Mark Wallace

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Mark Wallace received his PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he worked as a student assistant to poet Charles Bernstein. Wallace has been creating literary events in Washington, DC, and California State University San Marcos since 1995. Wallace has penned books of fiction, poetry, mixed genre, as well as chapbooks. His 2002 effort, Temporary Rides on a Subway, received the Gertrude Stein Poetry Award. He currently teaches at California State University San Marcos.

I Was Dreaming of Alleys

Leaping into
this afternoon lodges
of itself upon light, open
among the cracked
pavements, slanting winds
turning to face
music slides along the wall.
Wonder now, we’re strange
hand reaching across the fence
casual expense. What would
the art be knowing
do be doing, becalmed
or flouting the eye of storms,
I said, crossing at red lights
as if that could break
the limits of the streets.
Learning to move
in the body given
into edges of itself,
turned, that I would
be here to you loosely,
shaping the stories
of other lives all our own
never gone, though the snow stops.
The way veins streak fingers
leaves place to hold
the glass close to what we’re drinking
for. She said it’s off somehow
the aliens landed, a family visit.
I will not drift away from digression
or trap each inflection. Standing
open to the sky, leaning
towards pockets and pockmarks
saying yes, this
is where it starts,
all the shadows looking back
to be beginning again
in what happened
on the margins of fearing the footsteps.

Links

• Poet’s blog
• “Definitions in Process, Definitions as Process/Uneasy Collaborations: Language and Postlanguage Poetries,” Interview. FlashPøint. Spring 1998.

Media

Societies of American Poetry: Dissenting Practices | February 21, 2003
Field Work