-lickers not far off
the rock of geezer turds
contended over
in there
the house cannot get in
the house cannot come in
the house cannot stay out
the house cannot get out
a low cost shag while you shop
something for the kids to bang at with a pickaxe perhaps
an inscription on such stone found recently
something about "yeshua"
a one brother of a one james of one son of a
bisquit gone dry
as to why two newer schlockhunds
divide the waters
hunched down near two figures
hapless
stabbing at each other
in the throat
uploaded
corrupt dossiers
from swiss bank accounts
glare clouds not fulsome gray but orange against yellow
gas
swirls a figurine is a wool god a crinkled low-grade burlap god, is a swirl around the maypole
violent god
notice the arms
are limp
notice
sun across slant moon across slant book to look at
my son
what has thou snaked of late
bench
you can wait here
we can talk about
watch clouds
the snowcapped mountains
laughing uproariously
where our dust-devil sniveling gods swooped down from
simple anthropologic perspective
undoes the tale?
rumbling
globonian
approach
dzzz...why, jonah, I thought I stabbed you last night
dzzz...why, kemin, I thought I stabbed you last night
thundering clouds
scollpaper
screensaver
a fully-automatic
subjectivity
borne once
a webday
begin to scatter
globonian forces sweeping in
the true inheritor:
second-generation chinese (half haitian) french ex-national tranny
from the favelas of north sao paolo
the true inheritor
globonian
re-charterize state
lineages
intra-contanamixed
betrixed
ad infinitum
interests
intra-contaminixed
betrixed
ad infinitum
the children's pickaxe
amusement
itself
to be re-done
as
the point is
to transform it
beyond recognition
____
Reprinted from Milk Magazine, no. 6 (2005). Copyright ©2005 by Rodrigo Toscano.