Americafor K.K.I’ve taken more than I can ever give—
In these days of music and light
when too many beasts yet swarm the seas,
I wanted only to show her America,
to paint my crude landscape as a child
does, all color and bright beginning.
That day like an ocean pulls me back;
the coffee shop where we met beckons
from down the block, the dingy bar bathed in smoke
and musk and light and every place I’ve seen her sings.
She dropped full-grown from the rafters, each bit
of bone and lip and hair and fabric settled like a finger on my face.
I stood stunned, dropped what I carried.
Everything I needed called from a high tree.
As If Feeling, If Then
the passing on of secondary characteristics sight and swerve
is what has led me here sandy and unapproached
the vast field differs only slightly from the flowered bank
spare rumbling, small creature of light, duck
away from nicht, from naught, from noir
or new; the path reveals a cagey interiority, pustules of happening
sprung past, shot through, perched and purged
edges give way to expanse and rims, flight of the first chicken
aerial and Ariel, children budding aureoles
fancy that, her smile creaks upend Andover each door
finally fractured past the pulse my lover arched
eyebrow, back, humped-up rabbit, humped up-as-in-agitated
angels and gods and the road home clear of grape and fox
stouter than thou, O Corazon, Coeur, oh finally you came
and stuffed the lakes with geese the last words trickled out
Small Town Love Poem
I never had the requisite small-town
love. There was, I guess, little Renee, who
I imagine remains more or less the same,
wherever she is, but it wasn’t love
of the funnybook sort or the weeping
and gnashing sort, both sorts I’ve never
known. I had love for a small town
I hated. Love for the gravel, the booze,
the back streets and trailer parks,
the great rust-colored cars of Union Pacific
bisecting the town the way the bypass
scar bisects my father’s gut, love for the counter
stool at the Moose lodge where Dad still
takes his vodka tonics. I never put
myself into the love poem until now,
which is a little like a middle finger
pointed at my former skeptical self.
I’m hollering at somebody, the connection
is bad, and in all the fuzz and floundering,
(sobbing came later) something began
to make sense. Frost’s sense of foreboding,
the existential dread we try to refuse
by writing it away, by making
it a happy construction-paper sun instead
of a real one that will burn you to nothing
in nothing flat, for example. We make
our wolves cute and fangless. Our fish
all grant wishes and our small-town loves
are real and flawless and full of good cheer
and of bosom. I loved too briefly (say, quarter
of an hour) the girl who later died
on the highway—impossibly commingled
in my mind: her tongue, the car crash, green
paint, garish church light, how soft her hands
were. But I suppose I loved the river most,
the fires we’d build evading the police
which is, I know, the small-town cliché
of the century, but how can I resist?
I loved not being yet eighteen and one
of “the majority” and wondering what
that meant. I loved you, to whom I’m
writing this poem too quietly, too “from
afar,” too late to matter in the way
that things no longer matter once
you’re grown. What we lost there,
what writing doesn’t give back.
The Day the Music Died
Syllables of hay, backing up toward speech
Can’t wonder for long to go, a ward
Of the state, a wand undermined. The beach
Head fires a volley: I found your haircut
In a book about dragons: O most scaly, most
Unctuous, mostly harmless one. Shut
Me off, render me inconsequential, or bored,
At least. In the smallest spaces, the toast
Is proposed and carried out. We wedge
The sheet of carbon between each pyramid
Block, hoping to retain a bit of grit. Last
Week, the band dissolved. We went our ways,
Kyle was harrumphing, clamoring for the edge,
And amidst all the orgasms (everywhere!),
Everyone had a hard time falling asleep.
The New World
Because of a single
observed new fact
scientific systems,
entire worlds sometimes
grow suddenly obsolete:
the longest recorded
flight of a chicken
is thirteen seconds.
Who knew? Fowl
once flightless will
begin to soar twenty
minutes (approx.)
after this poem appears
on the bottom
of coops everywhere.
And for thirteen seconds,
skies will be unblued:
feathers, feathers, beaks!
Tomorrow I’m going out
to the middle of the circle
out past the bratwurst cart
and the Turkish kebab stand, past
sleeping men in stolen green
sweaters washed up against
the National Bank,
and having come
this far, I’ll spot the woman
with long black hair,
bum a cigarette, lean
in and ask her name.
Cuento Negro 6
The peculiar function of American metaphorism is to make one word one image one idea a doppelganger for another, thus relieving the burden of the signifier. You don’t find this in Kant, try as you might. Edifice can be separated from artifice by the following means: if you know you’re in the jungle, you can’t be “making” it up.
A relentless rain burdened the concrete. Maria seemed a beacon in the increasing ever-distant distance. Not even a trenchcoat can fix this conundrum. I own three staplers and three different styles of staples. I can’t make them match, I scour the wood floors for paperclips. We’ve got to bring it together somehow!
All the matchbook covers, read in sequence: do you like to draw? do you like to draw? earn a specialized degree in VCR repair. The photo on my bureau shows my brother in profile. Eldridge spent several weeks scouring the records, but no trace of a shadow behind the grassy knoll was ever found. The sound of his voice is disarming.
Cuento Negro 7
Para-whatsit—come again? The bin behind her old apartment contained several clues. A blue dress with a faded white spot. Hot as the sun, she scoured her presence from the scene of the crime. In the olden times, more graphic representations were necessary. Puck the head fairy takes his place. Race is still an issue.
Hand me a tissue, will you? Filling the holes with caulk takes time—the building of a nation isn’t accomplished in one day. Assimilation is easier if you remove morphological markers. The man in the hooded ski parka still seems suspicious. The delectable pieces of Turkish Delight fade slowly in the mouths of the still-poignant.
Pills and booze are mainstays. Mother plans a cheeky ruse designed to produce progeny. Two spears of asparagus, she sings in a blank falsetto. O, cilantro! O, baby carrots! O, Haricots Verts! The bare face of iniquity is upon the world. Space seems roomier. The place you were born is no longer there. We are stronger. We are fair.
Next - William Allegrezza
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