from: The Love Song of Myla J. Goldberg

Ann Pedone

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Seductive, smart, and so very very strange, Ann Pedone’s “from: The Love Song of Myla J. Goldberg” introduces us to a speaker who seems to feel everything with a ravenous hunger. The poem urges readers to start over the moment they finish, and to then start and end over and over and over and over.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Yolk began as an electric conversation around a picnic table in Saint Henri Square.
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Our scruffy pioneer and present prose editor had previously approached each of us with an idea, a vision: We would establish our own literary magazine in Montreal. And so it was, or so it would be. After that original encounter, eight individuals devoted to the word resolved that they would gather bi-weekly, on Sundays, and bring something new into this busy, manic world—something that might slow its spin down somewhat and cause its patronage to say: “You know what, it ain’t so bad, is it, Susan?”

We are undergraduate, graduate, and graduated students of writing. Some of us learn our craft formally from accomplished authors in seminar courses, and some of us learn by looking out the window of the world and onto the streets that sing below. Some of us learn from screaming squirrels, old curtains, departed grandfathers, and bowel movements. We learn from old lovers, long winters, imperfect mothers, and from the deep internet where a musical genius remains entombed.

Yolk is cold floors on Sabbath mornings, home-brewed ginger beer in the endless afternoon, and downpours of French-pressed coffee in assorted artisanal mugs. Our first official gathering was scheduled for a duration of two hours; most of us remained for six, departing only to attend to the summons of our own beckoning realities. Together, with time suspended, we talked endlessly of contributing something to disrupt Montreal’s literary ecosystem. Something unparalleled, something true.

But what? There was nothing to discuss. There was everything to discuss.

We volunteer our time, hounding some elusive beast composed of combustible words and works. We are hopeful, truly hopeful, that we can give something new, a new way, a new light, and that if we cannot, we might at least uphold the traditions of our predecessors, cast star-wide nets to capture their echoes. We are a thousand decisions. We are a sanctuary for the orphaned word, the solitary writer, the cereal-eating artist who yearns for company, for the comfort of a like mind; we sit together with them at foggy dawn, it rains a baptism, with our arms and hands intertwined, we form an umbrella—underneath, they scribble madly, the perfect picture.

Yolk in no way presumes to be superior to its contemporaries, but its contemporaries should not presume yolk to be anything other than loud—quite, quite loud. We are yippidy jazzed to address the oh-so-technicolorful magnificence of the human experience, but we are prepared also to address the ugliness, to stare at its wet, hairy snout and into its square depth and to roar in return at the things that yearn to devour our skin, beset our ethos, and dig graves in our own backyards.

There’s so much to say, there’s so much we don’t know, but together, with you, we can placate that ignorance, render it peaceful, tolerable, and perhaps even, fucking beautiful.

And Susan says, “Amen.”

I cum just as you pull it out your face a series of

crushed pineapple juice boxes later after you’re

back from the bathroom sticking my right in-

dex finger up inside of myself is this a hole into language you

pick up your phone check your e-mail cold

mother’s milk all over the kitchen floor is sacred need to take

the train back to Montclair to return red-checked

Talbot’s dress now compromised by wanting to marinate your cock in

this small glass jar of cottage cheese before you leave for

the station sudden brioche-induced orgasm is keeping

me from boiling my eggs until they are rock hard the

photos we pulled up last night of Kristeva naked on the beach in Boca or

fully sodomized duvet cover you found on sale at Jersey IKEA holding my under-

wear carefully over kitchen sink to squeeze out all of the full-pulp orange juice

there’s no logic to naked man we found spread-eagle in back of a 91’

Subaru convertible is under-done poached egg on white

toast or the obviously big-cocked guy in front of me in line

at Chase ATM he ended up bringing me to Starbucks to watch

lunch-break double penetration skim milk latte four vanilla scones heated

up just perfectly this longing to be a fragment you text &

organ music coming from last car of L-train suddenly stops or  poems

are not cries of a different animal but always of this animal here

between my legs everything in this room feels like something the mind will

never be able to fit into its large semiotic glove waiting

for the Uber in front of your sister’s place you put your hand down inside my

underwear searching for my wall-to-wall carpeting or all those torsos you

see Greek & Roman w/o any heads or hands or feet they’re unrealized desire 

waiting with three grocery bags full of chips & dip for next train to Princeton

Junction now you’re on speaker & I’m still reeling

from pre-Hellenic falafel we had for lunch or the ten days last month when we

didn’t fuck at all we ate fig jam on toast we quoted from all the women

in the gynecologist’s waiting room they

had traded in their uteruses for a window that lets in more light & Gregory

Markopoulos’ Enιaios I’ve been watching it all 80 hours here on my

phone mostly when I pee it’s that moment just before words begin to

take shape because the body is one continuous present tense me cumming

all over the small plastic pagoda the one you brought back

from Houston Lady Bird in mourning or our

mutual decision to leave CAPS LOCK ON grape-flavored

menstrual cycle & sugary urgent care visit two am the doctor wrapped both

my legs tight in Saran Wrap & sent us off only slightly more animal

than last night cross-legged on bathroom floor sucking on crotch of last Tide

Pod it’s Midtown uterine populism or the guidance counselor

who wanted me to stay after school so he could sing me to sleep at 15 he

brought me to recently renovated downtown yoga space

showed me his box of Oedipal dildos apricots see-through black

skinny jeans on sale at H&M are false beginnings of Abstract Expression-

ism groin-addled or everything that lies just below

the waters of wintry warm speech 

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Ann is the author of three books of poetry and several chapbooks. Her poetry, reviews, and creative non-fiction have been published widely. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Antiphony: a journal & press and Pin//a journal of contemporary poetics.

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Additional reading

Fiction
•
February 15, 2022

The Jogger

Poetry
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February 15, 2022

Magic Roundabout

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Yolk acknowledges that our work in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal takes place on the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka/Mohawk Nation. Tiohtià:ke is known as a gathering place for many First Nations, and we recognize the Kanien’kehá:ka as custodians of the lands on which we gather.

Yolk warmly acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts,  Conseil des arts de Montréal, and the English Language Arts Network’s Trellis Micro-grant project, funded by The Department of Canadian Heritage’s Official Languages Support Programs.