Wednesday, June 30, 2010

"X," Mark Irwin

Because every thought is either memory or desire, the world

pulls away on both sides. Anyone's wish is a bird, and a wish

unfulfilled the unwinged skull, but a seed--fuzzy--pushes

its past toward tomorrow, all flutter and ecstasy. That's why

whenever I see people touch, I place a small white X where they

stood. Chalk, wind. Rock of sugar. Rock of salt. We spend our lives

licking at both. We sleep, eat, cry, sing. I like most when

it snows, when I must reinvent the shivering marvel of each

X, as knowledge is recollection, and love all discovery without delay.

~ Mark Irwin, "X"

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

"Startling Point," Isobel Dixon

You think me unsurprising. Wait –
I have a thing or two to share. I’ll never
be the river in full spate, the raging fire,
but, look, I have my moments too:
fish-leap, a flash of juggled silver
barely seen before the splash,
a fleeting shadow shooting through
the water to some secret place;
the sudden kudu in the underbrush,
etched by your headlights, leaping clear.
And you paused at the wheel, aware:
at first just awed by muscled grace,
but then, the mind’s eye’s shattered glass,
the heart’s revealing race, the taste of fear.

~ Isobel Dixon, "Startling Point"

Monday, June 28, 2010

"Please Understand (A Bachelor's Valentine)" by Stephen Dunn

When, next day, I found one of your earrings,
slightly chipped, on the steps leading up to
but also away from my house,

I couldn’t decide if I should return it to you
or keep it for myself in this copper box.
Then I remembered there’s always another choice

and pushed it with my foot into the begonias.
If you’re the kind who desires fragile mementos
of these perilous journeys we take,

that’s where you’ll find it. But don’t knock
on my door. I’ll probably be sucking the pit
out of an apricot, or speaking long distance

to myself. Best we can hope for on days like this
is that the thunder and dark clouds will veer elsewhere,
and the unsolicited sun will break through

just before it sets, a beautiful dullness to it.
Please understand. I’ve never been able to tell
what’s worth more—what I want or what I have.

~ Stephen Dunn, "Please Understand (A Bachelor's Valentine)"

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Antilamentation | Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering
any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

- Dorianne Laux, "Antilamentation"

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Charles Baudelaire, "Be Drunk"

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

- Charles Baudelaire, translated by Louis Simpson, "Be Drunk"

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Rae Armantrout, "Veil"

The doll told me
to exist.

It said, "Hypnotize yourself."

It said time would be
transfixed.

*

Now the optimist

sees an oak
shiver

and a girl whiz by
on a bicycle

with a sense of pleasurable
suspense.

She budgets herself
with leafy

prestidigitation.

I too
am a segmentalist.

*

But I've dropped
more than an armful

of groceries or books

downstairs
into a train station.

An acquaintance says
she colors her hair

so people will help her
when this happens.

To refute her argument
I must wake up

and remember my hair's
already dyed.

*
As a mentalist
I must suffer

lapses

then repeat myself
in a blind trial.

I must write
punchlines only I
can hear

and only after
I've passed on

- Rae Armantrout, "Veil"

Monday, June 7, 2010

D.T. Max, The Family That Couldn't Sleep

"If prionlike diseases are infectious, though, they are not so in the traditional way. They are not 'alive' -- infection in their case is purely a mechanical process. The theory of prions threatens to diminish our uniqueness in the universe, which is one reason that -- like Galileo's insistence that the earth moves areound the sun -- it had trouble finding acceptance. It was another example of -- in the words of the German chemist Friedrich Wohler, who discovered in 1828 that he could synthesize the body's chemicals perfectly well in a test tube -- 'the great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.' The hypothesis was that life is ineffable, uniquely alive; the reality is that it is just chemical."

- D.T. Max, The Family That Couldn't Sleep

Inga Muscio, Cunt

Words outlive people, institutions, civilizations. Words spur images, associations, memories, inspirations and synapse pulsations. Words send off physical resonations of thought into the nethersphere. Words hurt, soothe, inspire, demean, demand, incite, pacify, teach, romance, pervert, unite, divide.

Words be powerful.

Grown-ups and children are not readily encouraged to unearth the power of words. Adults are repeatedly assured a picture is worth a thousand of them, while the playground response to almost any verbal taunt is "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

I don't beg so much as command to differ.


- Inga Muscio, Cunt

Friday, June 4, 2010

"Atlas" U.A. Fanthorpe

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

- U.A. Fanthorpe, "Atlas"

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Perpetual Motion | Tony Hoagland

In a little while I’ll be drifting up an on-ramp,
sipping coffee from a styrofoam container,
checking my gas gauge with one eye
and twisting the dial of the radio
with the fingers of my third hand,
Looking for a station I can steer to Saturn on.

It seems I have the traveling disease
again, an outbreak of that virus
celebrated by the cracked lips
of a thousand blues musicians—song
about a rooster and a traintrack,
a sunrise and a jug of cherry cherry wine.

It's the kind of perceptual confusion
that makes your loved ones into strangers,
that makes a highway look like a woman
with air conditioned arms. With a
bottomless cup of coffee for a mouth
and jewelry shaped like pay phone booths
dripping from her ears.

In a little while the radio will
almost have me convinced
that I am doing something romantic,
something to do with “freedom” and “becoming”
instead of fright and flight into
an anonymity so deep

it has no bottom,
only signs to tell you what direction
you are falling in: CHEYENNE, SEATTLE,
WICHITA, DETROIT—Do you hear me,
do you feel me moving through?
With my foot upon the gas,
between the future and the past,
I am here—
here where the desire to vanish
is stronger than the desire to appear.

- Tony Hoagland, "Perpetual Motion"

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

"The Unknown Citizen" by W.H. Auden

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

- W.H. Auden, "The Unknown Citizen"

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

“Panic in the Year Zero,” by D.A. Powell


Bless the tourists in their “Alcatraz Rocks!” parkas
     on the upper deck of a double-decker
          in any given February bluster.
They could have sworn it would be warm here,
     just because the cryometer says it isn’t cold.
Who the hell would look at a cryometer?
     People from arctic places, I suppose.
People who must have flown in over the map’s flat face;
     who must have seen the latest developments;
          the delta’s brackish mouth; windmills
waving white banderoles against the crisping brown hills.
     Spring looks a lot like summer looks a lot
          like drought. What would anyone expect
if they knew the way planarity invites the opportunist.        
     Aren’t the dispatches the same, reaching them
in Chehalis, Waterloo and Asbury Park. Even
if folks don’t watch what passes now for news,
          I assume they go to cocktail parties.
               Or they Twitter.
They don’t all have snug jammies and Ovaltine,
     though they seem to get snugger by the minute.
What kind of help could they get if they could get help?
          Help them make this dull show seem like art.
     Help the supporting cast appear
in the end, summoned from the cities of the plain,
     and appear to end and end again
          as in a wide shot of the Battle of the Marne.
Be tolerant of those you cannot seem to understand.
               And other such advice.
It’s the quiet part of the morning service,
     while I’m writing this down:
Thank God for the quiet part.
And thank God for the one who held me to my wickedness;
     who asked me to revel in it,
          even though it cost us both a little dignity.
It’s easy for me to look back at what’s destroyed.
I knew it would be destroyed, like a wicked town.
I never thought “that town is where the heart is.”
I simply thought “that town is where the town is.”
Usually someplace inhospitable, and filled with
     handsome men. The kind who kill you
with their handsomeness, or their acute cordage.
Hell is the most miraculous invention of love,
          no matter how the love turns out.
Hell is the place from whence the music of longing—
which accounts for most of what we call music—
     gets written.
Yet, I’m tired of this idea of hell, no matter how functional.
     Sure, I’ve had my petty doubts.
Like the extra pills I’ve put in my Eva Braun box,
     waiting for the bomb to hit Bakersfield,
          or some other place in the near distance
(this plan only works if there’s some kind of distance)
          the sign that it’s time to pull up stakes,
head for those durable hills with my pemmican,
     my Port-o-pot, my jerry cans,
     and yes, I too would have Ovaltine.
Though I guess it would be Ovaltine made with water
          instead of milk.
Such would be the dark days
     if we think the dark days really must come.
But I have lived through perilous times,
     and I do not love them.
I cannot pretend I’m smart about such things.
I mean: look at the sloppy slew I’ve been.
     And you were there. And you.
You’ve seen me rumple down the sidewalk like a moocher.
Lord knows, you’ve seen me hit that sidewalk on my keister.

          “Scandalous,” the tourists said,
               and flashed.
And when the worst of the drama came,
     they clucked their tongues and threw their change.
Something inside each one of us is cocked
          like the ear of a hound,
and half the time we hunt, and half the time we rescue,
     because we’re never really sure
          if the humans will beat us or feed us.
If we are our better selves, it’s just a wonder.
And if we’re not.

     Even in our legends, angels come.
They try their best. But we’re such shits.
     And it’s not because we want to screw them.
We screw everything. We’re mankind. It’s what we do.
I’ve probably sullied a few white wings myself.
     That’s not the problem.
So much has passed between us, we’re practically cousins.
The problem is, we’re so bent on an ending,
          we’ll sunder the entire valley,
with conviction. With an invented coda of immunity.
Nobody in this picture is granted immunity.
     If it were available, I’d have gotten it for myself.

          Enough with the apocalypse, already.
Think of all the history you’ve read. It started somewhere.
     It started at absolute zero, is what you thought.
Just because you couldn’t know what came before.
          But imagine: something did.

 - D.A. Powell, “Panic in the Year Zero”