Heather Brinkman’s four poems
Heather Brinkman appears in Issue 26 with four compact poems titled “v v v,” “e e e,” “r r r,” and “m m m.” Their language moves through music, anatomy, desire, shame, separation, and damaged certainty. Italian musical terms sit beside dense, tactile diction; abrupt line breaks and compressed syntax make each poem feel like a fragment under pressure.
The sequence rewards attention to sound as much as statement. Repeated letters become miniature titles, while phrases such as bel canto, marcato, and saltarello pull musical texture into the poems’ emotional field. Readers can explore related work through poetic forms, experimental poetry, modern poetry, and the wider contemporary poets archive.
v v v
Santo and Johnny
& all the boys
And
Ann
the pipe bottled penny cash
of addidago saltarello
and where our working hearts
have shamed us
they too
shall parturition,
and all things forgotten
will again affray
e e e
bel canto: onyx marcato
or all of universe for you
my whorehouse your heart
a burning violet
r r r
the cordon has won
its preventions of our
worn love, so may the ruga
iris saccharify and dissolve
to the tripartite of yarrow
the mast of men a cozenage
here, there Ovolo
now go and let me be that
on my own
m m m
Your Polish tits are far too much
for men and far too much for me
to rest within
I know the emasculate
sun will never again
rise on us with certitude,
“the glorious sunrise”
will never come
Issue 26 and the preserved record
Contemporary notices for Issue 26 list Heather Brinkman among its contributors, and the historical author index likewise places her in Issue 26. The surviving page preserves the four poems in full, allowing the sequence’s clipped lyric architecture and recurring musical language to remain available as part of the publication’s early twenty-first-century record.
For archival confirmation, see the historical author index and CutBank’s January 2006 notice.