TOWARDS THE 1950s
Slush of peaches gone to rot by the dark road side
where they fell or were pelted by teenagers
gunning roadsters, jalopies, escaping the last reel.
Single blonde hair of the girl they wanted,
all of them with the flash of grease
in their pompadours, the flash of switchblades
they pulled from the leather jackets
in which they seethed for the sex of speed.
Froth of waves and grain of salt
from the altar of their fatalism,
the ocean, to which they’d go with bonfires.
Acrid tang of the rubber melted
in the accelerations of every death wish.
Vinyl record ground down
to peppered sound beneath the player’s needle.
Chorus of forgotten love song.
Eulogy for Jane Russell.
Storm of motorcycles
and stock footage of California’s arid nowhere.
Pathology of the sneer,
abortive fight broken apart by the old
dying just the same.
Random revenge. Biopsy of too small town.
Spill of blood on the road
already stained in oil
and wet with vulcanite rain.
Rubied smear of her last kiss.
Emptied cashmere, warp her breasts left,
fished from the ugly surf
but not her third act body pregnant with ruin.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
In short
Ratatouille is several things at once: the best movie Pixar has ever made; an almost unmatchable standard for other animated films to meet; and confirmation of Brad Bird as the best director of popular entertainment today, live action or animation. Every frame glows and the story, especially its resolution, is uncommonly thoughtful and apt: a scene with a wizened, hollowed, frozen-hearted food critic suddenly snapped from decades of cynicism is played so wonderfully, so dexterously, I grinned in appreciation. Best movie this year.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
When
BORDERING ON THE TRAGIC
We kept hearing good things about Muncie.
There were meat eating flowers
in the very same world. Ravenous weeds.
A long time I watched her kiss
the waitress she held like a secret.
I watched her drop like a tooth into ink.
She never told me.
When I left, children sang.
When they sang, the world was less a riddle.
All the dreams were deciduous.
Litter in the night. Scant cities
dumping light into the sky.
Who could say to them the sky had enough?
The birds rattled bones
time had hollowed for flight.
The children had tried to sing like them,
their belongings in bandanas
knotted to switches swung
across their baby-fat shoulders.
I was never proud to pitch ruddy bricks
through bakery windows
when it was dark, to sift glass for crumbs.
That was hunger, I think,
though I never feared
the end of my body
beneath the trees where I hid from time.
Ambulances sang
about blood, blood forever.
Through green wood I heard every hymn.
And then they’d pass into the silence of others.
Whose hearts splintered.
And I hadn’t caused it,
not in my distance
or in all the nearness I had left,
but to the air I confessed all the same.
We kept hearing good things about Muncie.
There were meat eating flowers
in the very same world. Ravenous weeds.
A long time I watched her kiss
the waitress she held like a secret.
I watched her drop like a tooth into ink.
She never told me.
When I left, children sang.
When they sang, the world was less a riddle.
All the dreams were deciduous.
Litter in the night. Scant cities
dumping light into the sky.
Who could say to them the sky had enough?
The birds rattled bones
time had hollowed for flight.
The children had tried to sing like them,
their belongings in bandanas
knotted to switches swung
across their baby-fat shoulders.
I was never proud to pitch ruddy bricks
through bakery windows
when it was dark, to sift glass for crumbs.
That was hunger, I think,
though I never feared
the end of my body
beneath the trees where I hid from time.
Ambulances sang
about blood, blood forever.
Through green wood I heard every hymn.
And then they’d pass into the silence of others.
Whose hearts splintered.
And I hadn’t caused it,
not in my distance
or in all the nearness I had left,
but to the air I confessed all the same.
5
Yes, I'm stealing this from Karri's post on her fifth anniversary with this dapper fellow, but it's larceny with love, y'all.
Of course, this "fifth" business is a touch misleading as she and Bradley have been together since our undergraduate poetry workshop days, so a number somewhere between eleven and fourteen years is more accurate, not taking into account any break-ups, breaks, etc.
Time aside, and isn't it so easy to sweep away, I still recall the first time I noticed they were together or were on their way: outside the old campus bookstore, a few of us were gabbing and after a while Bradley and Karri left and took the stairs up the last bit of hill by the Guerry building. And watching them rise each step you could see it somehow, though they didn't hold hands or even touch. Something was in them you could see or sense somehow. The beginning of love is always sly and so I grinned.
I love Bradley and Karri. We were close in all those workshops. Two stories: Bradley is a couple of years older than me and when I was a senior in high school, already writing poems, I visited campus. Somewhere along the way I picked up several issues of the campus literary magazine, which was really quite good, but the poems that really stood out were by this guy named Bradley Paul. They were weird and not anything I'd read before, not in high school which was all Keats, Yeats, Whitman, Dickinson, and so on. One poem in particular called, of all things, "Sugartits," I think it was. Think of Tate but a little more ascetic. And it just blew me away. So you have this absurd situation of a high school poet totally digging, I don't know, a sophomore's poems. I'll never forget it.
And then there's Karri, who is sickeningly brilliant, a great poet, painter, and terribly funny and a great teacher. All of which are obviously repulsive traits. I'm not sure how Bradley can survive being married to this Einstein-ish babe. Just can't figure that out. Karri knows this story better than me by now, so she can correct me, but one night we were sitting in the Poetry Miscellany office, just hanging out. And somehow we found out there was this strange girl somewhere in the building, who we knew but didn't particularly want to spend time with. She would do things like show up outside your house and stand for hours in the rain. Or tremble a lot. But Karri needed to leave the office to go get something or work out or who knows what. I didn't want to leave the office and wait in the hallway until she got back. I also didn't want to be locked in the office alone, unable to get out if I had to. Neither of us wanted to give away that we were there with an unlocked and lighted office. So we came up with a plan: while she was gone, I'd sit with my chair against the door so it wouldn't open. In the dark.
And that's what we did.
So go wish Karri and Bradley a happy fifth anniversary.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
And to
AUDIO COMMENTARY TRACK
As you can already see, everything is fucked.
I really can’t remember why
but we hadn’t slept in three days,
downing rubbing alcohol by the bottle
and falling into stuporous public sex
at skating rinks and professional wrestling matches.
And there were the strange dares:
someone had heard lethally ascetic Canadian monks
were able to cause their intestines
to erupt in horrifying geysers from their abdomens
and all of us wanted to be the first
to figure out the trick of it.
So maybe in context you’ll understand
why most of the movie is missing sound
as we come to know this painfully shy woman.
Why Samantha weeps during sex
or is emotionally unavailable
to the people who need her most—
the dullards in the inexact change lane.
That we all forgot to rig the microphones
really does challenge the audience
to stay with the story by reading lips.
Or by accurately guessing her thoughts
as she naps on the sofa under general anesthesia.
And her feelings for this man
unlike any she’s known before
with his toothless optimism and total amnesia.
If you’re able to overlook how close
we all were to massive organ failure,
you’ll see some magic. Like this shot
of a tear streaking down her cheek
and through the precipitous ravine of her cleavage.
They were real, I should add, the tears.
The producer would call from Bogotá
where he had arranged
for her children to be tutored in cages.
The shoot was hard on everyone
and the parasites didn’t help
so I tried to keep the atmosphere light.
Which was hard to do
when everyone suffered from 106 degree fevers
and clinically undiagnosed paranoia.
But we pushed through
because we cared about the story
and eventually bothered to look at the dailies.
The only scene with sound was the last.
Which seemed almost poetic.
Above the landfill and their naked bodies,
above their clothes left in hurried heaps,
a choir of gulls are sadly cawing.
To me each convulsive sob sounds like joy.
As you can already see, everything is fucked.
I really can’t remember why
but we hadn’t slept in three days,
downing rubbing alcohol by the bottle
and falling into stuporous public sex
at skating rinks and professional wrestling matches.
And there were the strange dares:
someone had heard lethally ascetic Canadian monks
were able to cause their intestines
to erupt in horrifying geysers from their abdomens
and all of us wanted to be the first
to figure out the trick of it.
So maybe in context you’ll understand
why most of the movie is missing sound
as we come to know this painfully shy woman.
Why Samantha weeps during sex
or is emotionally unavailable
to the people who need her most—
the dullards in the inexact change lane.
That we all forgot to rig the microphones
really does challenge the audience
to stay with the story by reading lips.
Or by accurately guessing her thoughts
as she naps on the sofa under general anesthesia.
And her feelings for this man
unlike any she’s known before
with his toothless optimism and total amnesia.
If you’re able to overlook how close
we all were to massive organ failure,
you’ll see some magic. Like this shot
of a tear streaking down her cheek
and through the precipitous ravine of her cleavage.
They were real, I should add, the tears.
The producer would call from Bogotá
where he had arranged
for her children to be tutored in cages.
The shoot was hard on everyone
and the parasites didn’t help
so I tried to keep the atmosphere light.
Which was hard to do
when everyone suffered from 106 degree fevers
and clinically undiagnosed paranoia.
But we pushed through
because we cared about the story
and eventually bothered to look at the dailies.
The only scene with sound was the last.
Which seemed almost poetic.
Above the landfill and their naked bodies,
above their clothes left in hurried heaps,
a choir of gulls are sadly cawing.
To me each convulsive sob sounds like joy.
Patrick, you see I'm growing a moustache
Holy crap: today is Live Free or Die Hard. I keep thinking it's off in Future Land, never to arrive with its title that's either really bad ... or just not really bad. I'll go see it.
***
1408 is less than most scary movies. It abandons restraint pretty quickly and turns up the bombast. Nicely claustrophobic moments soon become tidal waves pouring from paintings of old ships. And so forth. Take a scene from the not all that great The Exorcism of Emily Rose: all it is is a lawyer in her apartment in the middle of the night, scared, and the score is strings sawing lower and lower and lower until the floor is about to drop out. Very creepy. 1408 rarely shows the same restraint, except early on. Jon Cusack appears to be phoning it in for the most part. Samuel Jackson does a fun, very jaunty turn as hotel manager attempting to talk Cusack out of staying away from room 1408. A little peek of the regular Jackson shows, finally, as he grows increasingly frustrated: "It's. An. Evil. Fucking. Room." That had to be the fun in casting him.
***
No resolution yet on where I'll live. Were I a betting man, I'd put my money on that box I mentioned a few days ago. Hopefully I'll be surprised.
The English Department is helping but ultimately it's my responsibility and I don't have a lot of power to push hard, for lots of reasons.
It brings back or unsettles emotional junk left over from this past year's job search, the way some things played out. I'm very happy to be with West Georgia but I can't invest the kind of money I'd need to in a more permanent, tenure-track, situation. I wouldn't be choosing from nothing and almost nothing.
***
Some good news: one of the panels I was asked to be on has been accepted for AWP. The Disabled Body Politic: moderated by Susannah Mintz, with Greg Fraser, Jim Ferris, and me in tow.
Of course, the bad news is the expectation I'm actually smart and articulate.
***
1408 is less than most scary movies. It abandons restraint pretty quickly and turns up the bombast. Nicely claustrophobic moments soon become tidal waves pouring from paintings of old ships. And so forth. Take a scene from the not all that great The Exorcism of Emily Rose: all it is is a lawyer in her apartment in the middle of the night, scared, and the score is strings sawing lower and lower and lower until the floor is about to drop out. Very creepy. 1408 rarely shows the same restraint, except early on. Jon Cusack appears to be phoning it in for the most part. Samuel Jackson does a fun, very jaunty turn as hotel manager attempting to talk Cusack out of staying away from room 1408. A little peek of the regular Jackson shows, finally, as he grows increasingly frustrated: "It's. An. Evil. Fucking. Room." That had to be the fun in casting him.
***
No resolution yet on where I'll live. Were I a betting man, I'd put my money on that box I mentioned a few days ago. Hopefully I'll be surprised.
The English Department is helping but ultimately it's my responsibility and I don't have a lot of power to push hard, for lots of reasons.
It brings back or unsettles emotional junk left over from this past year's job search, the way some things played out. I'm very happy to be with West Georgia but I can't invest the kind of money I'd need to in a more permanent, tenure-track, situation. I wouldn't be choosing from nothing and almost nothing.
***
Some good news: one of the panels I was asked to be on has been accepted for AWP. The Disabled Body Politic: moderated by Susannah Mintz, with Greg Fraser, Jim Ferris, and me in tow.
Of course, the bad news is the expectation I'm actually smart and articulate.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
I ain't got no cigarettes
Is there a better summer album than R.E.M.'s Dead Letter Office? Well, yeah, there is, I'm sure. But for me this is it. I can remember listening to it in the backyard of the new house we had built, five years after my injury. Those five years, in an old house, with hallways so narrow I was literally scraping down both sides of the hallway that led to my bedroom. Or I had to be carried into the bathroom because it was so small. Every morning before school I washed my hair leaning over the kitchen table, my head in a bucket.
But Dead Letter Office is that summer the new house was built, watching these clannish Alabama contractors raise walls and sheetrock and everything else involved with building.
"There She Goes," "Burning Down," "The Voice of Harold," "Ages of You," "Walter's Theme." Gems all, surprisingly good for a B-sides and odds and sods album, and looser than you ever hear them, aside from live shows.
Summer. Which I'm currently burning up in.
***
Mailing back my contract today, which had to be notarized. So I've been running around in 95 degrees.
***
No progress, really, on a place to live. I'm picking out curtains for my windowless box.
But Dead Letter Office is that summer the new house was built, watching these clannish Alabama contractors raise walls and sheetrock and everything else involved with building.
"There She Goes," "Burning Down," "The Voice of Harold," "Ages of You," "Walter's Theme." Gems all, surprisingly good for a B-sides and odds and sods album, and looser than you ever hear them, aside from live shows.
Summer. Which I'm currently burning up in.
***
Mailing back my contract today, which had to be notarized. So I've been running around in 95 degrees.
***
No progress, really, on a place to live. I'm picking out curtains for my windowless box.
NPR
BEING CHEERED BY EXCESSIVE CARTOON VIOLENCE
There are days when I don’t think of you.
Take Thursdays. Chances are,
you’ll find me in the attic
diving into the fiberglass with élan
common to certain tribes of Andalusian
knife throwers. Or burning
every Sudoko book I could find
within several miles of your home.
There’s a strange pleasure to be had in incinerating
faddish puzzles. Or loaves
of whole wheat bread still
in their organic plastic sleeves.
The experience can be nauseating
without enough sleep,
so I’ve been taking a lot of power naps.
Thursdays wear me out
so you see how I rarely think of you.
Or how some nights you would say my name
in your sleep. How I never
in all our time together told you this
because I feared you’d stop
more than I fear this
experimental immolation coming up on Monday.
Could go either way.
There’s not a lot of literature
on really getting it right.
Which is why I’m doing it
in the parking lot of the nursing home.
If it starts to look bad,
I’ll have nurses in comfortable shoes nearby.
I’ve thought a lot about this,
planned it out to the point
violent waves of clarity will seize me for a day.
And sometimes two,
if I haven’t been to the gym in a while.
So that’s Thursdays and Mondays covered up,
I think you’d have to say.
And the rest of the weekdays I keep open
because a Goth club opened
down the street—
where that Chinese place was that we liked.
Saturdays I sleep in
and practice throwing hammers at the moon.
Or at jets whisking by.
Pretending I might hit them is fun but expensive.
And then Sundays:
you remember the fat paper
you would read
and I would cut into neat strips
or pretend to read
or use to get the fireplace going
during those winters of hellish design.
All that orange concentrate.
The jazz we lost our minds wanting to like.
Sundays are hard.
There are days when I don’t think of you.
Take Thursdays. Chances are,
you’ll find me in the attic
diving into the fiberglass with élan
common to certain tribes of Andalusian
knife throwers. Or burning
every Sudoko book I could find
within several miles of your home.
There’s a strange pleasure to be had in incinerating
faddish puzzles. Or loaves
of whole wheat bread still
in their organic plastic sleeves.
The experience can be nauseating
without enough sleep,
so I’ve been taking a lot of power naps.
Thursdays wear me out
so you see how I rarely think of you.
Or how some nights you would say my name
in your sleep. How I never
in all our time together told you this
because I feared you’d stop
more than I fear this
experimental immolation coming up on Monday.
Could go either way.
There’s not a lot of literature
on really getting it right.
Which is why I’m doing it
in the parking lot of the nursing home.
If it starts to look bad,
I’ll have nurses in comfortable shoes nearby.
I’ve thought a lot about this,
planned it out to the point
violent waves of clarity will seize me for a day.
And sometimes two,
if I haven’t been to the gym in a while.
So that’s Thursdays and Mondays covered up,
I think you’d have to say.
And the rest of the weekdays I keep open
because a Goth club opened
down the street—
where that Chinese place was that we liked.
Saturdays I sleep in
and practice throwing hammers at the moon.
Or at jets whisking by.
Pretending I might hit them is fun but expensive.
And then Sundays:
you remember the fat paper
you would read
and I would cut into neat strips
or pretend to read
or use to get the fireplace going
during those winters of hellish design.
All that orange concentrate.
The jazz we lost our minds wanting to like.
Sundays are hard.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
What led me to this town
Too much to think about, too much to be bothered by.
***
Listening to The Jayhawks and thinking back to a pre-Napster, pre-iTunes internet, when mp3's were something a bunch of German sound engineers had cooked up and were flying around under most everyone's radar. And one night in the dark of my apartment, the only light a touch lamp set to dim. The woman I was seeing was asleep on the couch by the lamp. I was waiting for a preview of tracks from Sound of Lies, the then forthcoming Jayhawks album, and of course it took forever. I had turned the volume low, not wanting to wake her. She slept on her side, her back facing out. The light was in her hair.
It seemed the height of technology. The height of love.
***
Listening to The Jayhawks and thinking back to a pre-Napster, pre-iTunes internet, when mp3's were something a bunch of German sound engineers had cooked up and were flying around under most everyone's radar. And one night in the dark of my apartment, the only light a touch lamp set to dim. The woman I was seeing was asleep on the couch by the lamp. I was waiting for a preview of tracks from Sound of Lies, the then forthcoming Jayhawks album, and of course it took forever. I had turned the volume low, not wanting to wake her. She slept on her side, her back facing out. The light was in her hair.
It seemed the height of technology. The height of love.
We used to be friends
Many times I've declared the greatness of Veronica Mars. The problem with that was simple: I hadn't finished the first season yet. Not for lack of interest, obviously, but due to external factors: work, writing, my many foundations I fund with poetry money. I finally finished the first season, though, and my early opinions are only magnified. By a factor of about 10. I can hardly think of a more satisfying season long narrative. One that concludes in awesomely gothic pulp. It could have ended here, the whole show, and been this gem, even with the mystery of the final scene at the door. Like the close of The Sopranos, something you would always wonder about.
I'm sad to see Veronica go after three seasons but that's a great run. Great, great show and I still have two seasons left.
I'm sad to see Veronica go after three seasons but that's a great run. Great, great show and I still have two seasons left.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Dr. Jones, I presume
Harrison Ford as Indy one more time in the new Indiana Jones movie being filmed.
Friday, June 22, 2007
File under: Bad omen?
Who wants to live here? No takers? Let me sell it for you. Featuring unique motel-like stylings where all exits open on to external hallways, you'll lose yourself in nauseating vertigo as you take in the single room's 9ft wide expanse. If you close your eyes and imagine bison strolling across the plains, if you smell the rich verdure of nature, if you slowly begin to succumb to suffocating claustrophobia, no one will think you violently insane.
They'll just predict you will be in the near future.
To the left is the floor plan of what is apparently my best option for somewhere to live. A 9 feet wide room. With bathroom. Without kitchen.
Expect future poems to be about bumping into things and a palate-destroying procession of microwaved crap.
Chum
Cornshake has a beautiful post up over yonder.
***
I'm taking this little scoundrel to see Nancy Drew today. Keep me in your thoughts as I descend into the tween maelstrom. I'm sure it'll be fairly cute.
***
Who read the Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys books? I was an absolute fiend for the Hardy Boys books. My
copies were these old blue hardbacks with wonderful little paintings on the cover. They were always wearing sweaters and calling each other chums, especially Chet, their husky chum who often tagged along. Invariably, they'd be in a bazaar in Burma or somewhere and Chet would leave to find chocolate milk or something equally ridiculous. And he'd find it. Walking back, strange men running would knock him down, spilling his milk and glasses and the mystery was on.Man, I loved all that. I had several and would check out more from the church library.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Something less
LOYALTY OATH
I do hereby solemnly swear and affirm and affix
many foil seals with arcane symbols
to the lividly carcinogenic spirit
of Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy
of Wisconsin, a state I like even still
for letting Matt live there in happiness
with his wife, for being the only place of birth
Karri is likely to have. And further
do I tiresomely swear with my face
made up in moral gravity that in most ways
I am fucking awesome
and not a subversive person interested in
or committed to the overthrow of governments
by violence, disobedience or denial
of gym membership. I swear
upon many stacks of leather bound Bibles
the Gideons leave in hotel rooms
where I often went with lovers
to roll around for entire weekends
in sheets we fouled with ourselves and Chinese takeout.
I swear on your mother’s grave
and the fresh one beside her
where your father sleeps beneath new sod.
On my children screaming inside me
to hurry up and create them
with a foolish but lovely woman.
On her body’s every curve
by which I know how not to grow lost
when all there is to see by
is the moon tumbling from the sky
and the alarm clock’s red math.
I swear this and avow that
and sometime I promise
to promise to never violate
the Geneva Convention in all its charming quaintness.
I depose and declare
and many other verbs
which sound wondrously stern.
I lay down with my heart
and my hand above it
and both are filled with blood
and every breath swears its false oath so help me God.
I do hereby solemnly swear and affirm and affix
many foil seals with arcane symbols
to the lividly carcinogenic spirit
of Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy
of Wisconsin, a state I like even still
for letting Matt live there in happiness
with his wife, for being the only place of birth
Karri is likely to have. And further
do I tiresomely swear with my face
made up in moral gravity that in most ways
I am fucking awesome
and not a subversive person interested in
or committed to the overthrow of governments
by violence, disobedience or denial
of gym membership. I swear
upon many stacks of leather bound Bibles
the Gideons leave in hotel rooms
where I often went with lovers
to roll around for entire weekends
in sheets we fouled with ourselves and Chinese takeout.
I swear on your mother’s grave
and the fresh one beside her
where your father sleeps beneath new sod.
On my children screaming inside me
to hurry up and create them
with a foolish but lovely woman.
On her body’s every curve
by which I know how not to grow lost
when all there is to see by
is the moon tumbling from the sky
and the alarm clock’s red math.
I swear this and avow that
and sometime I promise
to promise to never violate
the Geneva Convention in all its charming quaintness.
I depose and declare
and many other verbs
which sound wondrously stern.
I lay down with my heart
and my hand above it
and both are filled with blood
and every breath swears its false oath so help me God.
We're perfect
If you don't download iTunes' weekly free single, you are almost always missing out on a good song. That is free. As in you didn't pay for it. Ryan was thumbing around my songs and found one he liked, a free one, so I decided to hunt up as many of them as I could recall downloading. And in almost every case, they're great and usually by new artists.
***
Progress on the Paul Not Homeless Fall Semester 2007 Project? Maybe. I've given up, my own efforts, and enlisted the department's help.
***
Call me Crazy Poem Submitting Man. Lots going out.
***
Progress on the Paul Not Homeless Fall Semester 2007 Project? Maybe. I've given up, my own efforts, and enlisted the department's help.
***
Call me Crazy Poem Submitting Man. Lots going out.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
4:2
Who woulda thunk it?
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is kind of almost in the same zip code as halfway decent. An improvement, for sure, over the first. All the same problems are present: moments of incapacitating hokum; ridiculously bad casting; special effects that at times are just weirdly shoddy.
It seems certain to me this was branded as Marvel's bargain bin franchise, an attempt at finding what level mediocrity will still make money. The guy playing Reed Richards is just there, virtuoso of bland. Jessica Alba still seems odd as Susan Storm, The Invisible Woman. The franchise does have a good thing going between Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm. A movie about them would be funnier. And the actress playing The Thing's blind girlfriend is just plain bad: you expect her to wear a t-shirt which reads, HEY, I AM SO TOTALLY BLIND. In some scenes, she can hear or smell who enters a room. Yet, when talking to her, she stares to one side or the other so conspicuously it's retarded. Because now her t-shirt reads, I'M BLIND SO I REALLY CAN'T TELL IF YOU'RE RIGHT HERE OR OVER THERE, LET ME CHECK DOWNSTAIRS.
Still, it's a bit better. Higher stakes. Less physical agony. For viewers.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is kind of almost in the same zip code as halfway decent. An improvement, for sure, over the first. All the same problems are present: moments of incapacitating hokum; ridiculously bad casting; special effects that at times are just weirdly shoddy.
It seems certain to me this was branded as Marvel's bargain bin franchise, an attempt at finding what level mediocrity will still make money. The guy playing Reed Richards is just there, virtuoso of bland. Jessica Alba still seems odd as Susan Storm, The Invisible Woman. The franchise does have a good thing going between Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm. A movie about them would be funnier. And the actress playing The Thing's blind girlfriend is just plain bad: you expect her to wear a t-shirt which reads, HEY, I AM SO TOTALLY BLIND. In some scenes, she can hear or smell who enters a room. Yet, when talking to her, she stares to one side or the other so conspicuously it's retarded. Because now her t-shirt reads, I'M BLIND SO I REALLY CAN'T TELL IF YOU'RE RIGHT HERE OR OVER THERE, LET ME CHECK DOWNSTAIRS.
Still, it's a bit better. Higher stakes. Less physical agony. For viewers.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Dec
THINGS WE AGREED NOT TO SHOUT
Mom is dead. Dad is visibly melting. Again.
Bitter recriminations. Bitter infidelities. Bitter.
Streisand is on. Finnish curses on the firstborn
of everyone who held us back. My credit rating.
Your many catalogs of shame. Scrapbook time.
Do you remember where we sank the kindergarteners?
Infectious constipation. In our spare time,
we enjoy perfecting methods of evisceration.
Bingo. Also, fire. Let’s make a baby.
Not anymore. You feel kind of weird inside.
My brother’s indiscretions. My indiscretion
with your brother. That lost weekend in Vegas.
Landslide of therapy. Moving to another state. Again.
We are running out of America. Faster.
Right there. Good girl. Judas Priest lyrics.
Freebird. Woo. Random latitudes.
Imagined injuries. Getting tired of your meniscus.
Seriously. Pay it forward. Routing
numbers and decade by decade
delineations of your bra sizes. Beginning with the seventies.
You promised. I thought you were
asleep. I thought you wouldn’t mind.
Surprise.
Mom is dead. Dad is visibly melting. Again.
Bitter recriminations. Bitter infidelities. Bitter.
Streisand is on. Finnish curses on the firstborn
of everyone who held us back. My credit rating.
Your many catalogs of shame. Scrapbook time.
Do you remember where we sank the kindergarteners?
Infectious constipation. In our spare time,
we enjoy perfecting methods of evisceration.
Bingo. Also, fire. Let’s make a baby.
Not anymore. You feel kind of weird inside.
My brother’s indiscretions. My indiscretion
with your brother. That lost weekend in Vegas.
Landslide of therapy. Moving to another state. Again.
We are running out of America. Faster.
Right there. Good girl. Judas Priest lyrics.
Freebird. Woo. Random latitudes.
Imagined injuries. Getting tired of your meniscus.
Seriously. Pay it forward. Routing
numbers and decade by decade
delineations of your bra sizes. Beginning with the seventies.
You promised. I thought you were
asleep. I thought you wouldn’t mind.
Surprise.
Chronic town
Say hello to the strange professor who sleeps on the quad. Yes, his hair is riotously unkempt and home to small woodland creatures, and he does seem to smell like a mixture of rotting carp and old tennis shoes stuffed with hyper-Gallic cheese, but he's a lot of fun, dedicated, and down with all the latest pedagogies and ringtones.
***
To get right down to it: it is in essence utterly impossible to find apartments accessible to me. Many of you may think to yourselves, but...the accessible law thing! Didn't it solve this?
Sort of.
The Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, signed into by law by the first George Bush, the one without the raging erection for apocalypse, only goes so far. The codes that buildings and businesses of a certain size must meet are great, but adaptations must not place undue financial burden on the business. Which I agree with.
It's just that my spinal cord injury is so weird that I'm caught just on the outside edge of ADA codes working great for me. But in the end they don't. I need an electric door opener. None of these places will have that, anywhere, ever. Because they don't have to. Because it's expensive. Because if an apartment was adapted for me, they'd lose money on me for the first year at least.
And, generally, this isn't really that big a problem: there aren't many versions of me running around trying to do what I'm trying to do. Don't think there aren't a whole lot of days when I darkly laugh about a high level quadriplegic writing poems. It's like getting metaphysically punk'd. By yourself.
So I'm striking out on finding a place to live in Carrollton. Which is not news or surprising. I try every time. The back-up, and it's really back-up in name only, is taking some kind of on-campus housing. In Tuscaloosa all my three years there were spent in horrid conditions. Sample conversation, before moving in:
Me: What are these huge stains in the carpet everywhere?
UA: Oh, those. We tried to get those up. The student who lived here last year had a colostomy bag. There was something wrong with his head. We tried to get those up.
Me: I'm thinking you didn't try hard enough.
Sample 2:
Me: You said there was a door opener here. That the whole reason for putting me out here was the door opener.
UA: I thought there was.
Me: You're going to have to put one in now.
UA: I don't know if we can do that.
Me: See, there's this law--
UA: Well, I don't know anything about the law.
Me: I think you're right.
***
The little hole I lived in there was in this old dorm, now demolished, which had some kind of water-based heating-cooling system. It was interesting to watch it degrade over time as it began dumping truly surreal amounts of moisture into the room. Papers began curling up. Towels stayed wet. I'd bought this huge box of envelopes, like 500 or something, and the glue in them would already be sealed. They were usable if you popped them back open and a couple of months ago I pulled the last one. Sure enough, it was glued shut. My hard back books began to warp. To curve.
Let's not miss that: I have an almost U-shaped Complete Shakespeare. Think about that.
I had to buy with my own money this filing cabinet sized de-humidifier and run a line out the window. Going out to teach or to get in my girlfriend's car, I'd watch the constant trickle.
***
Sample 3:
Me: Can anything be done about this heater thing in my room? Everything is damp. My desk is like a Petri dish.
UA: Oh, yeah, this old system barely works anymore. On its last legs.
Me: My books noticed. And my papers. My towels. My sheets. That's the best part: laying down after a long day teaching this University's students and the sheets are what many people call wet.
UA: Yeah, buddy, we hate that for you.
***
I'm sidetracked. I still bear the scars of Tuscaloosa. And I guess that's on my mind with all this difficulty.
***
To get right down to it: it is in essence utterly impossible to find apartments accessible to me. Many of you may think to yourselves, but...the accessible law thing! Didn't it solve this?
Sort of.
The Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, signed into by law by the first George Bush, the one without the raging erection for apocalypse, only goes so far. The codes that buildings and businesses of a certain size must meet are great, but adaptations must not place undue financial burden on the business. Which I agree with.
It's just that my spinal cord injury is so weird that I'm caught just on the outside edge of ADA codes working great for me. But in the end they don't. I need an electric door opener. None of these places will have that, anywhere, ever. Because they don't have to. Because it's expensive. Because if an apartment was adapted for me, they'd lose money on me for the first year at least.
And, generally, this isn't really that big a problem: there aren't many versions of me running around trying to do what I'm trying to do. Don't think there aren't a whole lot of days when I darkly laugh about a high level quadriplegic writing poems. It's like getting metaphysically punk'd. By yourself.
So I'm striking out on finding a place to live in Carrollton. Which is not news or surprising. I try every time. The back-up, and it's really back-up in name only, is taking some kind of on-campus housing. In Tuscaloosa all my three years there were spent in horrid conditions. Sample conversation, before moving in:
Me: What are these huge stains in the carpet everywhere?
UA: Oh, those. We tried to get those up. The student who lived here last year had a colostomy bag. There was something wrong with his head. We tried to get those up.
Me: I'm thinking you didn't try hard enough.
Sample 2:
Me: You said there was a door opener here. That the whole reason for putting me out here was the door opener.
UA: I thought there was.
Me: You're going to have to put one in now.
UA: I don't know if we can do that.
Me: See, there's this law--
UA: Well, I don't know anything about the law.
Me: I think you're right.
***
The little hole I lived in there was in this old dorm, now demolished, which had some kind of water-based heating-cooling system. It was interesting to watch it degrade over time as it began dumping truly surreal amounts of moisture into the room. Papers began curling up. Towels stayed wet. I'd bought this huge box of envelopes, like 500 or something, and the glue in them would already be sealed. They were usable if you popped them back open and a couple of months ago I pulled the last one. Sure enough, it was glued shut. My hard back books began to warp. To curve.
Let's not miss that: I have an almost U-shaped Complete Shakespeare. Think about that.
I had to buy with my own money this filing cabinet sized de-humidifier and run a line out the window. Going out to teach or to get in my girlfriend's car, I'd watch the constant trickle.
***
Sample 3:
Me: Can anything be done about this heater thing in my room? Everything is damp. My desk is like a Petri dish.
UA: Oh, yeah, this old system barely works anymore. On its last legs.
Me: My books noticed. And my papers. My towels. My sheets. That's the best part: laying down after a long day teaching this University's students and the sheets are what many people call wet.
UA: Yeah, buddy, we hate that for you.
***
I'm sidetracked. I still bear the scars of Tuscaloosa. And I guess that's on my mind with all this difficulty.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
POW
PREEMPTIVE ELEGY
Another future I don’t want to believe in:
my body filled with me slabbed in ice,
victim of comic book conflagration
involving great powers and absurd scheming
and slights darkly nursed over the years
and monologues refined and refined
for the day that had to come when Fate
evened things out, made right or bearable
the wrong and unbearable, brought low
the high and mighty, raised up the low and once weak—
and me stumbling in on it all,
looking for the bathroom or the gift shop,
blasted northward to the Pole.
Assumed dead and left to dream endless cold.
And there would be the scientists
to find me and thaw me
back at Ice Station Zebra with hair dryers
because they were bored
or out of large caliber ammunition
or had forgotten where the helicopter was parked
or were just crazed by isolation.
Stunned when my body spasmed in the air.
When all the lights began again
to flicker inside the defrosted wad of brain.
When the shock had passed
and we devised elaborate hand signals
because they spoke languages
that sounded a lot like other languages
but not my own. A day or two
and black floods of coffee
would determine the years
and the worlds I had slept away.
And the you. Who mourned me
however long, however brokenly you needed.
And all the rest of your life
dodging the rage of others
and keeping sparse gardens
and a lot of pragmatic, hurried showers.
Which is reason enough
to be sad. To mourn
your tangled hair with my thawed heart.
Another future I don’t want to believe in:
my body filled with me slabbed in ice,
victim of comic book conflagration
involving great powers and absurd scheming
and slights darkly nursed over the years
and monologues refined and refined
for the day that had to come when Fate
evened things out, made right or bearable
the wrong and unbearable, brought low
the high and mighty, raised up the low and once weak—
and me stumbling in on it all,
looking for the bathroom or the gift shop,
blasted northward to the Pole.
Assumed dead and left to dream endless cold.
And there would be the scientists
to find me and thaw me
back at Ice Station Zebra with hair dryers
because they were bored
or out of large caliber ammunition
or had forgotten where the helicopter was parked
or were just crazed by isolation.
Stunned when my body spasmed in the air.
When all the lights began again
to flicker inside the defrosted wad of brain.
When the shock had passed
and we devised elaborate hand signals
because they spoke languages
that sounded a lot like other languages
but not my own. A day or two
and black floods of coffee
would determine the years
and the worlds I had slept away.
And the you. Who mourned me
however long, however brokenly you needed.
And all the rest of your life
dodging the rage of others
and keeping sparse gardens
and a lot of pragmatic, hurried showers.
Which is reason enough
to be sad. To mourn
your tangled hair with my thawed heart.
Saturday in the
I'm late, again, but congratulations to Sandra for winning the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize for her manuscript, soon to be book, Theories of Falling, selected by Marie Howe.
My first book won the same prize and New Issues did a great job. I'm excited for her.
***
Sentence just heard on TV: "He's going to pimp his drill bit."
***
Slow week.
My first book won the same prize and New Issues did a great job. I'm excited for her.
***
Sentence just heard on TV: "He's going to pimp his drill bit."
***
Slow week.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Know
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Paul Guest is not an artist. At least not one
that science and philosophy have caught up to,
though pioneering branches of taxonomy
are doing promising work. Widely unknown
as the outsider’s outsider, the ultimate
in plus ultra marginalization, he was born
in a calendar year and even on a day,
though accounts vary. Life in the streets
was hard, filling every day with sadism
and glimmers of affection. Fort Wayne, Indiana,
was not a very good place to grow up,
not even for its most famous resident,
Johnny Appleseed, who wandered
for many decades planting trees
without permission. That is why Paul Guest
was born very far away from so much arboreal neurosis.
As a child, he was restless, curious about little
and addicted to melancholy.
Looking back, he sees he was born to be
whatever he is. Not a night watchman
at the parking deck near the hospital
where he was once treated for the traumas
of birth. His early work displays
a crudity some critics have compared
to the blood-scrawled messages
left by the left for dead in rural ditches
each year. He would see his
later work blossom, inviting his very own praise,
because, as an outsider, Paul Guest
sees what others cannot see.
The ones inside. With things like indoor plumbing
and anti-bacterial hand soap.
Also concrete evidence they once knew
a woman’s soporific love—
things like valentines, envelopes filled
with desiccated rose petals
no one will ever force them to throw out,
and extensive body scarring.
What they do not have, however,
in the shower’s scalding comfort,
in the double dream of double-thick duvets,
in the bowl of organic oatmeal
dusted with Sri Lankan cinnamon,
is The Truth, is Paul Guest,
two things he has always had a lot of.
Paul Guest is not an artist. At least not one
that science and philosophy have caught up to,
though pioneering branches of taxonomy
are doing promising work. Widely unknown
as the outsider’s outsider, the ultimate
in plus ultra marginalization, he was born
in a calendar year and even on a day,
though accounts vary. Life in the streets
was hard, filling every day with sadism
and glimmers of affection. Fort Wayne, Indiana,
was not a very good place to grow up,
not even for its most famous resident,
Johnny Appleseed, who wandered
for many decades planting trees
without permission. That is why Paul Guest
was born very far away from so much arboreal neurosis.
As a child, he was restless, curious about little
and addicted to melancholy.
Looking back, he sees he was born to be
whatever he is. Not a night watchman
at the parking deck near the hospital
where he was once treated for the traumas
of birth. His early work displays
a crudity some critics have compared
to the blood-scrawled messages
left by the left for dead in rural ditches
each year. He would see his
later work blossom, inviting his very own praise,
because, as an outsider, Paul Guest
sees what others cannot see.
The ones inside. With things like indoor plumbing
and anti-bacterial hand soap.
Also concrete evidence they once knew
a woman’s soporific love—
things like valentines, envelopes filled
with desiccated rose petals
no one will ever force them to throw out,
and extensive body scarring.
What they do not have, however,
in the shower’s scalding comfort,
in the double dream of double-thick duvets,
in the bowl of organic oatmeal
dusted with Sri Lankan cinnamon,
is The Truth, is Paul Guest,
two things he has always had a lot of.
54 million dollars
"A Washington, D.C. law judge broke down in tears and had to take a break from his testimony because he became too emotional while questioning himself about his experience with a missing pair of pants."
All I can say is the tears I weep are not for the American justice system but for this tragically wronged man. And his pants.
All I can say is the tears I weep are not for the American justice system but for this tragically wronged man. And his pants.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
100
OBLIVION: LETTER HOME
Thanks for the mango salsa and actuary tables
you requested for men of my age, economic bracket,
level of education, boring sexual orientation,
and tendency to pick fights with razor wire.
The numbers don’t seem encouraging.
By my calculations I expired several weeks ago.
There aren’t many people who can say
they are either mathematically stunted
or one of the hellish legions of undead
roaming the earth in search of Miami
because it’s nice there this time of year.
I have been so bored. Far away from the cities
that were first destroyed in rage
and then because it was surprisingly easy
and now out of habit. To pass the rigor of time.
It was probably untrue the anecdote
I heard growing up, that Eskimos
had some hundred words for snow,
all its variations, consistencies,
but I think I learned in the cities
the necessities of rubble,
made and made and made again,
until all I saw were men
ravaging the dust with their teeth,
if they still had any. Horrifying at first
and horrifying for a long time after that,
it grew to mean nothing much,
less than annoyance. When
they discovered the spray of blood
massive compound fractures
made from moderate heights,
when this was a happiness and they cooed,
I left. Quiet here and the air
seems better, no one dropping through it.
I was thinking of your silence.
How humid it seemed
and immense, August and all its agonies.
When you set fire to the sofa.
And you never said why
or allowed us to remove it.
I’m either lonely or in love with this
terrible world. Or dead
if it’s still true that numbers never lie.
Thanks for the mango salsa and actuary tables
you requested for men of my age, economic bracket,
level of education, boring sexual orientation,
and tendency to pick fights with razor wire.
The numbers don’t seem encouraging.
By my calculations I expired several weeks ago.
There aren’t many people who can say
they are either mathematically stunted
or one of the hellish legions of undead
roaming the earth in search of Miami
because it’s nice there this time of year.
I have been so bored. Far away from the cities
that were first destroyed in rage
and then because it was surprisingly easy
and now out of habit. To pass the rigor of time.
It was probably untrue the anecdote
I heard growing up, that Eskimos
had some hundred words for snow,
all its variations, consistencies,
but I think I learned in the cities
the necessities of rubble,
made and made and made again,
until all I saw were men
ravaging the dust with their teeth,
if they still had any. Horrifying at first
and horrifying for a long time after that,
it grew to mean nothing much,
less than annoyance. When
they discovered the spray of blood
massive compound fractures
made from moderate heights,
when this was a happiness and they cooed,
I left. Quiet here and the air
seems better, no one dropping through it.
I was thinking of your silence.
How humid it seemed
and immense, August and all its agonies.
When you set fire to the sofa.
And you never said why
or allowed us to remove it.
I’m either lonely or in love with this
terrible world. Or dead
if it’s still true that numbers never lie.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Oh
ELEGY FOR THE PLESIOSAUR
ON THE ADVENT OF ITS PREDICTED RETURN
We find your bones all the time and try not to be sad.
We’re not even sure how late we were
to your funeral or whether we sent flowers
or told great stories of how you lived
on your own terms and without regret
and that for you the most important thing
was family. And awesome displays of predation.
Carbon dating can’t say whether
the toasts we raised to you and your epoch
would have burned your alien face
with embarrassment for all the wildness of your youth
or swallowed you up in laughter,
as you might have tried to swallow us
on another day in the long life of ancient hunger.
And we hope the words we said
to all the mates you’d won with rituals
impossible for mammals to even comprehend
helped to assuage the thing that was grief
that was in them and would never fade,
they swore by the dangerous volume of their tears
and the veils of black weed
they wore in the fathoms of bereavement.
To your children looking on you
who said to themselves that you only slept
and would wake when all this was over
and everyone had left who swore
to honor your last hunt with all theirs to come,
we can only theorize how much they felt
of our terrified stabs at consolation
and whether they would have
let us keep our arms. The fossil record
so far contains no evidence
we attended the deposition of your body
as it was lowered into the murk
while many beasts sadly lowed in the depths
or whether the tears finally came
when upwards we desperately kicked
to the air of the world that was soon to be our own.
ON THE ADVENT OF ITS PREDICTED RETURN
We find your bones all the time and try not to be sad.
We’re not even sure how late we were
to your funeral or whether we sent flowers
or told great stories of how you lived
on your own terms and without regret
and that for you the most important thing
was family. And awesome displays of predation.
Carbon dating can’t say whether
the toasts we raised to you and your epoch
would have burned your alien face
with embarrassment for all the wildness of your youth
or swallowed you up in laughter,
as you might have tried to swallow us
on another day in the long life of ancient hunger.
And we hope the words we said
to all the mates you’d won with rituals
impossible for mammals to even comprehend
helped to assuage the thing that was grief
that was in them and would never fade,
they swore by the dangerous volume of their tears
and the veils of black weed
they wore in the fathoms of bereavement.
To your children looking on you
who said to themselves that you only slept
and would wake when all this was over
and everyone had left who swore
to honor your last hunt with all theirs to come,
we can only theorize how much they felt
of our terrified stabs at consolation
and whether they would have
let us keep our arms. The fossil record
so far contains no evidence
we attended the deposition of your body
as it was lowered into the murk
while many beasts sadly lowed in the depths
or whether the tears finally came
when upwards we desperately kicked
to the air of the world that was soon to be our own.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
To
REMEMBER HOW SAD THAT WAS WHEN
I missed sadness because I no longer missed you,
how emotionally counterintuitive it was
as my citizenship in the nation I made of you
gradually relapsed. I woke some other
place with lakes and blue skies and rush hours
and strangers I worried about. But no you.
No ages of you. No your name three times
when I walked somewhere or lay down at night
to bargain with sleep. No you
falling from my mouth everywhere I went.
No you anywhere to be seen.
A secret to keep. And mostly I did,
even beside other women who asked
with the privilege of their bodies
if you had ever existed and what did you do
and did you have a name I’d share
and had you been good to me
but I never gave you up. I left the last of you
to be lost in the fog inside me.
Napping in bomb craters, haggling
over debts I couldn’t deny were mine,
memorizing every month’s horoscope.
It seemed then the days
you had left me stained in sadness
were like that. Good apples on backorder from God
and the steaks full of blood
you taught me to love, rationed.
At least I told myself this,
thinking of all the never you were.
But there were limits and lengths
and limits again. There were
songs inside the fog inside the world.
I missed sadness because I no longer missed you,
how emotionally counterintuitive it was
as my citizenship in the nation I made of you
gradually relapsed. I woke some other
place with lakes and blue skies and rush hours
and strangers I worried about. But no you.
No ages of you. No your name three times
when I walked somewhere or lay down at night
to bargain with sleep. No you
falling from my mouth everywhere I went.
No you anywhere to be seen.
A secret to keep. And mostly I did,
even beside other women who asked
with the privilege of their bodies
if you had ever existed and what did you do
and did you have a name I’d share
and had you been good to me
but I never gave you up. I left the last of you
to be lost in the fog inside me.
Napping in bomb craters, haggling
over debts I couldn’t deny were mine,
memorizing every month’s horoscope.
It seemed then the days
you had left me stained in sadness
were like that. Good apples on backorder from God
and the steaks full of blood
you taught me to love, rationed.
At least I told myself this,
thinking of all the never you were.
But there were limits and lengths
and limits again. There were
songs inside the fog inside the world.
But
REGARDING YOUR APPLICATION FOR MANY IMAGINARY POSITIONS
Regarding your applications for many imaginary positions,
such as Glorious Leader of the Lutheran Jihad,
which you were good enough to explain
would pay no salary and convey no health benefits
or even obligate us to acknowledge you
as a fellow human being, we wish to thank you
for every assurance your tendency
toward unfettered rage was in your past,
and that a movie like A Clockwork Orange
or the good parts of Saving Private Ryan
would give us an idea of how you’d wasted
the best years of your life. All of us
nodded when we saw ourselves in you
and your poignant cries for help
even as we forwarded them to the legal department.
We trust you don’t mind.
We appreciate your seemingly robotic sense
of initiative and attention to detail,
to say nothing of the shockingly candid
photographs of you in bed with your girlfriend,
though we respectfully suggest
there are very few women who enjoy
what the professionally shot set
appears to show you doing,
and further we have reason to believe
you picked her up on Ninth Street
behind that weird carwash
one night when the desperation was too much to bear.
That is why it gives us no pleasure
to say we have found someone else
who best seems to fit our imaginary needs
at this time. Not only do we wish you luck,
we wish you would stop burning effigies across the street.
Regarding your applications for many imaginary positions,
such as Glorious Leader of the Lutheran Jihad,
which you were good enough to explain
would pay no salary and convey no health benefits
or even obligate us to acknowledge you
as a fellow human being, we wish to thank you
for every assurance your tendency
toward unfettered rage was in your past,
and that a movie like A Clockwork Orange
or the good parts of Saving Private Ryan
would give us an idea of how you’d wasted
the best years of your life. All of us
nodded when we saw ourselves in you
and your poignant cries for help
even as we forwarded them to the legal department.
We trust you don’t mind.
We appreciate your seemingly robotic sense
of initiative and attention to detail,
to say nothing of the shockingly candid
photographs of you in bed with your girlfriend,
though we respectfully suggest
there are very few women who enjoy
what the professionally shot set
appears to show you doing,
and further we have reason to believe
you picked her up on Ninth Street
behind that weird carwash
one night when the desperation was too much to bear.
That is why it gives us no pleasure
to say we have found someone else
who best seems to fit our imaginary needs
at this time. Not only do we wish you luck,
we wish you would stop burning effigies across the street.
Over there
I would dearly and painfully love to get up at a reading and read "User's Guide." While uncontrollably sobbing. Or staring balefully at everyone. Because people are often afraid to find funny any material that treads in these areas. Even if it's clearly meant to be. They want to respect pain et cetera. The few poems I have in this category I never even bother to read because there's always a handful of people who get the joke, who laugh only to find no one else is in the sea of drained faces. Awkward.
This poem came about after reading a review of Lucia Perillo's new book of essays I Hear the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature. The reviewer is sort of mindlessly reductive in the assumption that these essays = her life. So he describes a sort of doddering, bird watching, MS-slowed life that even includes "occasional sex." As though that were some mindblowing miracle. I can forgive him in that, of course, book reviewers are engaged in nearly "continuous sex." Which, as you probably know, is how I pay the bills. Reviewing books. I'm just saying.
This poem came about after reading a review of Lucia Perillo's new book of essays I Hear the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature. The reviewer is sort of mindlessly reductive in the assumption that these essays = her life. So he describes a sort of doddering, bird watching, MS-slowed life that even includes "occasional sex." As though that were some mindblowing miracle. I can forgive him in that, of course, book reviewers are engaged in nearly "continuous sex." Which, as you probably know, is how I pay the bills. Reviewing books. I'm just saying.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Shiny
USER’S GUIDE TO PHYSICAL DEBILITATION
Should the painful condition of irreversible paralysis
last longer than forever or at least until
your death by bowling ball or illegal lawn dart
or the culture of death, which really has it out
for whoever has seen better days
but still enjoys bruising marathons of bird watching,
you, or your beleaguered caregiver
stirring dark witch’s brews of resentment
inside what had been her happy life,
should turn to page seven where you can learn,
assuming higher cognitive functions
were not pureed by your selfish misfortune,
how to leave the house for the first time in two years.
An important first step,
with apologies for the thoughtlessly thoughtless metaphor.
When not an outright impossibility
or form of neurological science fiction,
sexual congress will be probably one of three things:
an act of sadistic charity performed
by tourists in the kingdom of your tragedy;
the curious, for whom you will be beguilingly blank canvas;
or someone blindly feeling their way
through an extended power outage
caused by summer storms you once thought romantic.
Page twelve instructs you how best
to be inspiring to Magnus next door
as he throws old Volkswagens into orbit
above Calgary. And to Betty
in her dark charm confiding a misery,
whatever it is, that to her seems equivalent with yours.
The curl of her hair her finger knows
better and beyond what you will,
even in the hypothesis of heaven
when you sleep. This guide is intended
to prepare you for falling down
and imagining détente with gravity,
else you reach the inevitable end
of scaring small children by your presence alone.
Someone once said of crushing
helplessness: it is a good idea to avoid that.
We agree with that wisdom
but gleaming motorcycles are hard
to turn down or safely stop
at speeds which melt aluminum. Of special note,
are sections regarding faith
healing, self loathing, abstract hobbies
like pretend spelunking and extreme atrophy,
and what to say to loved ones
who can’t stop shrieking
at Christmas dinner. New to this edition
is an index of important terms
such as catheter, pain, blackout,
pathological deltoid obsession, escort service,
magnetic resonance imaging,
loss of friends due to superstitious fear,
and, of course, amputation
above the knee due to pernicious gangrene.
It is our hope that this guide
will be a valuable resource
during this long stretch of boredom and dread
and that it may be of some help,
however small, to cope with your new life
and the gradual, bittersweet loss
of every God damned thing you ever loved.
Should the painful condition of irreversible paralysis
last longer than forever or at least until
your death by bowling ball or illegal lawn dart
or the culture of death, which really has it out
for whoever has seen better days
but still enjoys bruising marathons of bird watching,
you, or your beleaguered caregiver
stirring dark witch’s brews of resentment
inside what had been her happy life,
should turn to page seven where you can learn,
assuming higher cognitive functions
were not pureed by your selfish misfortune,
how to leave the house for the first time in two years.
An important first step,
with apologies for the thoughtlessly thoughtless metaphor.
When not an outright impossibility
or form of neurological science fiction,
sexual congress will be probably one of three things:
an act of sadistic charity performed
by tourists in the kingdom of your tragedy;
the curious, for whom you will be beguilingly blank canvas;
or someone blindly feeling their way
through an extended power outage
caused by summer storms you once thought romantic.
Page twelve instructs you how best
to be inspiring to Magnus next door
as he throws old Volkswagens into orbit
above Calgary. And to Betty
in her dark charm confiding a misery,
whatever it is, that to her seems equivalent with yours.
The curl of her hair her finger knows
better and beyond what you will,
even in the hypothesis of heaven
when you sleep. This guide is intended
to prepare you for falling down
and imagining détente with gravity,
else you reach the inevitable end
of scaring small children by your presence alone.
Someone once said of crushing
helplessness: it is a good idea to avoid that.
We agree with that wisdom
but gleaming motorcycles are hard
to turn down or safely stop
at speeds which melt aluminum. Of special note,
are sections regarding faith
healing, self loathing, abstract hobbies
like pretend spelunking and extreme atrophy,
and what to say to loved ones
who can’t stop shrieking
at Christmas dinner. New to this edition
is an index of important terms
such as catheter, pain, blackout,
pathological deltoid obsession, escort service,
magnetic resonance imaging,
loss of friends due to superstitious fear,
and, of course, amputation
above the knee due to pernicious gangrene.
It is our hope that this guide
will be a valuable resource
during this long stretch of boredom and dread
and that it may be of some help,
however small, to cope with your new life
and the gradual, bittersweet loss
of every God damned thing you ever loved.
Some will win
SPOILERS AHEAD:
It's hard to think of many situations for which Journey would be the perfect backdrop. Besides my wedding. And funeral. The birth of my first child. Not to mention its conception, during which I hold aloft a lit Bic cigarette lighter.
But the closing moments of the series finale of The Sopranos was one. I imagine many will be put off that the last ever episode wasn't the equivalent of Tony slowly feeding several of his enemies to a woodchipper while Paulie says something wondrously stupid, both of them devouring Buick-sized sandwiches. But it wasn't that. Despite an extremely serious threat, eventually solved with little fanfare but crushing effect, the show follows the well established rhythms established in these last six seasons. Life is life, up and down, good and bad, even with Tony's future undeniably darkly clouded.
Which created, I thought, this awesomely claustrophobic effect: you're waiting for it all to suddenly explode. The last scene in the restaurant, where for once Tony has arrived first, to me was nearly unbearable. As Tony waits, people file in, the camera seems to pay attention to some and others not, you wonder who is going to pop him right there. And then you feel the rest of the family is later than they should be and, yeah, this is what's happened. But then Carmela walks in and you think, holy shit, she looks gorgeous, really gorgeous, and this will be when it goes to hell.
But it never does. Journey rocks on with the Sopranos sharing some onion rings, Meadow walking in late. Fade to black.
I thought it was great. Prediction: average viewer will hate it.
It's hard to think of many situations for which Journey would be the perfect backdrop. Besides my wedding. And funeral. The birth of my first child. Not to mention its conception, during which I hold aloft a lit Bic cigarette lighter.
But the closing moments of the series finale of The Sopranos was one. I imagine many will be put off that the last ever episode wasn't the equivalent of Tony slowly feeding several of his enemies to a woodchipper while Paulie says something wondrously stupid, both of them devouring Buick-sized sandwiches. But it wasn't that. Despite an extremely serious threat, eventually solved with little fanfare but crushing effect, the show follows the well established rhythms established in these last six seasons. Life is life, up and down, good and bad, even with Tony's future undeniably darkly clouded.
Which created, I thought, this awesomely claustrophobic effect: you're waiting for it all to suddenly explode. The last scene in the restaurant, where for once Tony has arrived first, to me was nearly unbearable. As Tony waits, people file in, the camera seems to pay attention to some and others not, you wonder who is going to pop him right there. And then you feel the rest of the family is later than they should be and, yeah, this is what's happened. But then Carmela walks in and you think, holy shit, she looks gorgeous, really gorgeous, and this will be when it goes to hell.
But it never does. Journey rocks on with the Sopranos sharing some onion rings, Meadow walking in late. Fade to black.
I thought it was great. Prediction: average viewer will hate it.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
How not to call in late
Or, rather, exactly how to call in late:
Dream Horse Press has had the rocking good sense to choose my friend Matt Guenette's Sudden Anthem as the winner of the 2007 American Poetry Journal Book Prize.
I love Matt. I really do. Despite his advancing years and declining skills on the court, Matt is what They call good people. We began our MFA's at SIU the same year and it wasn't long before The Madness of Rodney Jones had formed in us a bond that nations nor gods could sever.
This recognition is long overdue but hopefully it's all the sweeter. Go over to Matt's place and ferociously congratulate him.
Dream Horse Press has had the rocking good sense to choose my friend Matt Guenette's Sudden Anthem as the winner of the 2007 American Poetry Journal Book Prize.
I love Matt. I really do. Despite his advancing years and declining skills on the court, Matt is what They call good people. We began our MFA's at SIU the same year and it wasn't long before The Madness of Rodney Jones had formed in us a bond that nations nor gods could sever.
This recognition is long overdue but hopefully it's all the sweeter. Go over to Matt's place and ferociously congratulate him.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Break
OBLIVION: LETTER HOME
Thanks for the rubber glue and instruction book
with VHS video and stereo cassette about
reenacting famous battles in American history,
including Korea and Bhutan. Before
his death in Thailand, Dad had good things
to say about the plasticity of time
in the modern age. I never understood
why he would take the reel-to-reel recorder
I earned from selling Grit for sixteen dark years.
Why he put it in the freezer before
retreating to the backyard where men could burn
things with epithelial disregard.
Which reminds me. A burning thing pursued me
this morning for several miles.
You’d think there’d be a lot of noise.
Screaming. Wailing. Existential checks bouncing
like basketballs all over the place.
Me seriously losing my shit.
But it was quiet. My frayed breath
and the fire’s placid respiration
like the soundtrack to something minimalist.
Lars von Trier, if he took the burning stick from his ass.
I wanted to tell you about it
before I forgot. At night distant walls crumble.
You feel a thump through the earth.
I haven’t learned to ignore it
so I wake inside something horrid.
Industrial throat after industrial throat.
Once in the ruins of an outhouse.
Or what I thought was one,
though by now everything unburned is amazingly fouled.
And by this I mean
this is one gift even you
would confess is their mastery,
with your white gloves, ultra violet lights
and night-vision goggles
watching me shed my virginity.
I think about her a lot—
I can’t remember the color of her eyes.
A song was playing
on the radio by the window.
It was older than we would ever want to be.
Thanks for the rubber glue and instruction book
with VHS video and stereo cassette about
reenacting famous battles in American history,
including Korea and Bhutan. Before
his death in Thailand, Dad had good things
to say about the plasticity of time
in the modern age. I never understood
why he would take the reel-to-reel recorder
I earned from selling Grit for sixteen dark years.
Why he put it in the freezer before
retreating to the backyard where men could burn
things with epithelial disregard.
Which reminds me. A burning thing pursued me
this morning for several miles.
You’d think there’d be a lot of noise.
Screaming. Wailing. Existential checks bouncing
like basketballs all over the place.
Me seriously losing my shit.
But it was quiet. My frayed breath
and the fire’s placid respiration
like the soundtrack to something minimalist.
Lars von Trier, if he took the burning stick from his ass.
I wanted to tell you about it
before I forgot. At night distant walls crumble.
You feel a thump through the earth.
I haven’t learned to ignore it
so I wake inside something horrid.
Industrial throat after industrial throat.
Once in the ruins of an outhouse.
Or what I thought was one,
though by now everything unburned is amazingly fouled.
And by this I mean
this is one gift even you
would confess is their mastery,
with your white gloves, ultra violet lights
and night-vision goggles
watching me shed my virginity.
I think about her a lot—
I can’t remember the color of her eyes.
A song was playing
on the radio by the window.
It was older than we would ever want to be.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Dear
OBLIVION: LETTER HOME
Thanks for the cucumber lotion and coupons
you cut out of the Sunday paper
though I have to bury them in an old thermos
or sink them with bricks and twine
so nobody kills me. Reading the obituary
for Mr. Kondrackie was sad
though he once beat me with his walker
for guessing wrong. We all have our faults,
I think. Dad used to tell me that
before locking the door to the basement.
He’d spend weeks down there
with his electric putting range and German
films. Did you ever figure out
what he ate? I think about that
when the glow of major cities burning
is strangely beautiful. Almost comforting.
I’ve been fixing up an old culvert
cannibals once used for a stop-over latrine.
It takes a lot of imagination
but I think you’d be proud
of the flow from one end to the other.
It’s been raining here all week.
And according to the woman
who pitied me during the night
and wanted nothing for her time
or the shadow of her body near the fire,
three years have gone by,
all of them marked by endless rain.
It seems hard to believe.
The people here are nice.
The ones capable of more than
savagery or tandem autoerotic asphyxiation,
at least. The food is bad
and you wouldn’t care for it
in that it barely exists.
But it’s been good for me.
When I laid the rags I wore
beside that kind woman
who had been so cold when I found her,
I wasn’t afraid.
I never once thought of you.
Write back soon. Tell everyone I’m not dead.
Thanks for the cucumber lotion and coupons
you cut out of the Sunday paper
though I have to bury them in an old thermos
or sink them with bricks and twine
so nobody kills me. Reading the obituary
for Mr. Kondrackie was sad
though he once beat me with his walker
for guessing wrong. We all have our faults,
I think. Dad used to tell me that
before locking the door to the basement.
He’d spend weeks down there
with his electric putting range and German
films. Did you ever figure out
what he ate? I think about that
when the glow of major cities burning
is strangely beautiful. Almost comforting.
I’ve been fixing up an old culvert
cannibals once used for a stop-over latrine.
It takes a lot of imagination
but I think you’d be proud
of the flow from one end to the other.
It’s been raining here all week.
And according to the woman
who pitied me during the night
and wanted nothing for her time
or the shadow of her body near the fire,
three years have gone by,
all of them marked by endless rain.
It seems hard to believe.
The people here are nice.
The ones capable of more than
savagery or tandem autoerotic asphyxiation,
at least. The food is bad
and you wouldn’t care for it
in that it barely exists.
But it’s been good for me.
When I laid the rags I wore
beside that kind woman
who had been so cold when I found her,
I wasn’t afraid.
I never once thought of you.
Write back soon. Tell everyone I’m not dead.
10
OBLIVION: MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
By the sea it wasn’t bad. They’d learned not to kill
themselves with tire irons. Not to think of it
while children writhed in their arms.
The air was salt and we breathed it. To the old,
it seemed like food. There were fish
that wouldn’t die. Not even left to drown in air.
We bit down. Then the conversation
changed. Mornings were spent scrubbing
the beach. The black sand gleamed
and to me seemed dangerous.
Not something one could even clean.
But the hours by the water had rubbed off.
The place was littered with rusted
things: wagon wheels and rocking chairs
and gingham bonnets I tried to stitch and patch.
In the night while we slept,
the sea spit back the dead inside it.
Which amounted mostly to affordable lawn furniture.
Which bothered us more than we let on
watching another patio table roll to a stop.
Someone found a pine tree; we piled it all in its shade.
They would find me where I hid
and drag me back to the shore.
Little clots of light bubbled atop the water.
It looked like clear soda.
I tried explaining the concept.
Many of the surviving pedagogies were almost useful.
This happened less and less.
Above the water on the salt-crusted rock
I could see almost to the horizon,
another concept that went nowhere.
Floating in with the tide: a single bit of color.
They’d spent the day staring
at things like skulls and crock pots
and were sleeping their troubled sleep,
so I stole down to the water.
A green bottle bobbed in the pool.
In its mouth was cork and in its throat
what seemed to be a note.
They would never understand.
I threw it back into the romance of the crashing surf.
By the sea it wasn’t bad. They’d learned not to kill
themselves with tire irons. Not to think of it
while children writhed in their arms.
The air was salt and we breathed it. To the old,
it seemed like food. There were fish
that wouldn’t die. Not even left to drown in air.
We bit down. Then the conversation
changed. Mornings were spent scrubbing
the beach. The black sand gleamed
and to me seemed dangerous.
Not something one could even clean.
But the hours by the water had rubbed off.
The place was littered with rusted
things: wagon wheels and rocking chairs
and gingham bonnets I tried to stitch and patch.
In the night while we slept,
the sea spit back the dead inside it.
Which amounted mostly to affordable lawn furniture.
Which bothered us more than we let on
watching another patio table roll to a stop.
Someone found a pine tree; we piled it all in its shade.
They would find me where I hid
and drag me back to the shore.
Little clots of light bubbled atop the water.
It looked like clear soda.
I tried explaining the concept.
Many of the surviving pedagogies were almost useful.
This happened less and less.
Above the water on the salt-crusted rock
I could see almost to the horizon,
another concept that went nowhere.
Floating in with the tide: a single bit of color.
They’d spent the day staring
at things like skulls and crock pots
and were sleeping their troubled sleep,
so I stole down to the water.
A green bottle bobbed in the pool.
In its mouth was cork and in its throat
what seemed to be a note.
They would never understand.
I threw it back into the romance of the crashing surf.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
7
OBLIVION: STAR CHARTS
Waiting for them to return from their tempers
was the plan fanned out in the dark
and nobody seemed to object to instant
hobbies like staring at nothing until
their souls packed it in and split for the next life.
Or digging dead turtles from muck
near the road to leave them waiting watch
for something no one agreed
had even existed, this star light,
this light, this sky unlike a boot’s black heel.
And I had only just arrived
with the other world clinging to me
and rubbing off on everything I touched
or slept on or asked sincere questions about.
The mess annoyed everyone.
Even my apology shimmered
while they circled around me
to demand I help them do something
to be determined later.
And though I loved the tree
and the branch that held me sleeping
above the ground with ash
in drifts of falling effacement
and the river no one knew
to mourn by fire, lost as they were I left.
Waiting for them to return from their tempers
was the plan fanned out in the dark
and nobody seemed to object to instant
hobbies like staring at nothing until
their souls packed it in and split for the next life.
Or digging dead turtles from muck
near the road to leave them waiting watch
for something no one agreed
had even existed, this star light,
this light, this sky unlike a boot’s black heel.
And I had only just arrived
with the other world clinging to me
and rubbing off on everything I touched
or slept on or asked sincere questions about.
The mess annoyed everyone.
Even my apology shimmered
while they circled around me
to demand I help them do something
to be determined later.
And though I loved the tree
and the branch that held me sleeping
above the ground with ash
in drifts of falling effacement
and the river no one knew
to mourn by fire, lost as they were I left.
Ob
OBLIVION: LETTER HOME
Thanks for the bleach and the directions back,
even though we’ve had this discussion
already. I should tell you before I forget
or the crushing pain roars back
how much Emily appreciated the red yarn.
She couldn’t stop smiling. Until
she vanished one night or decided
to leave. When I think how much the same
those are, even my bones sigh.
Down the street there are children
who need baths and when I find water,
I carry some in my hands and tell them
I’ve found another hidden river
in an owl’s nest or inside one of the leaves
running mindlessly about
as the dead tend to do here.
I try to reveal their faces
or slick the knotted hair from their colorless eyes
or let them drink a little
but all they want to do is run.
I go back giving water to the ground
and names to their miner faces
and trying to recall the gloves I wore
when I was eleven. The trains I tried to believe
were only sound. The box
I sent you should be there before long,
though inside it all I placed
was a cricket’s green leg.
I’m sorry about that but I was thinking of you.
All the weight that I could afford
and the only thing at night
singing that will not want to eat you
or wound you for sport
and before you ask, yes, I was careful,
though there were times
when all that saved my skin
were Grandma’s prayers so give her my love.
Thanks for the bleach and the directions back,
even though we’ve had this discussion
already. I should tell you before I forget
or the crushing pain roars back
how much Emily appreciated the red yarn.
She couldn’t stop smiling. Until
she vanished one night or decided
to leave. When I think how much the same
those are, even my bones sigh.
Down the street there are children
who need baths and when I find water,
I carry some in my hands and tell them
I’ve found another hidden river
in an owl’s nest or inside one of the leaves
running mindlessly about
as the dead tend to do here.
I try to reveal their faces
or slick the knotted hair from their colorless eyes
or let them drink a little
but all they want to do is run.
I go back giving water to the ground
and names to their miner faces
and trying to recall the gloves I wore
when I was eleven. The trains I tried to believe
were only sound. The box
I sent you should be there before long,
though inside it all I placed
was a cricket’s green leg.
I’m sorry about that but I was thinking of you.
All the weight that I could afford
and the only thing at night
singing that will not want to eat you
or wound you for sport
and before you ask, yes, I was careful,
though there were times
when all that saved my skin
were Grandma’s prayers so give her my love.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Honey
OBLIVION: TO-DO LIST
A lot you should do: hurl invective at dawn.
Stop at dusk. Stop all attempts
at rhetorically complex valentines
as timed to the sun or any star
available for general reference. Mow the lawn
or at least remove the rust
clotted bear-traps from the thicket
all the lawn has slowly become
in a kind of melancholy art installation
you want to watch forever. Definitively determine
the distance between thinking
and doing. Once and for all. For it is vast.
And submit the results
to many peer-reviewed journals
hoping to give so much thinking and doing
to oblivion. For it too is vast
and full of fondness for however much
you are content to ignore
its tab for the ruin it keeps running up
everywhere you care to look. And those places
you don’t. Don’t think
there isn’t a spot for you
in all this abstraction; you’ll fit right in
and never look back at that
world again. How her skin
and your skin, how both were one world
while her red hair burned
you through the chest, through to the bone
and to the well of blood
where she held you
up and all you carried, all that you had in you
like an ore, you gave. Give
again.
A lot you should do: hurl invective at dawn.
Stop at dusk. Stop all attempts
at rhetorically complex valentines
as timed to the sun or any star
available for general reference. Mow the lawn
or at least remove the rust
clotted bear-traps from the thicket
all the lawn has slowly become
in a kind of melancholy art installation
you want to watch forever. Definitively determine
the distance between thinking
and doing. Once and for all. For it is vast.
And submit the results
to many peer-reviewed journals
hoping to give so much thinking and doing
to oblivion. For it too is vast
and full of fondness for however much
you are content to ignore
its tab for the ruin it keeps running up
everywhere you care to look. And those places
you don’t. Don’t think
there isn’t a spot for you
in all this abstraction; you’ll fit right in
and never look back at that
world again. How her skin
and your skin, how both were one world
while her red hair burned
you through the chest, through to the bone
and to the well of blood
where she held you
up and all you carried, all that you had in you
like an ore, you gave. Give
again.
Cut
AUDIO COMMENTARY TRACK
As you can already see, everything is fucked.
The shark wasn’t working and Linda
had to be replaced by a homeless man
we cleaned up and taught crude
phonetic Russian. The Thai embassy threatened
dire things, canings and worse,
extraordinary rendition to French Canada,
if we refused to swear fealty
to their epileptic despot who was deposed
in a coup while we were there
that everyone we met agreed
was fantastically bloody. I sent
word for the street urchins we’d chained
to a truck to be given cameras
and ankle bracelets that satellites can track
so we could find them
should they not return with the footage
I wanted. That’s coming up
in just a second, though mostly all you see
is the road and a lot of running
and sobbing. There. And there and also there.
The amount of viscera surprised
the crew, though to be fair,
I’d hired them off the back
of a loading dock in San Clemente
the week before. Scrappers, all of them,
and the language barriers,
which were severe, I admit,
gradually thinned their numbers
as the shoot went on. Some we buried
within sight of a graveyard
out of respect for what we thought
their mother’s stricken wishes might have been.
But it was all hypothetical
and in that heat we lost a few more
before we had a chance to pretend
our sadness was debilitating
or at least an emotion which passed for sadness
in that part of world. Look,
there is the shark again—
we made it out of packing foam
and spray-painted it ourselves
to make sure the job was done right.
We named it Bruce.
No one can say we didn’t reasonably value verite.
And I do think it resembled
something a child or person recovering
from massive head trauma
would find dangerous or scary
or at least uncomfortable to be around.
We never did find Linda
though I left the number of the hotel
none of us were staying at
because we were sleeping in the forest
taking turns at watch just like
this scene though the suspense is muted
by incorrect matting
so all you see is knees and fire
and some dialog about love
and honor and taking a stand
which was very moving to us all
though none of us wept
with our eyes on the trained chimp and his chainsaw.
As you can already see, everything is fucked.
The shark wasn’t working and Linda
had to be replaced by a homeless man
we cleaned up and taught crude
phonetic Russian. The Thai embassy threatened
dire things, canings and worse,
extraordinary rendition to French Canada,
if we refused to swear fealty
to their epileptic despot who was deposed
in a coup while we were there
that everyone we met agreed
was fantastically bloody. I sent
word for the street urchins we’d chained
to a truck to be given cameras
and ankle bracelets that satellites can track
so we could find them
should they not return with the footage
I wanted. That’s coming up
in just a second, though mostly all you see
is the road and a lot of running
and sobbing. There. And there and also there.
The amount of viscera surprised
the crew, though to be fair,
I’d hired them off the back
of a loading dock in San Clemente
the week before. Scrappers, all of them,
and the language barriers,
which were severe, I admit,
gradually thinned their numbers
as the shoot went on. Some we buried
within sight of a graveyard
out of respect for what we thought
their mother’s stricken wishes might have been.
But it was all hypothetical
and in that heat we lost a few more
before we had a chance to pretend
our sadness was debilitating
or at least an emotion which passed for sadness
in that part of world. Look,
there is the shark again—
we made it out of packing foam
and spray-painted it ourselves
to make sure the job was done right.
We named it Bruce.
No one can say we didn’t reasonably value verite.
And I do think it resembled
something a child or person recovering
from massive head trauma
would find dangerous or scary
or at least uncomfortable to be around.
We never did find Linda
though I left the number of the hotel
none of us were staying at
because we were sleeping in the forest
taking turns at watch just like
this scene though the suspense is muted
by incorrect matting
so all you see is knees and fire
and some dialog about love
and honor and taking a stand
which was very moving to us all
though none of us wept
with our eyes on the trained chimp and his chainsaw.
Contagious
June and the crush is on: finding an apartment is never not a huge hassle. Meaning, it's the sort of thing that, for me and my life, always makes you think you won't find one. Which makes you Matt Foley. Which, I admit, might be an interesting pedagogical approach. Heavy on that might.
The range in what various places define as accessible is always interesting. Most are generally up to the standards of the ADA, or, if not, willing to accommodate. That's great if you're these guys. But these guys I'm not. I need an electric door opener, for example, to even get inside an otherwise accessible apartment. And the right kind isn't cheap. They require installation, wiring, a strike plate that allows the door to be locked and able to be opened. And so forth. This isn't necessarily what you might call cheap.
And that's assuming I've found the apartment. Or the apartment complex. That's within walking distance of campus. Or, less conveniently, on a bus route.
Another assumption: that the school's disabled students haven't already swarmed locust-like over the limited number of accessible apartments available in a small town. Which in many cases they have.
So if you need me, I'm in a van. Down by the river.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Handling
RENTED DARK
Even priapic bouts of sexual insanity
were no match against that winter
which dropped snow like cement
for cement’s sake. I came to think
of the weather as one of the leering
prison guards in a Women in Chains flick,
cast for his ability to produce
terrifyingly profuse body hair
and an admirably effortless mien of depravity.
Breakfast became bananas
and anthropomorphizing the storms
or thoughtfully vetoing
each other’s baroquely murderous impulses
or speaking to each other
in the flat affect of hostages
denouncing the moral and ethical whatever
of wherever. I dreamed
of understanding the sky
or touching your skin somewhere
beyond the bit of darkness we rented
on Olympic Street
without fearing we’d lose a thumb or toe
or dawdle into hypothermia
like lost children.
But that was when I dreamed
or slept at all. At night by light of the busted TV,
it was easy to see how
your face fell into sleep
and the rest of you followed
while each infomercial taught me
how to be wowed
by borrowed yachts
and stock photographs of Italian roadsters
and grimly orgasmic head-cases
who waved cancelled checks like stays of execution
while swilling soda water
with Pentecostal fury.
There were secret methods
and proven techniques
and when I closed my eyes
it sounded like birth control from an alternate dimension.
Supplies were low.
I had to order now
but I never did,
letting the night run out
like a special offer. Each one was.
While we made love
in a frozen world, operators stood by.
Even priapic bouts of sexual insanity
were no match against that winter
which dropped snow like cement
for cement’s sake. I came to think
of the weather as one of the leering
prison guards in a Women in Chains flick,
cast for his ability to produce
terrifyingly profuse body hair
and an admirably effortless mien of depravity.
Breakfast became bananas
and anthropomorphizing the storms
or thoughtfully vetoing
each other’s baroquely murderous impulses
or speaking to each other
in the flat affect of hostages
denouncing the moral and ethical whatever
of wherever. I dreamed
of understanding the sky
or touching your skin somewhere
beyond the bit of darkness we rented
on Olympic Street
without fearing we’d lose a thumb or toe
or dawdle into hypothermia
like lost children.
But that was when I dreamed
or slept at all. At night by light of the busted TV,
it was easy to see how
your face fell into sleep
and the rest of you followed
while each infomercial taught me
how to be wowed
by borrowed yachts
and stock photographs of Italian roadsters
and grimly orgasmic head-cases
who waved cancelled checks like stays of execution
while swilling soda water
with Pentecostal fury.
There were secret methods
and proven techniques
and when I closed my eyes
it sounded like birth control from an alternate dimension.
Supplies were low.
I had to order now
but I never did,
letting the night run out
like a special offer. Each one was.
While we made love
in a frozen world, operators stood by.
Sarah Hannah
To our writing community:
It is with the deepest and most unremitting sorrow I have to tell you that Sarah Hannah, one of our own, extravagantly talented, brilliant, witty, buoyant, and beautiful, has taken her own life.
Tupelo Press will hold a memorial for Sarah at Poet’s House in September when her new book, Inflorescence, comes out. I will invite the entire writing community to come and read from her book, and to read tributes or poems in homage. Meanwhile, flowers and expressions of sympathy may be sent to her family at the following address: Nathan and Harriet Goldstein, 17 Metropolitan Avenue, Ashland, MA 01721.
Sarah received her doctorate as well as her MFA in Poetry from Columbia University, and was the author of two collections of poems, Longing Distance (Tupelo Press 2004) and Inflorescence (forthcoming from Tupelo Press in Fall 2007). She was a faculty member in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College, where she taught graduate and undergraduate poetry workshops and literature courses. She was a terrific teacher, adored by her students, her colleagues, and her friends. She lived her life fiercely and fervently, making many of the most memorable and poignant poems I’ve had the great fortune to read. To know Sarah was a great gift, to lose her is unspeakably sad. She had the sort of soul that made the world a better place at every step.
Jeffrey Levine
Tupelo Press
Please, Mr. Postman,
Re: that lightly padded envelope you’ve carried
Hip-side for some time, that scripted missive you’ve
Delayed and delayed relaying to the next pick-up
Box, that scripted something you can’t quite put
Your finger on (except that you put your hands
All over it)—some days you take the long route
Around the leaf-strewn street, you stop under
Some thick hemlocks, half hidden, you wrest it
From your blue canvas bag and behold it,
Scan the somewhat illegible script: Broken Tree
Road, the destination, but of course that is not
Your role, to hand deliver; you’re only to pass
It along to the next point of dispatch. Still, for
Some unaccountable reason, you are unable
To fulfill this sworn duty. You know it’s only
Paper, but what words might be written there?
You run your warm palm across my front,
You turn me over in your hands.
I seem to have taken on some human characteristic.
I seem to be crinkling some obscure utterance.
I was intended—
I was posted in good faith—
No more. Please, Mr. Postman, pry.
Tamper.
Felonize.
Please, Mr. Postman, bring me home.
—Sarah Hannah
It is with the deepest and most unremitting sorrow I have to tell you that Sarah Hannah, one of our own, extravagantly talented, brilliant, witty, buoyant, and beautiful, has taken her own life.
Tupelo Press will hold a memorial for Sarah at Poet’s House in September when her new book, Inflorescence, comes out. I will invite the entire writing community to come and read from her book, and to read tributes or poems in homage. Meanwhile, flowers and expressions of sympathy may be sent to her family at the following address: Nathan and Harriet Goldstein, 17 Metropolitan Avenue, Ashland, MA 01721.
Sarah received her doctorate as well as her MFA in Poetry from Columbia University, and was the author of two collections of poems, Longing Distance (Tupelo Press 2004) and Inflorescence (forthcoming from Tupelo Press in Fall 2007). She was a faculty member in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College, where she taught graduate and undergraduate poetry workshops and literature courses. She was a terrific teacher, adored by her students, her colleagues, and her friends. She lived her life fiercely and fervently, making many of the most memorable and poignant poems I’ve had the great fortune to read. To know Sarah was a great gift, to lose her is unspeakably sad. She had the sort of soul that made the world a better place at every step.
Jeffrey Levine
Tupelo Press
Please, Mr. Postman,
Re: that lightly padded envelope you’ve carried
Hip-side for some time, that scripted missive you’ve
Delayed and delayed relaying to the next pick-up
Box, that scripted something you can’t quite put
Your finger on (except that you put your hands
All over it)—some days you take the long route
Around the leaf-strewn street, you stop under
Some thick hemlocks, half hidden, you wrest it
From your blue canvas bag and behold it,
Scan the somewhat illegible script: Broken Tree
Road, the destination, but of course that is not
Your role, to hand deliver; you’re only to pass
It along to the next point of dispatch. Still, for
Some unaccountable reason, you are unable
To fulfill this sworn duty. You know it’s only
Paper, but what words might be written there?
You run your warm palm across my front,
You turn me over in your hands.
I seem to have taken on some human characteristic.
I seem to be crinkling some obscure utterance.
I was intended—
I was posted in good faith—
No more. Please, Mr. Postman, pry.
Tamper.
Felonize.
Please, Mr. Postman, bring me home.
—Sarah Hannah
4
It's official: Battlestar Galactica will end with season four. Hate to hear it but I'd rather it go out while it's still insanely great as opposed to season 8 when Apollo moves to New York City, working as a bartender, because he really wants to live life. And finish his novel. And reconnect with the daughter he never knew. And fall in love, though he had sworn never to be hurt again. And try to help his screw-up buddy from college, who hides a secret pain. And deal with explosive revelations about stuff. And to walk down the sidewalk, vanishing into the crowds, while a bittersweet love song plays and the credits roll.
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