Peek

BEGINNING IN THE LOST AND UNCLAIMED BAGGAGE CENTER

IN SCOTTSBORO, ALABAMA

In that tumble of flotsam, that hall

of the mishandled and shunted

and slightly damaged and surely forgotten

and mostly never missed except

maybe to curse constant loss

that living is, I could not be

consoled, though I snickered

just the same as we all did

rifling the racks of red cheap negligees,

faux satin and wrongly

furred and crotchless

and sexlessly peek-a-boo

there in the open air

fallen far from the foreign nights

for which each had been

bought in arterial shame or embarrassment

though I hoped

not, though I imagined

one among them,

no different than the rest, no finer,

to be refugee

from an Eden

not entirely lost

or defiled

but I couldn’t be consoled

not even by

the greater strangeness we found further down,

the sacred undergarments

worn by Mormons

beneath their clothes

always when inside the temple,

that one of us bought

to wear for Halloween

parties, the long cover-alls stitched with arcanum

to protect from all

harm, to be kept

as secret as the wretched lace lost

in the tropics

and unfound, fretted over, finally forgotten

until reborn

mocked in Alabama,

a kind of karmic redundancy I could never escape,

not when the night

seemed to bleed heat

and the stars

throbbed in the last throes of incandescence

and the magnolias

larger than all

other life and green beyond green

sang the locust’s sawblade refrain long into the lost night.

In the mail

• Collected Poems: 1937-1971, John Berryman
• Intaglio, Sophia Kartsonis
• Collected Poems, Lynda Hull
  

Stuff

Thanks to Redivider for taking "My Nightmare" for its upcoming issue. Thanks, too, to the kind folk at Pebble Lake Review for taking three off my hands: "The Lives of the Optimists," "Seduction with Entropy," and "One More Theory about Happiness," which is kind of neat as it's the title poem of my manuscript-in-progress.

Well, you're my friend

Ah, look, it's winter skulking in at last. Fie on that. Fie on 19 degrees. The other night. Not today, thankfully.

***

I'm not sure what to say about this.

***

Today's unattributed but generally obvious lyric:

Now that drunk-tank in Atlanta
Was just a motel room to me
I think I might go work Orlando
If them orange groves don't freeze....

Ha

I can't wait for this book.

Flurry

Last night, babysitting involving an Olsen twins movie. Starring Steve Guttenberg. Weep for me. A little?

***

Stressful days, though as I said to a friend, I'm shedding some of that stress. But I think it's more accurate to say I'm becoming better at compartmentalizing it. Boxing it up.

Still, I'm finding the margins between feeling good and awful, rested and wrecked, shrink. Every other day it seems like I hit a wall at some point and have to drag myself.

***

I declined an acceptance from a good journal. And I kind of feel bad about it. They wanted a poem but only if I agreed to lose 9 lines in the middle. And I just didn't agree with the edits. I've only declined edits twice before: once over a comma and once over a change in tense. Both those journals still wanted the poems in question.

It feels rude, almost, to disagree, like I don't appreciate their interest and attention. But this was the right decision to make, I believe. The poem will find another home.

Z

Back.

When your train gets lost

No rain and no poem. Yet. Both could happen. Inclement inspiration. Weather.

***

iTunes is downloading the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica. Awesome, but I'm still a couple behind it. Too busy of late to watch anything.

***

Speaking of iTunes, do you ever listen to the mixes you make for others? I do. I am. It should be easier to do this with poems.

***

I rented a van last week, a mini-van, that was fully accessible, with the powered sliding door and automatic ramp that folded out. Completely automated. Push-button. And a mini-van should never be cool, but I have to confess it was pretty great. I don't have one and haven't since the old 1986 model gave up the ghost a few years back. I don't even drive. But this was great.

Of course, a newly converted van costs something like 40,000 dollars. Which, for a poet, is, you know, lunch money.

Walkie

Monday morning and rain. My foot tapping like it expects something. Besides more rain. A new airport letter poem, maybe. I have some thoughts for one, this time for Memphis. Cities on a river. Al Green. I can't get next to you.

***

I'm tough on myself in a lot of ways, probably too tough, though I never realize it. I often feel badly towards readings I give, but I gave one Friday that felt like a good one, a good experience, which was nice.

***

Someone asked me if I'd ever watched video of me reading. No! God forbid. Too much self-awareness is just that, too much.

Audio is bad enough.

Update

Chair back in running order, after some heavy duty checking and re-checking of parts and cables.

This is good.

Y

Back from Location X. Had a fantastic time. The flights back seemed to be jetting faster than normal -- the pilots ready for bed? I was too. Except the ground crew at Chattanooga shared, I believe, less than an entire intellect between them. They were mystified by my wheelchair, looking at it like parts from the space shuttle. One of the problems with flying is that your chair has to be disassembled, to a certain degree, to fit in the cargo bay. And this is often enough done with less than adequate care, let's say. In Baltimore, my armest was bent so badly out of true it was impossible for me to drive. I had to sit around for three hours demanding they do something to fix it before they finally sent up an honest to God jet engine mechanic. They have some serious tools. He was able to bend it, with considerable effort, back to shape.

But last night I wasn't so lucky. No power would come on. I think they've broken something, torn a wire, some kind of connection isn't happening.

So I'm kind of stuck. Well, not kind of. I'm in my push chair, which I regard with a kind of intemperate loathing. Hopefully, this will be easily fixed.

Back

Now, sleep.

Fire

Packing today, watching the weather channel with a kind of avid morbidity: all that ice! Ah, but I'll manage. Leaving here tomorrow at noon, gone till the weekend.

33

Looking back over old poems is interesting, instructive -- to see choices made then I might not make now. They feel only faintly familiar. Did I write that? Did I believe that?

***

Listening to Aretha Franklin while reading poems by Jason Bredle is perfectly normal.
***

70 degrees here yesterday and sunny. Jonquils raising up.

Till

Muddle-headed, tired, pushing through, working on things for next week and beyond. Fun, fun, fun.

Tell me something good.

Of the thousand rainy days

A phone interview today. They're always mildly disorienting, the disembodied quality, the echo of the speaker phone.

***

On the road next week to an undisclosed location. It's a secret. Shh.

2

AIRPORT LETTER

In Greensboro the trees spasm with ache or what

I’ll say is ache. Better to pretend winter

never came with its hands full of Canada.

Better to watch them sway this always

farewell. Better to do many things than this.

One more book I won’t finish

and artesian water and muffins

like wagon wheels want my wallet

to open like a flower. Nobody laughs

when I say Kim Jong-Il is my co-pilot,

nobody but me, and in this

there is a lonesome perfection

found high above one’s life.

I am advised the cushion beneath me will float

should we find ourselves in water

and I’m informed of the invention

of the seat belt. All its mysteries

tumble out into this tube of air

we’ll call our own and in it

the smell of being human goes forth—

it isn’t bad, not when

you’ve burned by mistake

a bag of dog hair,

as I did one summer that now feels

like amnesia. But this odor is communal,

countless cells pushing

salt from the skin like a greeting.

A congress of nerves.

So I think of you beside me,

your body knotted by colorless dreams.

How the sky can seem

an intrusion,

all this blue like an ocean, an ur-sea.

Something in which

to vanish. To sink like warm stones.

Monday

Laryngitis is a strange experience. I came home from Philadelphia feeling fine but within a few days began to grow hoarse and very nearly lose my voice. For a few days, I croaked or rasped. A friend called one night and could understand nothing I said. I was beginning to worry that it would linger. But, happily, I can speak again. Still a bit deeper than usual but I'm essentially fine.

***

I like traveling, even the awful, vexing parts which everyone rightly laments hold a kind of mis-adventurous appeal, but previously I was traveling maybe a couple times a year. The coming weeks will have me all over the map and that's to the good, but I'm thinking I'll grow tired of the airport and all its tense bustle.

I'm thinking I'll write several airport letter poems.

***

Read the new issue of Diagram: 6.6.

Monday

Laryngitis is a strange experience. I came home from Philadelphia feeling fine but within a few days began to grow hoarse and very nearly lose my voice. For a few days, I croaked or rasped. A friend called one night and could understand nothing I said. I was beginning to worry that it would linger. But, happily, I can speak again. Still a bit deeper than usual but I'm essentially fine.

***

I like traveling, even the awful, vexing parts which everyone rightly laments hold a kind of mis-adventurous appeal, but previously I was traveling maybe a couple times a year. The coming weeks will have me all over the map and that's to the good, but I'm thinking I'll grow tired of the airport and all its tense bustle.

I'm thinking I'll write several airport letter poems.

***

Read the new issue of Diagram: 6.6.

When

AIRPORT LETTER

I left my heart in Phuket, I sang, lifting

from the emerald earth, table tray

stowed before me in obedience

to her voice. Or her boredom, paining

me. That we should have

all this sun but want sleep

and more sleep or a vat of bruised gin

was unbearable. With me

I had no books and no paper

on which to diagram sentences

in Esperanto. I read the air sickness bag

inviting me to advertise

on its side my product

and had to smile. Remind me never

to resist. Remind me

to produce something this year

but not a child,

nothing that will have my eyes

or begin to speak this foreign language.

I thought of you beneath

the zaftig clouds. The sun dropping

though them like a lustrous

bomb. The ganglion of roads running

out into the night. Now

it’s night and looking

for small birds is instructive

but only in rage

and then infinite humility. I’m learning

geography is about loss

and so I keep moving

into closets that never smell like you.

I’m learning not to order

everything but want nothing.

My mouth is empty. The words won’t stay.

Ring

ON RECEIVING A CELL PHONE

Nothing I’d ever wanted, the phone

and its digital leash, orbital tether.

Refused and refused again, even

after the hours into night

spent in a dead elevator,

in its grimy light, canned air, sepsis

weather. I’d return

eventually. I’d shower

and shave and lob

mild volleys of complaint

skyward. Fake gods, get ready to tremble.

Or not. This was all

the consolation

I needed or wanted

for lost time. I’d waste more

and more again

beside the river

and beneath trees lolling

in summer’s long

attention. I was happy to be

moderately remote,

checking email

on the hour,

pleasure taken in the distant word of friends,

nattering about

carnations and wounds

and cartoons

and God knows what else. But,

love, if ever I’m lost

the satellites

to a map will pin me

and someone

with a shovel

will come and ruin his back for my life.

And back I’ll go

waiting for dusk

to come down like an avalanche

and for you to call,

to call me by name, to find me once more.

The serious moonlight

Randomness from Philadelphia:

• exhausted on Thursday, while Eliot browsed through all the shops I couldn't get in, which is essentially every single one, I rested my head on a Starbuck's table. Who is the slumped over wheelchair guy? Has he ordered anything? No? Great.
• Being 19th in line for take-off from Philadelphia, which took an hour. Circling Charlotte in the rain for an hour before finally landing.
• Nearly missing my connecting flight. Handed off to six foot four US Airways employee who then sprinted me through the airport, shouting people out of the way.
• This congestion I picked up, turning my voice into a basso profondo.
• Getting on a bus to New Jersey. Oops.
• Eliot getting twenty bucks worth of bus tokens when we wanted just two. Oops, again.
• The flight from Charlotte to Chattanooga. On the way up? Jet. Back? Turbo-prop. Tiny. This is a little like finding out how sausage is made: once you see how it's made, the enthusiasm falters a bit.
• Flying through clouds the whole way, watching ice form on the prop. My window was directly in line with the prop. I couldn't stop watching. Suddenly, a huge ball of ice pelts into my window, sounding like a big balloon popping.
• Ice balls pinging off the plane's hull. People freaking.
• I met one of the guys from Jackass in the airport.

Green

KUDZU

For having eyes almost I thought

to congratulate myself. This was that

day’s little epiphany: the train

rucking out of tunneled

darkness back into the visible

world. But all the world was Alabama,

high above Sylacauga

and far from Gordo

and Tuscaloosa trying not to catch

fire. Pulled slowly up

with the bored and sleeping,

enclosed and muttering,

we were freight

for the foothills, the near mountains,

the plain height

to which we’d come

and no one seemed to see the green

wildness snaking

everywhere. To the glass

baked by August

I pressed my face

like a question—

an oiled mark would stay, would stain—

and everything

was kudzu

except the sky

which kept its distance, held back its rain.

I hardly wanted

to stop

or to later say

all this was beautiful—

no, I thought of the moon. Or the sea’s woven floor.

And these for a moment

only as another

tunnel took us in,

swallowed us up,

and in that hunger I kept my own.

This wasn't for dinner. 

Nor was this. 

Agog

Coming back from MLA, I'm reminded of a quote from Blazing Saddles, when Hedley Lamarr says, "My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention." Too often, really, I'm Taggart when he replies, "Ditto." But, in this case, talking about writing poems and teaching poems is always energizing. I come away with a zillion ideas for new poems and almost as many ideas for classes. The poems will write themselves, or they won't, but ideas I'm spitballing for teaching include:

The poem of invective: the classically cantankerous tradition of laying down the smack on one's enemies, ex-lovers, fellow poets, and so on, would be a lot of fun to trace from Catullus down through the Renaissance and to contemporary poets, slam poets, rappers, etc. Prosody would be an important consideration. I'm not sure an entire workshop could be sustained on this but a kind of workshop/survey hybrid would work, I think.

Poetry of the body: for all poetry's immateriality, not being cast in bronze or carved from stone, it is in many ways one of the most bodily of all the arts with poets speaking of the line as a unit of breath, poetry's rhythms that of everyday speech or the beat of the heart, which are all debatable assertions, but it is an art that is entirely biological: it arises from the strange chemistries that are the mind. Franz Wright refers in one poem to the brain as being "sentient meat." That horrifyingly apt phrase set me to thinking. This is all preface to a course on the different ways to regard the body in poems: Whitman's body electric, some Neruda, Lucia Perillo's The Body Mutinies, Tom Andrews' The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle. And so on. Still lots to think about on this one.

And so on. Don't hold me to any of this. Prices subject to change without notice.

Window shopping

Eel. It's what's for dinner.

Night in the city

Me and the gorgeous Ben Franklin Bridge.

Highlights

Survived. Mostly intact. I tore a fingernail somehow. Otherwise, none the worse for wear. Well, there were two successive flights to Charlotte canceled for mysterious reasons, throwing all my travel plans into violent disarray. The people in Special Services were helpful, dying to be helpful, which is not always a good thing. When one of them suggested flying us to Laguardia, on to O'Hare, then to Atlanta, then to Chattanooga, I had to put the kibosh on the helpfulness, at least the insane degree going on. So we decided to square away everything for the next day, spend the night in Philadelphia. They were going to put us up on their dime but at hotels too far away to be useful. I mentioned the fact that there were no accessible taxis in the city. This is when Madame Dramatic descended from her airie.

"DO NOT TELLLLL MEEEEE THERE ARE NO ACCESSIBLE TAXIS. WEEEEE HAVE MADE GREAT STRIDES. GREAT STRIDES!"

She really talked like this. Imagine community theater on steroids. With lots of gesturing. Flourish. Flourish was key.

I informed her there were, in fact, no taxis I could use.

"I MYSELF HAVE LIFTED PASSENGERS INTO TAXIS. IT CAN BE DONE. I MYSELF HAVE DONE IT, SIR."

Can you lift this two-hundred fifty pound chair, too, I asked. Her face blanched a bit. Good.

"YOU MEAN THERE ARE NO TAXIS WITH LIFTS. THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW!"

I just smiled. Meanwhile, a large pack of Mummers, imagine something out of Rio's Carnivale but less restrained, ambled by, playing banjos, accordians, fiddles and God knows what else. It was like Big Bird had exploded at a Ricky Scaggs concert. I'm pretty certain they were all feral.

I asked if they couldn't put me up at the Airport Marriot. No, she said. That hotel right there, that we can both see right out the window, that's connected to the airport by a nice little walkway. Again, no. Why not?

Because they don't have an arrangement with them. Because that would make sense and be convenient for all involved.

So I just paid for the night myself, just to end the pain.

This sums up much of the travel. The rest of the time in Philadelphia was a blast. I'll leave you for now with a picture that kind of says it all.