Contents
| Kapulani | ......... Makaleho |
| Murray Edmond | .......... Le livre de l'histoire du monde |
| Adam Aitken | ..........The Astral Traveller's Guide to Alice Springs |
| Pam Brown | ..........City |
| Yunte Huang | ..........Farewell to Farewell |
| Richard Hamasaki | .......... Da Mento Hospital |
| Rebecca Mays Ernest | ..........Scratch Factor |
| Paul Hoover | .......... The Mezzanine |
| John Noto | .......... Persona And Thrall |
| Dan Raphael | ..........[untitled] |
| Gabrielle Welford | .......... Con labor ay shun |
| Joshua McKinney | .......... Icarus Backwards |
| Jorge Guitart | .......... Mr. Hiatus |
| John Kinsella | ..........nature morte: Oh Rhetoric! |
| Yunte Huang | ..........Tofu Your Life |
| Pam Brown | .......... In One House : Adam Aitken : A Review |
| Susan M. Schultz | .......... from Addenda |
| Loss Pequeño Glazier | .......... Kyushu |
| Sue Moss | ..........Cautionary Tales |
| Murray Edmond | .......... The Gannets of Pilsen |
| Dan Featherston | .......... rioatoyac |
| Michelle Murphy | .......... Conversion |
| Liz Waldner | .......... Talented and Gifted |
| Cydney Chadwick | .......... Hangman |
| Marie Hara | .......... Over a Drinking Fountain As I Recognize
the Face the Metal Parts Make: Eyes, Nose and Water Shooting Out of a Mouth |
| Marie Hara | .......... A Conehead Marching |
| Joshua Harmon | .......... New Orthography |
| Hazel Smith | .......... from Walking the Faultlines |
Contributors' Notes
Makaleho
Click to enlarge
Le Livre de l'histoire du monde
In remaking the world we have come full circle. But we have
remade the world with our own hands-rediscovering all things,
not once imitating anything. -Michel Seuphor
The world was stitched together at noon
on Sunday out of old bicycle parts
by a mouse with thread of ice and eelskin silk.
The first woman said to the first man: "Hola!
In a cave not far from here I keep 1000 geese."
At sea the pig fell overboard and so arose
the custom of sacrificing the first-born child
by casting it at birth into the ring of beehives.
Chroniclers began to write it down about the time
major technological advances were made in the art
of navigation. Possibly a heavy protein diet
contributed. The rebels sailed out into the centre
of the lake from whence they could be heard hurling
atavistic insults at night, their naked shadows
big as wind-tossed trees on the torch-lit water.
First the world ran out of participants;
finally the observers too became extinct.
The bare, brown earth and red, crumbling rocks
were alive with a carpet of gregarious mice.
Mutant eels with fixed grins which displayed
their sabre teeth infested the remnants of fresh water.
Ice descended and froze the ink in pens
and saliva in mouths. The image which was evoked
was neither the man weeping after the film
because he had recognised the impossibility of
ever returning to the land depicted on the screen
nor the piled bodies of the stupid army
who camped in the bush clearing and were shot
where they shat by volleys of accurate fire,
but the dry laundry flapping day after day
in an exhausted air with not a soul at home
left to take it in and fold it up. Barcelona, 8/12/96
The Astral Traveller's Guide to Alice Springs
As if the town has lost its sight to cataracts, the cold gravel
the ghost gums. The air's too pure to create clouds, or the simpler structures
of human kindness. Brown hawks carve the air, ground zero
over football fields, sprinklers fan out into rainbowed mists.
It's a place where dogs chase rocks and stalk mountains,
for gazing at stars, so many stars seen by so few.
We leave our signature in the sky, before we descend, guided by the star fire
of dead ancestors. There's work to do, finding out
what it was exactly, modifying our accents, and sounding out
the brittle earth, test the exact composition of gases, life-
supporting in proportion to life-threatening.
We gauge in the driest creeks and in the flesh of thinnest cows
the hazardous nature of propagating a new race of ourselves,
even in the form of trees modified by nitrogen overload,
or as other organisms that meet a sympathetic balance
with the native inhabitants.
As gentle as befits our cosmic nature, we sprinkle the dirty ice we are
among these pilgrims in a shopping mall, all wearing
T-shirts of rocks: central landmarks we have used
to navigate our countless passes of this continent.
We follow them-discreetly as scientists-to their place
of nourishment-a watering hole of complex
anthropological interest. Here the spirit of the tribe
is ennobled-not by mere trinkets-but by the wrought iron runes
of a crueller script they call Branding Irons, a typeface
signifying ownership of their four-legged herds. It is clear we have
stumbled on empires of meat, and this its temple, and these
their custodians and their icons: photo-chemical representations
of shelter, ideal scenes of water, moments of harvest, a muster of beasts
by elegant hovering vehicles they call helicopters.
Might this be the place to declare ourselves
a delegation from Halley's comet, but too shattering an interruption
to their industry, and our accents as yet too strange.
We return, puzzled that our prophesies
predicted so little of this, so little written but with this new knowledge
we see our home for what it is: magnesium and ice
never seen before or ever imagined, in orbit round the sun.
Farewell to Farewell
stripping off all articles
we are non-natives
excitement of city air
final-
ly
stinks on pages
leaves (farewell) rotten in mouth
we don hav
any
to say
though
so energetic
those pages of snow
so dreamy
those letters of summer
where is
day keeper
tell me
how to me
morize
with id
you pay 3.75
for movie
that doesn't hurt
but leaves of me-
(autumn)
mory free
so farewell to farewell
go back
there your seat and
hear me
sing
not swan dirges
but
peas in showers
Da Mento Hospito
Eh, somebudi lik make one
big freeway tru my vallee
t'dey lik bill 'em reel beeg
and strong man
lik one battl ship
so t'dey can send all t'dem kars
an trucs an busses
t'rew da mowntans
an make moa
condos and macdonals and purlridges
so da turists, and da grunts, an da locos
can bang each a'da moa
not only dat, but the air fors guys
lik hapai dere missos
tru da mowntans from heekem to mokapu
an bak
one na'da hi'way ain't gonna
keel dis iland brah
dis iland alredi' dyin-
da hungri politisans
da govament
an da beesnees mens
tink dey can ku'aku'ai da aina
lik one prostitoot
eh, so wat if get one moa hi'way
tru da mowntans
who gives a fricken "A"
about da farmas
da fishamens
da fresh wata
da wind
da rain
an da makas
yeh, da eyes,
da makas dat luk da mowntans
an spak da new hi'way runnin
tru da vallee
da eyes dat see nottin'
but one beeg town
an pretti soon
we can drive dawreck-
from halawa prison oneway
to da hawaii state mento hospito
in kaneohe
circa 1983
Da Mento Hospito
E, sambadi laik meik wan
big friew chru mai vaeli
de laik bil om ril big
aen schchrawng maen
laik wan baeto ship
so de kaen sen awl dem kaz
aen chraks aen basez
chru da mauntenz
aen meik moa
kandoz aen maekanoz aen prlrijez
so da turis, aen da grants, aen da lokoz
kaen baeng ich ada moa
not oni daet, bat da ea faw gaiz
laik hapai der misoz
chru da mauntenz fram hikam to mokapu
aen bak
wan nada haiwe eint gona
kil dis ailen
dis ailen awlredi dain-
da hangri palatishenz
da gavament
aen da biznez menz
tingk de kaen ku'aku'ai da aina
laik wan prastitut
e, so wat if get wan mo haiwe
chru da mauntenz
hu givz a frikin "e"
abaut da famaz
da fishamenz
da fresh wata
da win
da rein
aen da makaz
yae, da aiz
da makaz daet luk da mauntenz
aen spak da nyu haiwe ranin
chru da vaeli
da aiz daet si natin
bat wan big taun
aen priti sun
wi kaen jraiw darek
fram halawa prizen wan we
tu da hawai steit mento haspito
in kaneohe
(rendered into Hawai'i Pidgin [Odo] orthography
by Charlene Sato)
Scratch Factor
x home/ x factory
Shock of delicacy finished
flavor withering in the bud
think quick out of a paper bag
perimeter of parameters
food for the barn dance
standing date at the seat of production
pull close
the building blocks of organism
nest in Chinese boxes
how lived is what built when
living in it as it builds
earn hard free time
transact mortar
negotiate solder
homework the landscape
brick by brick project distinguished contexts
weighing plane figures of tin
fields of trope, candor, lawn of lays
root by sound
plant a candle, taste movement
cracker pie, barbells, milkmaid's buckets
rond de jambe sautŽ
counter
factual
axel airy, ery, ory
x factory / y home
Y call this summer
born to wild
raised to be intellectual
studied spontaneity
cottage industry
exerting, detecting
ceaselessly, seamlessly
spat cultch
molluscular waste
conduct
carryover
hallmark of a vestibule
chirographic noodling circuitry
trading crafts like beads of common sense
mood rings
pieds poids
the transfer of weight
commodity at premium
as if everyone were dying tomorrow
as if everything were to disappear
remain without remainder
pearls of great silliness
hut cot hut
Rest
Matrix, it is not said
yet dough must
Roman couch of multiples
isotopia secretly trite
freshly jaded hackney abroad
what is where is when is how
wooden overcoat
six foot bungalow
Dutch basement
waterlogged pillow
utope, euphorist
give us a last dying simile
involved, folded, complicated
unleavened greening
inseep deepening
binary, supernumerary
nouminal
mettle of kilter
angel biscuits, airs
play them, breathe them, don them
unitrine
y home / y factory
Edenic
side of a barn
spite painting or irresistible palette
nitty gritty
brook and bridge
dawning artery
blue willow patterned pie chart
concurring in nature
region's rights
war conditions versus reasons
recognizance
reconnaissance
recognition
good 'n' plenty 'n' strange
the sea by the sound of someone's voice
does the hearth extend to the waterfront
pressure points distinguished
locomotif
roundhouse for maintenance of crazy urges
fretless
a bird calls like somebody learning to whistle
y factory / x home
Spontaneous studiousness
venture some
geometry in time makepiece
plug into the campsite
delect on the right
gristly
landings prior to the promised
answerable
answeringly
sensible host implicit
responsible acting foundation
presence like articulation
monk abode a sphere
curled ribbon on the package around
the point at which everything remains to be done
tear ducts, hidebound peppercorn
homeplated
movement over the tongue
The Mezzanine
Fumbling in a vein glassy with its transit,
the story will not begin, the story will not die.
Repeating the world like water,
events begin their nervous arrival.
Now we have cognition no nicety can kill.
The mother theory swells along the neuron range.
The social anvil rings. Money as love,
love as greed, greed as a kind of fate.
When the god of dirt's transparent,
the stealthy world's in flood. World of utter words.
In the summer of that idea, passionate excess,
bruised with attention, breaks. Large men
are seen walking, embarrassed by their size.
At the bottom of human nature, something beaten stirs.
Instead of desire, a brown tree and a blue,
marge of snow at the garden verge, and the new dark age.
We sit in the excavation between silence
and white noise, where the blank weight of existence
thickens but will not shine. Except of course
those clouds, stately against the mountain,
which in their brilliance blind grass and shatter water.
We are beneath one now, prepared to be impressive.
Persona And Thrall
Mand; wheel-bloom; locking gardenias;
My idle mind is sitewild, a tumescent bauble
throbbing the infrared, a trussed mud-puddle, revisited
architecture of the graveyard theatre, history
of storm sewers, minutely stepped on brick
ready for the sun's light pulver:
Day! The broadside vehicular flush
is a revolution, cleansing vacuum
pedal-steel vascular ducts on-line,
yellow bands of tendon drill under blue
membrane, jangling, ringing out
the grey-soft data-glove;
THERE is my reprieve: mind like cauliflower celluloid
peeled from luminous thirst movements;
Remixable debt-weather lightening over
broad, sculpted lawns of March time
blooms awash in flesh, and the field density
wakes volcanic shot-glass vernal with tears,
the measured pour
bursting from stems into petals
FOREVER is only slightly more than worn
velvet remade in another shift or cell structure;
The spit of morning rotates on axial-cone
elastic sublet arcs coloring up the rinsed ochre
astrolabe; early-blistering clouds
pipette vaporous lubricants
through sinus vagrancies
windblown leaf-buds
cut across the looped crane's nest moon's
toss'n'turn cabinet.
"you write about the audio-visual psychic barrage that batters
the mind and heart to a pulp,. . . while i write about the moon
cause that's what i'm looking at"
- mark sargent
getting barraged with all these moons useta bother me.
i'd keep running to avoid, while others wafted through impervious or oblivious.
maybe inoculated, or immune
these fuzzy fires. these powdery chills
a tingling dearth of focus
pull-array peeling back dead sensors
to vector through rocklight
adding beasts to each letter:
rose beasts halo beasts
moon beasts raining like an army of sew machines
like spring break florida beach a sudden aluminum forest:
the sound wind makes
through crowds of naked silent people
grooving with moving, tuned with the light
phoneless ears shadeless eyes
hair active as a cat's tail when birds arouse
these bird moons- I could be one, let go and particulate,
flying as if hunting seeing as if special
swimming the wind through skin evanesces thermotropic pulse
aglint and active, swirling ephemera evolve wormtread language or morphology:
scarf held till the right moment needs hillocks of desired muscle
like half-baked rice paste humming the ceiling down:
space squints time forgets
my body is dense as the wind at earth's core, shoes like capacitors
feeding me earthwind,
i'm jumping till i'm knee deep
spasm-dancing like a helicopter made flesh
Con labor ay shun
Onceuponatime YEStuday it finally came down to
this. No more nutmeats. Hear me? Hair me?
I am in this adamant. The first man,
and not even hairy, all-breasted, s o f t
in the right places. Don't take advantage.
Dis is yer mudder speakin.
Co, co, co, co - what was the word? How write it?
Brain lost, no exit, no weigh out?
Opt, operation, odger, velo, llaboration
yes, yes. And what's that then? lippiness?
labia? work? lip-service?
libbers? labbers? collabers. Who, hoo, woo?
These painful headshorn. These guileless
workworn. Con labor ay shun. Tutti mutti.
Woik tugither. No prob. Woik tugither good,
woik tugither bad. Woo say good, woo say bad?
Woowho say tugither wit du wrong who. Mostly
inwar. Inwar the wrong who is con labor.
Tantamount tu treacle. Mountatante
tu treasurn.
Ticklemepink & I'll tellall. Tugither wit du rite who is.
Not inwar.
Icarus Backwards
hurtles into the sun
from now on
unable to recall
the conditions to
elicit the luxurious
past, its always-
correct observations
on suffering, betrayal,
dimension and disuse.
I read all
morning a book I
couldn't close: it
was the cruel flash
as light angles into
a wave and then
the wave is gone.
But it wasn't like that.
If there were any,
the venders' shops are
closed, a village exactly
as I remember it.
for Edmond Jabès
Mr. Hiatus
eclectic odium during happy hour one of a series
litotes to papier reality to saboteurs
bobtail collects sentimental alps o kool pragma portico
it ceases to designate as soon as you touch me
this is the spirit in which
prejudice glyphs moved
i created a superb bluster
for the summary of kissing
i translate scalp paradoxes
proclivity plague breaks out
you are good at monasteries & oozing
time covers the monopoly of snow
but the frog met the tepid
then i see you are a pillar of the ad hoc
an axon clogs configures glass gears
forget phonation & feel this
if you follow lineaments you'll find postcards
now only the behemoths have become details
this could be inference arriving rebarbative sales
i wish to call the ridicule patrol
i am sugar's ligatures & a long congelation
why don't you infest this for now while the strip-searcher blinks
organic matter keeps you up all night
like i said the undermining champ
yet the monstrous everyday phrase
& the inerrant minaret dude
the sheep are lunar when they want to
& yet you sleep with the kites
front-row tickets to hints?
the board destroys the logogram
a miasma festival and the out-of-towner
puts a finger in everyone's it
though a good fist is conversational
i'll focal variation you buster
to the throbbing friend
you have been simpering for centuries
no not cavalleria talmudiana
i negotiated with the lacustrine folks behind the dump truck
determine if resemblance plays a bosomy role
rust is in shipshape & python is the colonel of the wind
of a shell my mucous nemesis
i happen nearer your body thanks to being atheoretic
& the standard girl pauses in persistence's interstices
the fatal constraint hits low
you derive confidence from phlogiston
three times a day my stomach constructs a deal
a dunce is nice watery architecture
since supper i've known what meaning can do to you
nature morte: Oh Rhetoric!
for John Tranter
Calls for clarity
suggest the breakdown
or rediscovery of a market
like horrible workers
following Rimbaud
as he moves through and out
of the post-modern
work ethic, meaning just hanging there
like an island buoyed by dense air,
as the earth revolves unsecured
beneath.
The masters leave studios
& paint only for personal
gratification-horrible workers
keeping the studios going,
contracting art to a single flourish
of pen or brush. Like Cicciolina
being the model for everything
in the glossy magazine apartments
of meta-kitsch. Or Elle Macpherson
saying you should only read
what you've written yourself.
Or Christo hiding dead art
beneath swathes of wrapping.
On the Island of Doctor
Moreau the animal-humans
animate analogies & moralize
as we take our medicine.
Taking the cure means
making it suffer. Metaphor
is the only way of saying something
plain & simple & as we turn full circle
towards Babel Fowler becomes a kind of
trendy gibberish. In
Giacomo Balla's
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
_we_ notice the energy
of a still in which Balla
delights in the simultaneity
of deprivation. Innovation
is the fraudulent usage
of an established
method of discussion
on the nature of intent
& inspiration
only because there's a market.
We might still be drawn to expression
without a means of exchange
but it's unlikely we'd be pushed
to validate it. But that's
in a perfect world where your indulgence
wouldn't bother anyone a damn.
That if you didn't work you'd starve
along. A doctor tells the story
of a suicide who survived
just long enough to fully comprehend
the totality of pain. He'd drunk toilet cleaner
& then changed his mind.
Like the late twentieth century.
There's no need to refer to particular
incidents to make _this_ a political poem.
I can analogize by using the Island
of Doctor Moreau & prompting the reader
to consider the tyrannies of science,
which is a euphemism
for. _The Law Giver is dead_.
The Ipecacuanha like a UFO fixation.
In the House of Pain Moreau said: "You
forget all that a skilled vivisector
can do with living things."
Here, if you wish
for an absolute kind of illumination
you must of course
read the book. I have read the book.
A lot of my friends are writers.
Many are venerated by their peers
& would be considered to have good taste
in things literary. I write a poem & hand it around.
Some praise it as the best thing I've written,
others suggest I return to the draft-board,
others that I scrap it & take a rest.
I consider that the best thing
you've written might not mean much
if deep down they think that the rest
of your stuff is pretty lousy.
Even their judgements
have different meanings
depending on how they tell me & how I listen.
Style doesn't change, but styles do.
I once led into a poem with a quote
from Brodsky: "Everything has its limit,
including sorrow." I read the poem. It's titled
"Trans-celluloid Vision". I consider why
the quote is used? The poem is in three
parts and the last stanza reads: "Everything has its limit-
the train slowing, the journey
almost complete. Relief
borders on sorrow.
I lose track of the plot,
embracing the platform." In the _light_
of the rest of the poem this is a little "tacked on".
It is a poem about a fragmenting relationship;
a kind of lament.
But this doesn't really come through
so it can't _really_ be about that.
I haven't guided the reader.
through italicizing "can't"
to make my intention clear(er).
My problems continue(d)
with a second reading
& I suggest(ed)
it's another of those I gave up on but wasn't able
to get rid of.
Years later & I'm at it again.
The first line of section 1 (View from a train)
reads "The curve of the track / betrays the engine."
I remember the train going from Sydney to Melbourne.
That the _mystery of movement_ was lost when
the engine appeared out of the window. I think it was
raining & the atmosphere was "surreal". But this
is not my word, it comes from somewhere else.
The poem continues: "Moisture
trapped within the double-paned window
makes liars of manufacturers claiming
air-tight security. I stare past the frame
of lacquered wood & outside the day
is cinematographic. Flickering
from reel to reel until the credits
show the names of logging & catering companies,
trucking & management industries."
The second stanza turns against the first:
"A green desert. Sheep moving slowly
through viscous paddocks, water pooling
like blood. Dry country stranded
on the backbone of grey granite.
A washed sunset emphasizes
the sharp teeth of a retreating city."
I recall being dissatisfied with the "washed
sunset"-maybe "brooding" or "harsh"
or some other more active adjective?
But it was the bitterness of sorrow
that intrigued & this disparate
image stuck. In the dissection
of the corpse of this poem
I recall Lyn Hejinian
telling me how she'd gone to watch
autopsies with Mike Patton,
the lead singer of Faith No More.
I wouldn't have mentioned Mike but his music
has always interested me & if he hadn't been
on world tour I'd have tried to solicit
material for the literary journal I edit.
Lyn said
that in this de-sensitized environment
(actually that's my word, I can't remember
what she said specifically but its effect
on me was to suggest this) the body
wasn't that frightening.
I think she held a liver.
I asked if it was like a collection of artefacts
being removed carefully from a tomb.
I think she laughed.
But it might not have
been a comfortable laugh. The second section
of my poem is entitled: "The Cat
& The Canary or The Absence Of Sorrow
Accompanying A Belated Reading
Of The Millionaire's Will: A Reconstruction
To Help Pass The Time" So, it's _sorrow_
by association. In _true_post-modern spirit
I digress into commentary on a 1927 b & w
horror film. Somewhere in there there's
the influence of Tranter. I'm tossing up
whether to "background" this piece.
No, I'll quote it in full & then elaborate,
simply noting that the long lines
do not best capture the short subtitles
that accompany silent movies but _do_ suggest
the notion of linear narrative. Maybe
as you read the long-lined version
you can also visualize how it would
look were it segmented, chopped up:
"The late night silent classic for the real buffs.
Shot in '27. The director died two years later
Of blood poisoning. The screen throws a double image,
The UHF aerial failing, or the ghost of the director
Fermenting 'in-camera' with age. He has the cast
Lip-synching their way through a reading
Of an eccentric millionaire's will in a house
That his ghost has occupied for twenty years.
There is Mammy Patient, Susan & the famous
West Diamonds, Annabelle, Paul, & The Lawyer.
GHOSTS! the portrait falls to the floor.
Mammy inks her brow. The will
Mentions a distant relative & demands
Sanity. The lawyer disappears. The murderer
Claw-fingered & with nails like razors
Is seen only by Susan, who must PROVE
Her sanity! The doctor with peculiar hands
Arouses suspicion. There's a moth in the safe
Though it's not been opened for twenty years!
And who hired the imposter asylum warder
Who's hunting a madman who tears
His victims as a cat does a canary?"
Strangely, this section stops here.
No witty line that might hint at resolution.
If the title is considered we might
reflect on the ruthlessness
of the participants.
An allegory of the twentieth century.
Or of the human condition generally?
It's been noted that the last stanza
of the final section
seems a little "tacked on".
But in the light of the second section maybe
it's a pretty obvious conclusion?
Part 3 ("Solarization-a celebration") reads:
"Sunrise.
My mind blank.
Spencer Gore's painting
The Icknield Way 1912
appears stereoscopic
on my glasses, or so
I'm told. A geometric
almost tabular sky
registers through a film
of brilliant light
as the train celebrates
the approaching city's
solarization.
The sky inflects
& organizes fancy:
the landscape bright,
explosive, threatens
to ignore the script."
"Organizes fancy"-_it_ reminds _me_
of a review by James Dickey
on John Ashbery's first
collection of poetry.
I can't remember what he said exactly
but he hated the book.
I tracked the book down
& thought it was great.
But then I like Ashbery{'s poetry}.
There's something about his use of weirs,
I think.
I'm reminded of Vasari
talking of Leonardo
saying that he could find no living model
for the features for his head of Christ,
so it was best left incomplete. It existed in my files
as a kind of still life,
as a piece of dead nature
waiting for clarity,
hinting at de-
compositon.
Tofu Your Life
frame de frame
rule de rule
______________
| your life |
| a small |
| square tofu |
______________
unnegotiable shape
soft to chopstick
\ \
In One House : Adam Aitken
A Review
reading a set of poems
is easier & usually
more pleasurable
than talking about one,
about how, for instance,
adam, in his book, shifts
between realms of identity, between
the record- an itinerant childhood-
& , as an adult,
a reconstitution
the poet's mission, declared
first off, in a quote
from "Art & Lies",
is to recover
past, home & place.
(mission impossible?)
the first poem's title:--
_Post-colonial._
via various tourisms-
tv airport history-
africa leichhardt gilligan's island
cambodia burma uluru thailand
enmore saigon surry hills,
from bruce lee to barthes,
james bond, & mr. & mrs. big
a kind of analytical
umberto-eco-everywhere
gone "asian"
finally lands
in Bondi
& exotica- monkeys
angkor wat's bats karma tantra
buffalo buddha tiger balm-
rendered the quotidian-
even the shopkeeper from Saigon spoke Greek
to sell his cheeses-
the exotic, the "oriental"
charted, examined, lamented
dismissed, embraced--
the spectacle is integrated
& it's all on SBS
("_the world is an a-ma-zing place_")
the writing-
as adam fixes
imagination's artifice
to art what bob
adamson's blurb calls
john forbes' "hip technique,"
naming the influence,
reminds me more of dawe
breaking away
from his mentor, forbes,
(this poetry's less eccentric)
into, for example,
a rhyming formalism-
in
_Indochine_
She gave birth to fearless boys, who sold the farms,
who played chicken
on highways for dying on; they'd live again
as dashboard tiger charms.
&
_Sailing to Byzantium_
Byzantium: east meets west in search of fame
Strangers to each other--from a life of action
To a layer cake of fin de siecle, a corrupted game
this dark-ish humour
doesn't joke
and love?
every poet's gnawed old bone-
cool love appears
but the tone is mostly
temperate, serious & sensual-
Rivers of jungle honey you'd agree
thick enough to sweeten bitter herbs
so deepened empathy
becomes a protest poem
_The Bad Women of Bangkok_
the cynical excess-
sex without eros-
and the girls disguised as monks
smuggle into clubland
where you can
lambada with a snake or smile in a cage
of disillusioned crocodiles,
or edit their lives
and take them back to the hills of their youth
riding whatever tiger you choose,
and call it a safari.
adam edits
life upfront & stretches application
as he calls
his English language home,
the referents
comfortable at last
in the title poem-
but here to stay like a generation
tagged on to the last, bemused by the next,
some still writing
poems to their friends.
From Addenda
Kyushu
And words to match. The great work creeds from (take one vantage
pointing to an etymology, for example "horizon", "Ho rhizome" or
"O chorizo", depending which way you're framing the sea). That's not
to say there aren't any rhythms--the feet vary then consume them, nor
a common denominator for the waves that cosign this loan as presence
the few points on its surface from which we spy land we cite as 'typical'.
Bent forward blasts and crosses the region with barbs of economy. Horno,
petulance, or hana hou. I first saw signs of its coast called baja (named in
contrast to an alta that no longer qualifies but flatly assumes). Short
poems in the vein of this looking outward as the necklace pearls define
a path: typhoon in Japan, telescope mirrored in Hawaii, Santa Cruz,
Los Angeles, and both sides of the basin (from "basinette," a small spit
worn when swabbing diskettes drug in from the Net). As basta, there's
plenty of North--you name its Sur or San. Russians galloping to wood
forts, a presidio built to preside over religious custom. What whet lands
consumed by blasts of this populace of verbs. From Santa Cruz to Saigon.
Reddened jangle of fruits stretching to sea-blasted hole in ocean rock. It
is flesh defining pliant sand--the way you once strung words to narrate it
(alternatively the spit of ice that joined enough preceding my Mayans to)
mindful of the spring-fed pool amid redwood burls curled past a pretense
of rock. Talofa anyone use the same roof for "pacifier"? And "pacifist"
itself presents one with a fist. What timbers or joists would bolster thus
"metonymy", a tick on the piano, a key that sticks in some shale scrawled
"C". Haole adjectives and naval verbs. To lint or prick. To give volcanic
pressure. Returning to the continent she could no longer accept her prior language
and switched (though having no athletic ability) to major in Phys. Ed.-the
only discipline that did not betray her pidgin. Ever pretend to make a list or to
digitize your addenda? For example, who would you ask to name that perfect
colorful flash before the word fills with screams? I've seen such descriptive
terms--take the video on fly fishing. O'er the sounds on its crests that prate
then plaster. Without benefit of lights nor shaving hot water. A baleful black
oyster. The rock that juts through its tempestuous lather. Save a chapbook
mailed or the way we net across this distance rather than attempting to swim.
Cautionary Tales
Click to enlarge
The Gannets of Pilsen
"jet out from Muriwai"--Colin McCahon
claims that an enormous diamond lies buried under the fetid, sculpted
smoothnesses of the ground of the colony are surely false yet their gold,
cream and black heads multiplied many times are mythic in their clarity as is
the knowledge that these are remnants, the dwindled descendants of millions
and millions of ancestors
the one-eyed general had his good eye shot out; not only that, the Catholic
enemy snuck out from within the city walls and stole his diversionary Polish
camel from Nuremberg and defeated his army
their wings, double-jointed and stretched out and still in the act of flight
tremble under the dialectic of pressure and the begged question of wind
from the train window we watched a mother pull her daughter along over
the ice on a tiny plastic sled
their bones were used to make tools for moko, their feathers hung from ears
on the clifftops of Otakamiro Point and Motutara [Island] on Auckland's
rugged West Coast, with a wingspan of over 2 metres and a taste for
anchovies these birds are graceful hunters and fearsome fliers
whether these birds have been sighted flying west over the city of Pilsen is
a question only you can answer though the numbers in the colony dwindled
alarmingly this summer without apparent cause
hitting the water at speeds up to 150 km per hour they reach depths of up to
10 metres and attack their prey from below
how intimately our second guesses are connected to farewell and departure,
hands on hips, searching the horizon for an incoming jet off Muriwai or a
departing spirit journeying north
she leaned forward after describing her production of King Lear with 14 year
olds, how they had used balls and skipping ropes and children's games to
create this infantile world, middle class kids for whom Cordelia was
introduced as too clever by half and fooling everybody succeeds only in
fooling herself, to say, "I hope we kept the Bolsheviks entertained"
so all information is part of the natural camouflage of the narrator, the
multiplicity of stories, the simplicity of plot as it flies
without any preliminary flying and having never fed themselves, they leave
the nest to fly directly to Pilsen over 10,000 km. away
bamboozled with occasion, huddled in the car at the top of the cliff above the
colony lashed by such a dense blur of rain and wind we could not see out at
all, hieratic man alone
the kind of no-frills, no-thrills, provincial capital bustling with energy and
solid with ice with a busy market beside the cathedral and a sign reading,
"Chicken Roasted Just for You" or words to that effect
and even in such slim conditions the gannets are still dropping off the cliffs
and lifting into the drafts, performing their aerial hermeneutics
how could I have children he often asked, when I might be dead tomorrow
and nobody dared say to him but isn't that the case for everyone and now he
is still alive today while several of his colleagues have died and he is heard to
say but do you mean to suggest that this is somehow my fault while under
the aura of wisdom his eyes at least look scared and why won't he is not speak
to you at least make an appointment when you have known him so long
mating is for life, hermetically closing the saga of solitude on the south coast
of Australia, say Queenscliff at the heads of Port Phillip Bay, defining a lump
of grass, sticks, seaweed, earth etc. for better/worse/ever
you were arrested and detained for 48 hours and released and immediately
rearrested and detained again for the maximum legal holding period and
released and rearrested and so on and this went on for 10 times until you
escaped and hid out got married had a child were again detained lost your job
sold flowers and after years finally worked as the psychologist you always had
been all you lost was the ability to distinguish a real persecution mania from
genuine harrassment
after 100 to 110 days the mature chicks grow restless, gazing out to sea, hands
on hips, how ingeniously the plot is constructed since everything is natural
and nothing can be taken for granted
how old are the daughters then if the father is "four score and upward not an
hour more or less" there is no mother where is the mother
take for example that day on the beach, after the pulverising wind and the
black blasts of rain, we walked freely in a light air under mild-yellow sun,
seeing dogs trot alongside, kites overhead and paintings forming on the
horizon far out to sea, to the right of the seal colony
beginning of your journey and so, historical as love is--
ecce, the bird of latitudinal migration, who bears this message like a true
pigeon
rioatoyac
banked bright fluttering wash to reeds' weft. soft tin over the bridge morning
glories twined to dobe hear trumpeted blue thin wisp over there.sierra's fringe
while haze. under the sun these flowers burned closed by light. museum's closed
light a little bone lamp. mosaic stone wig mixtec skull. heart's rose crown a
petaled crush. accreted stone. gives, absorbed, language to be at stake under the
sun yoked to robelike flutter. cartilage frill loosed from fipple heart's white
heat. whole corollas trembled along tongue's inverted root. lengua's twofold
speakerspoken: soil under strata of speech even roots will not raise. ruin's pure
stone of speech I cannot bear nor roll away. some turquoise. some fractal blue
sustained on spinal rig as if color were mineraled light. word's deep weight of
raised surface to loom drawn from the very fiber very thing weaving of itself.
Conversion
When she was young, she possessed a hand, now irrevocably lost,
holding an apple. She used to stamp her boots to crow songs, raise a
thigh-high dust in honor of their impermeable music. The callused
balls of her feet engaged in the residue of dance, a fox trot or cha-
cha. Her legs threatening a disco split in the early morning frost. To
keep her questions alive she carved them in stone, laid them beside
the roadways, believing that miracles could play themselves out, one
way or another before a new dust would blow it all away. To keep
her weight among the epitaphs, it was said she converted apples into
hands and hands into thin letters, that once unsealed provoked riots
in far away cities, caused household pets to come together in one
simultaneous scream. When she was young, she would kneel for the
fountain coins of luck, taking back the wishes. She thought how
stationary one must be when our history gives into an undeniable
absence, when an arm suddenly vanishes without appeal. How still
to divide the waters. There is a photograph, dog-eared, that shows
her standing at the edge of her land, hands struck open like a match.
An apple rests precariously on the top of her head while one eye
squints into the camera, laughing.
Talented and Gifted
He hurt her amateur feelings. No bandages, please. A panda bear
from the county fair is like unto a spelling error: Ouch, delete on
bended knee. Pedigrees not withstanding on their greasy feet (O blue
blood, O 10W40, O lubricated with nonoxynol, O engine engine #9;
how doth thy corporate chassis shine, $$$ maketh the world to turn,
you _______ my _______ and I'll ______ thine), pigeon is a
language spoken by all who puffeth themselves up, causing their
chest parts to go before them as pride goeth before a fall. An
economics Just-So Story, brought to you by the makers of Geritol.
Can you say Black Monday? Forced retirement? Over-inflated? The
market is a little bit nervous, the market has the jitters, the market
has an Excedrin headache: no futures trading tonight, dear. No
nonoxynol necessary; the fruits of his labor land in a little wad of the
financial section while she sniffles in the next room. He sleeps,
snores, stretches, thumbs through the coffee table volume The Sexual
Parts of Plants. Geez Louise, who framed thy fearsome symmetries?
Faithful dog noses his crotch for her head to be petted. Oh dog (he
pets), you really are clairvoyant and a relative of god. Make that
_mature_feelings.
Hangman
They have been best friends since they were nine, and during every study hall
have surreptitiously played the game of Hangman. They are so quiet and
practiced they have never been caught. At the end of the seventh grade one of
the girls is distracted and bored with the game, but plays anyway, sloppily
marking the binder paper with lines where the letters will go, while looking
around the study hall in the hope that a particular boy is watching her. She
smiles at the boy and crosses her legs so that her skirt rises to reveal her thighs.
Each time her friend guesses a letter, the figure of the hanged man receives
another embellishment. Finally the stick figure is complete and the girl writes:
you lose,displaying the word her friend was supposed to deduce. But you
misspelled it!, her friend shouts, causing the teacher to rush over and make
black marks next to their names in her book.
One of the girls spends the summer on the other coast, and that fall they
encounter each other on the first day of school. Over the summer the girl who
drew the hangman developed breasts, while her friend got acne. The former girl
walks past her friend and joins a group of eighth grade females who also have
breasts, who are also wearing dresses and makeup. They form a tight cluster
next to the lockers, talk and laugh among themselves. Instinctively the other
girl goes toward some students she has known since the fourth grade, girls who
are either pre-pubescent, wear braces, glasses, or have imperfect skin.
Although they know they are too old for it these girls go to the playground,
swing from the monkey bars, or rock up and down on see-saws. Bored with this,
they drag their shoes through the coarse sand. As dust flies they become
increasingly frenetic, begin running haphazardly around the playground, their
arms outstretched. Ugly bitch they shout and scream while trying to knock one
another down in the dirt.
Over a Drinking Fountain as I Recognize the Face the Metal Parts Make:
Eyes, Nose and Water Shooting Out of a Mouth
A Conehead Marching
Sitting at the bus stop in broad daylight, not moving except to breathe, I
feel that no one can see me anymore. Part of everything finally.
When I was young my mother had warned me that men could come by,
breathing closely, in their cars, looking out to steal girls. Torture them. Rape
them. Throw their bodies into faraway gulches. I didn't hear her then.
Who I have become is no longer bait for such men. But I hear her, her
quiet voice, her cold watery questions. I feel my body blend into another crowd
that gathers around the concrete bench. When the bus arrives, they shuffle
move to get on except for a dwarfish lady. We are alone for a while. I
memorize the pattern of the material of her dress. Then she leaves without our
having looked at each other's faces. Two invisibles.
Late in the afternoon here comes a bunch of school kids from
Ka'ahumanu School with teachers holding traffic cones at the front end and in
the back guarding them. Precious cargo moving through dangerous streets where
anything could happen. Past me, all of them. They insert themselves into my
vision, marching full of explosive noises and color. In the middle of the parade
a boy with an orange t-shirt wears a traffic cone on his head. Of course he feels
different and alone in his costume. It shows in his looking around. I know this.
His head is small enough to fit inside the cone as if a helmet had been made just
for him to look like a walking crayon.
A clown.
His serious dark eyes meet mine. He is surprised, but not too much,
because only he sees that I am here and he knows the others don't mark me.
I put my finger slowly to my lips so that he doesn't startle.
He shrugs his shoulders, and he doesn't call the others.
Then the clown is gone. But I can hear the warm, splatter of words and
sounds, the lighthearted footsteps receding for a long time.
Bicyclists in helmets and those pants like black plastic now and not one
of them looks this way.
The sunset that comes on is huge, red and takes its time.
At nightfall I move on like a cloud away from the headlights. Slow,
wet with no tears--no regrets, thanks, anyway--and a quick rainshower, I leave
a trail of broken things in my wake. Bits of Kleenex, unspooled tape strands,
toilet paper underfoot, crushed tickets, torn up money, grubby pennies, puka
panties, useable cardboard, my old address on a crumbled note, self pity, twisted
scatter pins, a good zori, the unused supermarket cart, last night's newspaper
bed, the one sweater with a button, directions from my empty pill bottle and the
snapshot that was left. All I got now is their faces. A few of their voices in my head. That's about
it, honey. I say that. Loud so it feels good and fades until
nothing's there from me, all gone.
New Orthography
Entre's extract twoo strict annverse unversed strickin nether universal co cau a
dy spent a drawe, forgo nedles given t groudn,-cover,-less, new orthophony nede
to examine times staffd sheets or lves not synchronous installed aboue, erly tha
mourn yet im under plus-ground,-water, dug up, -foot and appraeciated wll wool
her will pure genius of cous in crisis or crisscross a folklore [illegible] swg veto
enclose't sums time soon vote too hard to give it up to say it say simulate at the
same time stimulate.
Perguiltspek
From Walking the Faultlines a hypermedia, installation piece.
shunder urtli stroqua agalan stroqualan ault? tauf intervirt? qual anapex?
brekem omaguis woance ferguisling, sepho spyrou valpe baterou.
brekenoch phaton phora isginoic ault. olo woance plakinvo rebse lansnot.
shunder brekwa rohor antergat voper. intervit oiter babetrou acen bowa
plakinvo.
wofor? veltrans? eclovo?
acen isplenus phaton. brekwa rouks belbalo. acen plape phatapex, acen
sinin spinispek. oiter inglingance acen rebse breke inguilor.
babetrou oiter woance olo isginoic! brekenoch brekwa rapho calwo
eclovo! shunder inglingance urtli inguilmor phora spepho?
rants sinin cultimur. roucks sinin cintevep. rohor leslex laslo isginoic.
spinispek wadora brekenoch intervirt plakinvo. shunder stroqua cultimur
calemwo. brekwa acspe inglin. brakwa plapwa tulariv, brekwa phaton
ferguisling inglingance. intervit plakinvo inguilor shunder brekem
plakinvo isginoic.
Poetics
she spat out her past at the speed of light
the quest for language unborn and buried
the route is never the same rule twice
a man cracking the egg of the text
she found herself born into endless caressing
dead authors swimming in their own semen
the site where the phallus hovers and shuffles
a light dissembling into silence
a breath which blurs the edge of the mirror
a woman and man slowly undressing
the earth unsettled the earth unsigned
a pathway at the squirt of a button
metaphors loosening at the joints
trains at the crossroads of dying and living
a woman tearing the bread of being
a woman tonguing the wine of syntax
one voice disembowelling another
a woman defecating dead reason
a worry taking the route of a wish
a longing that springs from mental re-jigging
a world at the edges of spilling and spinning
a word begetting ancient beginnings
a piece taking the part of the whole
the tune that makes the bow play the fiddle
a wish to make a jigsaw of space
the end is always in the incision
a box containing festering riddles
Monologue
You know I've always wanted to write a stream of consciousness piece in
reverse. And I've always wanted to perform my life as if I believed in my
actions. The whole thing is in fragments which you sew together. I've
been permanently in exile spitting out and sucking in my past. You keep
saying the same thing and it becomes something else. The trouble is
people don't like my voice, they say it's too loud, too masculine, too
aggressive, too soft, too feminine: the list never stops. But you mustn't let
fate be your physician. Because everything is terribly odd and it's all a
case of getting even. They said you're parading in the nude, but I said I'm
just knocking the socks off language-it's a will without an agenda. At the
same time at the centre of everything is this terrible fear I have, that by
thinking about death I might cause it. I stand with my back to the mirror
and keep turning my head. All I can see is England replete with
redundant meanings. I've realised that I feel at home in cyberspace
because I have no sense of direction. I like the routes without rooms.
When I started to read Freud I couldn't believe how much he and I had in
common. Yet a text has to go somewhere occasionally or drop off at a
likely destination. It's keeping your eye on the timetable which counts.
Inspiration is a lie but anything can trigger it. For example, I like the
flowers Suu Kyi wears in her hair, don't you, a reminder that somewhere
she has another life and exists in a different way, even if she's forgotten. I
often think I'm only a photocopy, or a ghost on the faultlines. It's not chic
to write about love so you have to kill it or bend it double. But I like to
resurrect the text with my voice. You keep walking without feeling
you've ever arrived, and when you do it's never the place you intended.
Then his eyes appear in close up. His mouth loosening at the corners, the
most seductive smile. It's romance, it helps you to forget. After that it's
all corridors and low ceilings. Pol Pot and Hitler, not to speak of Stalin.
You have to be on the alert like a bird sleeping with one eye open. It may
be best to speak a language no-one understands. At the very best
translation is always desecration. There's always this wish to master the
text, but you have to break the rules to know them. And you have to stand
your ground. Round about you everyone is pushing buttons and
reproducing themselves. It's all emotional hide and seek. I remember my
aunt baring her breast: I'm still afraid of catching her cancer. There were
a lot of hidden things, and also whispered words I couldn't understand.
My father's name carved upon a tombstone. But cemeteries are cities
where they keep the dead. I don't want to go sightseeing because I might
get caught in the traffic. I'd rather swerve between channels and eat
books: text in the hole, soupe ˆ la situation. It's good the way you are
beginning to see things my way, just as I am beginning to catch up with
your way of thinking. But however clearly you think things out, there is
always someone crying in the next room. Which is hardly surprising
because, on the whole, men can't tell the penis from the phallus and I'd be
hard pressed to tell the difference myself if I didn't write. Why do you
think I'm telling you all this? Well, you can't live to rule but you can
light a room by blowing out the candles. The more peculiarly I write the
more infectious the aroma. I like to speak, but generally when I do I'm
sorry. I learned Hebrew as a child but I could only read, I couldn't
understand a thing. I'm no good at crossword puzzles, keep imploding in
the mirror. Yet, they say, there's no such thing as a word which doesn't
strike a light. I'd like to be myself but I hardly ever am because I don't
exist. They painted letters on me, but in the rain they washed away. And
monologues can be boring. Still, it's good to wipe the screen and clear the
decks. Dead lovers in Bosnia, the murdered at Port Arthur. And the
almost over-leaning tower of Pisa. A sign that nothing stays as it seems.
And no-one gives a damn whichever sex I'm choosing.
Kapulani lives in Pu'ahu'ula on Oahu • Murray Edmond is a
Lecturer
in Drama at the University of Auckland. He recently traveled to Detroit, Buffalo,
London,
Prague, San Francisco, Honolulu, and elsewhere • Adam Aitken lives in
Sydney; his new collection is In One House, reviewed in this issue •
Pam
Brown lives in Sydney: among her many books are This world / This Place.
Her review of Adam Aitken's book also appeared in Heat magazine
• Yunte Huang attended the University of Beijing and the University of
Alabama before entering the Poetics Program at SUNY-Buffalo, where he is currently a
doctoral student • Richard Hamasaki dedicates this poem to the memory
of
the late Charlene Sato, whose work continues to inspire cultural consciousness,
resourceful
scholarship, and social activism • Rebecca Mays Ernest works in Special
Collections at the University of New Hampshire Library • Paul Hoover
co-
edits New American Writing with Maxine Chernoff in California. He edited
Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1994). Among his books of
poems
are Letter to Einstein Beginning Dear Albert (1979) and The Novel (1991)
• John Noto edits Orpheus Grid, and is author of the recent collection,
Psycho-motor Breathscapes, from Vatic Hum Press, San Francisco •
Dan
Raphael lives in Portland, Oregon. He has recent work in Caliban, Cyanosis,
Juxta,
Tight, and Heaven Bone • Gabrielle Welford is a doctoral candidate
in
the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's English department. She is currently President of
the
Hawai'i Literary Arts Council • Joshua McKinney teaches at Valdosta
State
University in Georgia. He has been a firefighter in California and lived for a year in
Japan.
He was winner of the 1996 Pavement Saw Chapbook contest for Permutations of the
Gallery
• Jorge Guitart grew up in Cuba and is now a linguist in the
Department of
Modern Languages at SUNY-Buffalo. He is author of Film Blanc (Meow Press)
• John Kinsella's The Undertow: New and Selected Poems was
published recently by Arc, in England. He edits Salt, in Australia, and presently lives
in
Cambridge, UK • Susan M. Schultz's "Declensions of Is" is reprinted in
The
Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry 1994-1995 and she has
work
forthcoming in The Poets' Calendar (both Sun & Moon books). Voice-overs,
with work by her and John Kinsella, is forthcoming from Tinfish Network
•
Loss Pequeño Glazier is a widely published poet who runs the Electronic
Poetry
Center in Buffalo; he is co-editor of the electronic journal, Rif/t. The EPC can be
found
at: http://wings. buffalo.edu/epc • Sue Moss is a Tasmanian poet,
playwright
and performer. Her collection, The Upwardly Downward Mobility Blues, was
published by Penguin Australia in 1994. She traveled through outback Australia in
1995 in a
Kingswood station wagon. Cautionary Tales was designed by Julie Hunt
•
Dan Featherston's poem is part of a larger work, "Mexico Weave." He lives in
Tucson,
Arizona • Michelle Murphy lives in San Francisco and has recent work
in
Orpheus Grid • Liz Waldner is currently a writers' colonist in
California;
she has a book forthcoming from O Books • Cydney Chadwick runs Avec
Press
in Penngrove, California. She is author of Enemy Clothing, published by Five
Fingers
Press in San Francisco • Marie Hara lives in Honolulu and is author of
Bananaheart & Other Stories (Bamboo Ridge Press, 1994) and winner of a 1995
Cades
Award for Literature. The two pieces printed here are part of a longer series, TRUE
STORIES of Wanda Ku'uipo Wakita, a Cultural Observer • Joshua
Harmon lives in Ithaca, New York, and has recent work in Verse, Alaska
Quarterly
Review, Western Humanities Review and elsewhere • Hazel Smith
is a poet and musician who lives in Sydney and teaches at the University of New South
Wales.
She is author of Abstractly Represented: Poems and Performance Texts 1982-90,
published by Butterfly Books. She has two CDs of performance works. Of Walking
the
Faultlines she writes: "[it] accesses the extremes of language, subjectivity and
location.
'Perguiltspek' consists of a newly constructed language; 'Poetics' is based on images
which are
grouped musically rather than thematically. The monologue creates a sense of a
particular
voice, but is also a 'polylogue' of different voices" • Suzanne Kosanke
(graphic
design) teaches English at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa • Gaye Chan
(cover) is an Associate Professor of Photography at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.
She
likes to look at both beautiful and horrible things • Duncan Dempster, Jr.
(cover) works at lo-fi press, a division of compress productions.
Correction: In Tinfish 3 the poems by Che Quian-zi were translated by Jeff
Twitchell and Zhen Zhen.
Kapulani
And distress fled to the outlying regions. She was left with a band of contentment
over her
brow, the one that had
throbbed violently in the past, and couldn't know why she was chosen to lose herself
in
ongoingness: the present belongs
to those who relinquish desire as a good against absence or the threat it leaves like a
homeless man's mattress at the
door; he doesn't threaten you, but his circumstance does, so you retreat into the
sanctity of
your castle, sacred if only
because it stops the drafts from disrobing your security zone. So contentment is
always at
the mercy of the next plunge in
stocks (at best) or thermometers (at most contingent). The invitation obviously false,
you
arrive late to find the
company banded like endangered birds (not those of prey but other more delicate
ones
whose beaks can't reach into most
flowers for their rudimentary nectars), conceived in discourse and bounded by it, as I
am
bounded by these narrower than
usual margins. The culture shock eased a bit, white people seeming more or less
inevitable
in every circumstance, and so
did the reflex anger that greeted her first public exposures to the old rules. Yet the
purpose
is to conjoin elements, allow
them their clash, then recuperate whatever's left as sediment for the newer
dispensation, the
one that promises to
arrive like express mail, a day or two later than promised. The local is real, as my
students
remind me, white woman
shuttling unpredictably in and out of her symbolic value, the duck/rabbit example
hardly an
instance of
autobiographical excess. Fluttering like a lid or nervous astronaut in front of a zoom
lens,
space between him and more
space, you recoup your losses as evidence there was a gain, embarrassed knowledge
taken
like a fortress, or the ego's
precarious pylon on the far cliff, ropes in arrears as usual. Guilt greets you less as fact
than as necessary outback to
operate through, though your ancestors did not, & etc. Intellect is molasses compared
to
historical necessity arbitrated
by oppression's stern rehearsals history's over for you guys, but not for us. The phone
rang and you neglected it, hoping
instead for more direct speech, the blood knowledge that the wanderer set his chips
on.
Plantations run by such as you,
"discovery" made by such as you, evidence that agency sells disaster and an outsider
referring to "the rape of the land"
is a fool even for noticing it. Metaphor as defense or irony, and I love them both, don't
do
it when communication occurs
on the head of a pin and there's no time for prettiness (considered with or without its
"r").
Old judges told tales
predicated on outside value; the newer ones start from a siege and then take the
shelter of
their sufficient arguments for
enclosure, which later bites them as an instance of bourgeois power realignments. The
gap
is there to slip through, so
take up your pen and write (if not here, oh crucial"if") a measured dialogue with other
selves, even where the
landscape falls away and all you see is ruin around the billboard advertising your
front yard
as paradise, lest you prick
the bubble to which you signed a loyalty oath. I wouldn't cheer for that if I were you.
Pam Brown
City
A yearned-for somewhere
adverb-physically
as lost as now
gazing across
the chunky valley
to a hill
of quivering lights-
There is no
destination-
just a place
no site
not olympic
village site
not harbourside
casino site
nor section
of expressway
just east
of where
coincidence
has determined
your residence
in a city
you returned to
to remember
why you left-
Inventing
nostalgia
for elsewhere-
you'll live there
in the future-
I tell it lots: how when I walked past TGI Friday's and looked over at Straub
Hospital
before I checked out the park, I watched while the first car in the lineup at the light
stopped
too soon, and all the ones in back began to hit into each other like a herd collapsing in
smoke
and screeching noise while they fell to the road in shudders of heat. How when I
walked past
the wooden bungalows the tvs went on one after another because of something in my
magnetism,
and the Cablevision guy waved at me. How when I was downtown the sparkle of the
ocean by
the piers kept hiding away from me behind the buildings which were built to keep us
from
seeing the deep, waiting water and running in. How tunta girls know when I
side-eye
stare at them, because I know who is planning to be hookers from their high school,
because I
like how the girls are free now, not like us who had to had to had to and in veils in
this hot
weather, yet. How I don't like the looks of a squad car roaring toward some angry
emotion,
violent blue light yanking everyone's eyes away from their proper dreams. How a
real estate
agent accosted me yesterday. Who do they think they are to sell us out with their
signs and
their messages everywhere we want to see peace and quiet. How a white cat with no
teeth and
weepy eyes, the one that follows, recognizes me without fail. How a black dog who has
escaped will consistently lead me farther into loneliness because of loyalties,
unbelievable to
many. Makes you think.
Contributors' Notes