CONTENTS
Mark Weiss | Harriet Zinnes | Brian Fewster | Tim Allen | Dominic Fox | Robert Hampson |
Kent Johnson | Richard Dillon |
********************************************
MARK WEISS
THE FIG
1
I was riding that day. Nut-trees, roses,
pink, white, and the reddening globes of pomegranates, clouds,
and moving water. An old man
held the reins of my horse. I dismounted, and he rode her
into the mountain.
2
Fig
fur
flower
gemstone. The grass
undulant with snakes.
I hold you in hand. Breast,
testicle, uterus, purple
of garnet.
I was a girl then, in a tree,
with a man beneath me. Apples and figs. Afterwards
sleeping at streamside beneath the branches.
3
It was the trout
that told me to leave. The fig
like an ornament, the moon in the clouds.
Red berries
floated past us. "This place
you may not be." And across the stream
a girl said, "this is your father."
4
For seven years there was no sunlight.
I had lost my way.
They dressed me and groomed me
and made me wear garlands.
THE TEST
Your servant is your friend, your hand
is your father.
.
You come back.
You know you blew it.
Everyone dies.
.
This is the only test.
.
The rain has stopped.
A young woman stands on the terrace
looks towards the valley.
The near cloud
the long white one
could be a ridge-line.
.
The darkest time.
.
Lavender's blue
rosemary's green
when I am king
you shall be queen.
On my back
from this mountaintop
stars, the milky way.
.
Lost. What was it? Unlit,
etcetera, the red dirt, the dusty greenery.
.
As if I were woven of different threads, red
for sex, blue for calmness, yellow
for intellect.
.
Bats at the mouth of it
fly out at dusk
re-enter at dawn,
so many teeth folded around themselves
on the cave's palate.
.
In the old days men brought birds with them into excavations.
When the air was spent
the bird fell, its eyes
as shut as a raisin, dead.
So the men would clamber upwards.
The girls at Auschwitz
scorched lungs, clawing
for the light of the windows,
no longer seeing or caring about their tormentors,
breaking their nails on the walls.
.
Memory loss--inattentiveness--small details
confusion
weakness
vision clear, but blurred connection between vision and understanding or touch
anger and fear
paranoia--need to escape
At waking, after meals.
.
Total simplicity allows the killing.
********************************************
HARRIET ZINNES
Paradise Enow
The unfathomable sky,
holds in motion
the airless nightingale
You cannot speak of heaven
You cannot speak of hell
without the wherewithal
All
where
with
sun
songs evaporate in Paradise
the fall
Shoe
If the shoe fits ...
But the nails are outrageous.
They protrude
like enemies breaking the front line.
It is all a matter of the hidden.
The voluptuous staggers to be born.
On the sidewalk
there are many shoes,
and the nails make no sound.
Oh, but the clatter,
the clatter of the hidden.
Veronica's Veil
Veronica's veil -- how to handle that today?
An image?
A sacred image?
A reflection?
An illusion?
Saint Veronica walks the streets,
and weeps.
BRIAN FEWSTER
Polyp
1. Enema
Lie on your side, please, with your knees drawn up.
I'm going to administer the enema through this tube,
but first I have to insert a finger to check
there's no obstruction. Please relax. That's good.
Here is the tube. Let me know if you feel discomfort.
OK, that's finished. Now I'm about to withdraw it.
Remain in the same position for five minutes,
or until you feel a powerful urge to go.
The toilets are just opposite.
2. Flexible Sigmoidoscopy
And now another personal violation,
in the same submission posture before an image
that lurches in cinéma-verité down a tunnel
of garish tangerine,
to monitor a self I haven't seen.
Yes, there it is. It's quite a little monster.
We're going to have to cut it out in pieces.
The silver blade goes in and out of shot.
Open. Now close. Open again. Now close.
Something inside has set my teeth on edge
like a fingernail on mortar - not quite pain
but an electric buzz, a scything whisper.
Memory stores the images away
and my attached labelling equipment
begins to shape and generate these words.
That's about half. I'll make another appointment
to finish it. It's probably benign,
but these things can turn cancerous if left.
We'll know for sure after the biopsy.
3. Rectal Washout
What I have to do, my love, is push this tube
up your rectum and pour about a litre of water in
through a funnel. It's going to feel a bit strange and uncomfortable.
Let me know if it gets too much. That's wonderful, my sweet.
Now I'm removing the tube and I want you to swing your legs over
and ease yourself off the bed on to this commode.
As soon as you're ready, let it all out and use
the toilet paper, but put it in this bag afterwards.
It hasn't come out, my darling, so I'm afraid
we'll have to go through it again. This time, wriggle your hips
from side to side and wait five minutes on the commode
before letting go.
Yippety-doo! I see polyp.
4. Waiting for the Biopsy
According to a theory on the edge
where physics merges into metaphysics
a quantum level indeterminacy
entails a bifurcation of the universe,
invisible layers peeling off each second,
including those my uninvited guest
was absent from. An unmarked road's been taken
and selves diminish down divergent routes
towards their unseen outcomes
while I wait.
TIM ALLEN
luck & skill
shrill wire
nosedives
extinct kitchens
unleash terror core
I get the message
I understand
I understand the way
a vapour trail understands
a vapour trail understands
the jet engine
I understand the way
a jet engine understands
a jet engine understands
the jet
I understand the way
a jet understands command
a glowing ring
singed fringe
I came I saw
I commandeered
volunteer flickers
next to unpeeled teacher
the stars came down
like angels
the angels came down
like stars
the starry angels
went down
crested volunteer
went up like a mast
balanced up there
like a mascot
mutiny in the sapphire
core
wreck roar
on tight beach
on swinging
shore
stabbed through a veil
of mauve beaches
why the language park
parks here
in the lane by
the language park
in the mistake
in the country
when our understanding
sits atop a car
sits atop the bonnet
in a video
drowning in model club
sweat
choking on dry ice
like a macho sunset
be gone from
here brand new
orders
stuck to a wound
to a wounded
lover
a pretender a
pretend power
a pretend force
actually
fading on a knoll
fading knoll…
all he ever
amounted to
was a good name
hiking through form
*
when I grow up
I want to be a sniper
a police marksman
a snoop
a snipe at work
a squeeze
marking territory
with inspired silence
hum-drum
the cut mug cut my gum
tucked-in tum tugged my gut
everything in one direction
my coffee-mug smiled
it was seventeen today
teacups came from miles away
all arrives from the only place
days are lamps
nights are express trains
oral candle-cloud
skin screan
buttered draft
where's the party?
over there
where's its locus?
glasses made w petals
drinks made of preparations
determined then cropped
ready then cropped
then switched
there then raped
my o my
your a croupier
in a group of croupiers
everything's over there
you'll find all you need
carol sheets, cabs
indians had the arrows
but they died
giving directions
chipped kiss
shredded ball
flapping 'round the field
i'm sick of this
gona spew up
my whole world
hum-drum requests
others' favourites
traffic calming
shot in the face
but bite my tongue
from over there
hum-drum requests
traffic calming
shot in the face
but bite my tongue
from over there
distance pitches
sweating alibis
tourist angels
afternoon twists
on the ansaphone
clerk pitches in
drums in basement
clerk in garage
solo beans
hollow
routine
___________________________________-
unincremental increment
the hollow features in the landscape of animals
programme squeezed between sea and sky
the hollow features in the mysterious horizon
a programme as ceaseless as it is unneeded and bent thin
a lot of light bitten into by a little light cries out
'i'm bleeding my life-light I'm bent and thin as dense rubble'
the towns have water democracy and health insurance
the hospitals think of themselves
a programme of rehousing numbers of letters be
comes the programme for rehousing letters of numbers
the rain is reasonable therefore the rain is like reason
the hollow future of the imprisoned human beings
sick mayonnaise sky is full of amazing unfallen snow
we feel as weird and dark as abstract accidents
a tousled haired decision combs the mermaid's hair
its quiet its too quiet its ambitiously quiet
the sophisticated depressions just like a waisted pipe
a depressed sophistry just like a hipped pipe
as the shadows deliberately unravel life comes to life
spectrum echo
unthawed out thought sufficient unto its clever lever
swells into a symphony and mislays the melody
the rain coming down hard now like heavy rock music
a melody mislaid above resurfaces below metal
the mermaid reminds us of women and of fish
the prison roof is removed to insert an umbrella stand
saw this programme it had a doll's filing cabinet
was interested in the vest that separated mindline from bodyline
stale old lady shuffled under the sofa is that melody
unincremental increment clinging to the script
DOMINIC FOX
Two Noble Mice
from a work in progress
Our agents have depleted self-esteem,
pass unchecked through osmotic boundaries;
are even now at work in schools and dairies.
Revise contingency; brush up on contagion,
small god of casual sex whose name is legion.
Exchange immunities, lest worm of worm
run rings around the commune. In the warm
of reciprocity share recipes
for violent tortes, exploding canapes.
Each mutant strain of love extends the en-
tity drawn fibrously across an N-
dimensional continuum as sponge,
as coral, as the arbitrary angel
folding, unfolding, his wings into space-time.
* * *
Speaking of love, do you expose a nerve,
a root, in the tongue itself, the tongue itself
as root or nerve exposed on the butcher's block?
The soul in its dissolving capsule, your love's
body's adornment of gesture and composure -
what leaks out through the hole in her winter
layers, that vital expenditure - is that her breath's
warmth lost in purling steam before your eyes?
Love gets and stays caught in hostilities that
are like the air's conduits in that they are endless,
aimless, statistically reducible. Atrocities,
shittiness, on all sides. Speaking of the love
in burly or dissolving conduits, the vital
tongue leaking into the block, adorn yourself.
ROBERT HAMPSON
2 from 'serious business'
october heatwave
interactions
contaminated by
journalists decode
weather charts
safety modifications
to suit the
pragmatism of
government
slow burn
sweats through
target countries
away from
coastal fringes
peace with
security on
all scheduled
flights no
quick knockout
for CNN
irrespective
of destination
local hero
this is serious
business we have
air supremacy
where we cannot
find him he
shows his face
only to admirers
media access
stitched shut
only promo videos
with studied
disregard for
appropriate agencies
high altitude
airdrops deliver
individual yellow
lunch-packs
cause for
heartburn perhaps
on the hill
KENT JOHNSON
Two post-poems from:
A Thinge for Barrett Watten* (a Booke of correfpondencef in progreff)
September 25, 2000
Dear Charles (Simic):
Yes, it’s true, the Language poets air-brushed me out of Leningrad.
One thing I will never forget from that simulacral city in reverse is sitting in a vast hall in an
incredibly ornate czarist building made all of marble, crimson-draped windows towering out onto
the Neva, swarms of rococoed cherubs overhead, Barrett facing me across the great mahogany
table in a kind of late pinkish glow, looking quite uncomfortable, eating little spoonfuls of caviar,
while half a dozen Stalinist officials from the Ministry of Culture raised formal toasts to the
“American cultural friends of the Soviet Union.”
Arkadii Dragomoshchenko leaned over to me and with booze on his breath said in heaviest
accent, “is this a bunch of fucking shit or what?”
“You think so?,” I asked, sturgeon eggs sliding down my throat. “I think this is fantastic!”
It was the first time in my life that I felt like a real Poet....
And to my left, far away, at the far head of the table, was Ron Silliman, his whole face consumed
by a blinding sphere of light.
love,
Kent
October 8, 2000
[Dia del guerrillero heroico]
Dear comrades:
What a terrible city Detroit is. Two days ago I was there, sitting in a Greek restaurant called The
Parthenon, or something like that, reading The Paris Review roundtable discussion about “The
State of Poetry Today,” with participants Harold Bloom, Stephen Burt, Frank Kermode, William
Logan, Daniel Mendelsohn, Richard Poirier, Richard Lamb, and Helen Vendler. In the forty or so
pages of commentary about dozens of the “greatest poets,” living and dead, there is not one
mention of a single non-Caucasian—and only three passing mentions of non-English language
poets (Brodsky is one, dismissed as the most overrated poet in the world, and Cavafy, and Rilke).
It’s really quite amazing. Is America a racist and eurocentric culture? My God, I’m beginning to
wonder!
Not that it has anything to do with this astounding state of affairs in the Paris Review, because it
doesn’t, but any minute, I thought, Barrett Watten will walk in the door, looking like he just
stepped out of GQ magazine (Wayne State University is only a few bombed-out buildings down
the street from The Parthenon), but he never did, and I doubt he would have recognized me even
if he had, all fancied up and lipsticked in drag as I was.
Anyway, in this Paris Review piece (which, indeed, is remarkably like Detroit in many different
ways), is an analogy that struck me as so interesting I thought I would ask what people thought
about it: Richard Lamb says, “It sometimes seems like poetry is the first art to become a sport.
The writer/common reader model has broken down in favor of a sort of generalized participatory
aficion. Few baseball fans never play baseball (Marianne Moore might have been an exception)
[note to comrades: Jack Spicer was probably another, but this is not the kind of piece in which
one would find mention of him, KJ]; likewise there are poetry sandlots and diamonds all over the
place. And some Shea Stadiums. The result is lively but fuzzy.”
The rest of the day, in between sipping my Retsina and making eyes at the handsome Greek
waiters, I wondered: If this baseball comparison is true, what then is our Subsubpoetics? Is it an
American Legion team learning the ropes? Is it a high school team full of up-and-comers? Is
Subsub an obscure farm team in AA, full of frustrated wanna-be’s? Is it like a team in the old
Negro Leagues, neglected but loaded with talent? Is it a sandlot team full of wishful dreams? A
bar league softball team drunk and playing for fun? A Playstation 2 baseball team on a computer
screen? To what might we compare “our” team?
Whatever we are, the Major League Owners Association members around the Paris Review
roundtable would seem to be unaware of our existence.
Kent
*[To be underftood af a metonyme, not af a perfonage]
*[To be underftood af a metonyme, not af a perfonage]
RICHARD DILLON
BIG TIME SHOT
No poet here other than Dillon ever strode in the midst of beer party
out on Cape Ann at midnight midsummer
Picked up basketball ala Terrance Stamp in Toby Dammit
And with back to basketball hoop nailed to elm
Out beyond the farthest realms of Horse
Amid mayhem and hooting, back of car the puking nympho
I versed the sunshot in radiant arc
As the one we call Bopper
Two hundred fifty pounds baseball hat swivelled wrong
Arms lifting out UP flung
I salute you above the silent crowds the years
"You Did IT, DAD, Voosh! Drilled it! DAD, IT's Never YES! BEEN DONE!"
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