John Altoon

By Cedar Sigo b. 1978 Cedar Sigo

The neck

of the flask

pitch black-getting bored

jacked

also madness, insidious

intended ghost

(days late)

I cross green & white flowered seas

Valentines, May Day

conferring with henchman

one must keep holy

the edges of fragments

slots used

clothes loose

dried bloodspots

bolster elegance

Found a goldmine

outside a mansion

a prolongation

of the art

of very rich hours

oil in

childe ballads

sung, unsung against I should say

“over” though,

The Cosmos

slows it for us

The heretofore unmentioned

26th Series

(he gets the girl)

sparks fall call me

if you do die

Cedar Sigo, "John Altoon" from Stranger in Town, City Lights Spotlight No. 4. Copyright © 2010 by Cedar Sigo. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.

Source: Stranger in Town (City Lights Books, 2010)

Biography

San Francisco poet Cedar Sigo was born February 2, 1978. He was raised on The Suquamish reservation near Seattle Washington and home schooled from the eighth grade onward. In 1995 he was awarded a scholarship to study writing and poetics at The Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado where he studied with Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Lisa Jarnot, Alice Notley, and Joanne Kyger, among other poets. He has lived in San Francisco . . .

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