words

borborygm
n. - rumbling of the bowels

Everything Good Between Men and Women

has been written in mud and butter
and barbecue sauce. The walls and
the floors used to be gorgeous.
The socks off-white and a near match.
The quince with fire blight
but we get two pints of jelly
in the end. Long walks strengthen
the back. You with a fever blister
and myself with a sty. Eyes
have we and we are forever prey
to each other’s teeth. The torrents
go over us. Thunder has not harmed
anyone we know. The river coursing
through us is dirty and deep. The left
hand protects the rhythm. Watch
your head. No fires should be
unattended. Especially when wind. Each
receives a free swiss army knife.
The first few tongues are clearly
preparatory. The impression
made by yours I carry to my grave. It is
just so sad so creepy so beautiful.
Bless it. We have so little time
to learn, so much... The river
courses dirty and deep. Cover the lettuce.
Call it a night. O soul. Flow on. Instead.

C. D. Wright, "Everything Good Between Men and Women"

a sound of sheer silence

He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He answered, "I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away."
1 Kings 19:11-14

Sumer is i-cumin in

Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.
Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.

Sumer is i-cumin in—
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth—
Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu.
Ne swik thu naver nu!

Anonymous

the dismal science

In the weeks after the election, as the political stalemate persisted, the value of Zimbabwe’s currency plummeted. Before crossing the border from South Africa, I had exchanged a hundred American dollars for three trillion five hundred billion Zimbabwean—thirty-five billion to a dollar. Most of the cash was newly minted five-, twenty-five-, and fifty-billion-dollar notes, with pictures of giraffes and grain silos. A few days later, the going rate was a hundred billion to one. Food prices tripled overnight, and many salaries were made virtually worthless. Cash was becoming nearly impossible to obtain; banks were allowing customers to withdraw the equivalent of only one U.S. dollar per day. The effect was a state of existential madness. Prices bordered on the fantastic, and ordinary people had to grapple with calculations in the trillions for the most prosaic transactions. One day, I wandered into a supermarket to buy some water. The price for a half-litre bottle was $1,900,000,000,000 Zimbabwean, or nineteen U.S. dollars. On a nearby shelf, I found a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black for $83,000,000,000,000.

Jon Lee Anderson, "The Destroyer"

a grief observed

When news of R.L.’s death arrives, the world reels and capsizes, yet even then we see the shadows of children—capering upside down, on the sunlit asphalt, like ghosts of what should have been.

Anthony Lane, "Time Trip"

obscure

And he said, "Go and say to this people: 'Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.' Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed." Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said: "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate; until the LORD sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land. Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled." The holy seed is its stump.
Isaiah 6:9-13

near to you

Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.
Deuteronomy 30:11-14

they were big into rhymes

BEN
The newspaper headline was, "Ice Town Costs Ice Clown His Town Crown"

Parks and Recreation, "Go Big or Go Home"

sonnet

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Shakespeare, "Sonnet 65"

tell her

Tell her she cant watch the news

Tell her she can watch cartoons

Tell her she can stay up late and watch Friends.

Tell her they're attacking with rockets

Dont frighten her

Tell her only a few of us have been killed

Tell her the army has come to our defence

Dont tell her her cousin refused to serve in the army.

Dont tell her how many of them have been killed

Tell her the Hamas fighters have been killed

Tell her they're terrorists

Tell her they're filth

Dont

Dont tell her about the family of dead girls

Tell her you cant believe what you see on television

Tell her we killed the babies by mistake

Dont tell her anything about the army

Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army. Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldnt she know? tell her there's dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she's got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them, tell her I'm not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them, tell her we're the ones to be sorry for, tell her they cant talk suffering to us. Tell her we're the iron fist now, tell her it's the fog of war, tell her we wont stop killing them till we're safe, tell her I laughed when I saw the dead policemen, tell her they're animals living in rubble now, tell her I wouldnt care if we wiped them out, the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I dont care if the world hates us, tell her we're better haters, tell her we're chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it's not her.

Dont tell her that.

Tell her we love her.

Dont frighten her.

Caryl Churchill, Seven Jewish Children

a list

I look for the simple things I no longer see. I do not go to confession. Legs slightly open excite me more than legs wide open. I have trouble forbidding. I am not mature. When I look at a strawberry, I think of a tongue, when I lick one, of a kiss. I can see how drops of water could be torture. A burn on my tongue has a taste. My memories, good or bad, are sad the way dead things are sad. A friend can let me down but not an enemy. I ask the price before I buy. I go nowhere with my eyes closed.

Edouard Levé, "When I Look at Strawberries, I think of a Tongue"

there's a divinity

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,
That would not let me sleep: methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,
And praised be rashness for it, let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will,—

Hamlet 5.2.5-11

so I won't have to look at this anymore

A Few Poems about Berkeley, CA

I

From a certain height you can see the bay

roiling with fog,

the Golden Gate a kestrel flown too high,

smudged by descending

drift in slow rags.

Peers of bronze leak from hills amazed

with condensation,

the city off-dirty like rain-edged glass

and smelling of asphalt.

Carillons ring smoky—

the campanile flutes its coil of sitting cloud,

obelisk errata.

II

Men who wheeled their bikes

hitched with trash bags

here sift bins for recyclables,

crunches of accordioned

aluminum underfoot,

and clinking bottles.

Faces sober and pinched after the day's cull

sit curbside towards the intersection,

washing in wind its sleight perfumes

passed

and passing in drunk spirits,

and caws, and clouds

fuming blistered over the harbor

barely within sight.

A bike, a shopping cart, whatever's burdensome

or half-journeyed on the descent-facing hill:

impenetrable,

if by face only, stares forward.

III

John Berryman lived here in the ‘60s.

The heavy poet light-footing up Durant

with the bay on his back and books

in hand, a forehead sweaty

from drinking and ravened talks,

a tongue cotton-squeezed from ripostes

done-in acutely against the dishonest,

bitterly if need be;

Berkeley is undisciplined like that.

I would’ve liked to have met him before,

to have caught his dull frenzied annoyance

at the distance between him and his Schubert,

and maybe to have traded my “Good Evening”

for his thick high mumble back

just before the click as his cell

closed for the night. If he rumbled through here,

what else consolation can we afford?

IV

You can take stock in some not very well-

done work, work barely understood—

and now that sits apart, leery, curling

at the edges where your hands left moisture.

But out there it was already night

and someone yelps in sex, which always spikes

the heart a little, a lone

invisible hot voice

seizing on being body not body alone,

a crude sort of witness that flicks away

as quickly as it came.

So what do you do with these lonely irruptions?

Bury sleep in their sharpened folds.

V

“Our actions coalesce,”

you said, curling your legs around his hips,

“I liked the movie”: night-pinched,

dreams squint off at distant signs of light,

immiscible and left vaguely wanting,

but never fully gone,

preferring to linger instead

freaked, to bicker with the other memory-

not-memories pooled together

like black water in a shiver's cool skin

first coming into contact with morning

where warm leaves swarm like flies,

and how real its strides: how fast it foxes

other yearnings forward.

VI

It’s hard to defend cold and unfeeling things:

these, groping for a certain distance

unreproachable,

like collecting rocks at their wet glossy prime

palmed by water and bedded in scalloped

sand where even their dark oily

undersides shine, damp where moisture

has sucked away to deeper rocks.

Wait a few days.

What are those bones on the dresser?

I do not care, or remember.

VII

He worked in the years of his family

and lived as a butcher (I think), retiring

eventually into the city’s hutong’s

crouched under escorsed monuments

immortal of nothing:

iron and age and recited histories

of error, carved notoriously

into its raceless, steadfast statues.

There were years he returned home only once,

and that’s the memory passing on—

of distance indifferent.

When he had his stroke, words interceded

from another country, from foreign tongues.

Here was where he sat, tightened

and wiry off the bed’s edge, a view

of tenements sloughing into narrow

avenues and a sky antlered by stray branches.

You said that you didn’t like it here,

that “There was no love.” But there was,

just in shapes unfamiliar to us.

He died a few days ago, back at home.

She took him North and there they waited his passing

as they did his last decade, in gruff, scolding

care. She won’t say much, treading slowly

on squinting off for steady measure.

VIII

Undergrowths are strangled with muddy silt and loose

sheddings that bed the soil like hoarfrost, unseen layers

propping up grass-blades and lazy suspensions of dew.

It is only now beginning to be winter, late November

climbing into its usual heft: the sky makes thick cloud

covers and we breathe condensation into its cold gaps.

The leaves had drained from green to purple to ferrous red

before I had remembered to admire their

twisting, so there is instead a carpet of leaves to tatter

and truncate into dark cement its unremarkable sog.

Yet a freshness rends the air like the luminate greens of rain,

accentuating the contours of a face—

the way debris gathers in the furrows and the neck and rings

the eyes like starving raccoons.

In this season it is hard to hide anything.

On Telegraph, on Durant, beggars shake their sparse-coined cups

the dead season’s charitous salvo to the passing crowd.

IX

Extravagant glosses of weather

bring you from nowhere

and suspend you

like lightning

truculently

twisted down

to illuminate scapes

of spindle and wire,

momentary blindings,

then again darkness

and its persistent rot.

X

Reading a poorly-typed copy of The Triumph of Love.

Its rhythms thump off and on, working out

the process of grace in the tongue of history

and haemony, supposedly curing;

so why does it weigh like lead? Think

basically: God present in all things—

the abundance of cloudy scrolls enshadows

the approaching solstice, gimlet

eyes through crevices actually canyons of piercing light,

clouds accented by lumen undergrowths, its gloom

only ominous by allowance. The rain’s approach

flitters through brush, and it’s this register,

not the limning, that calls forth. I realize

I’ve swallowed a foreign voice but let’s write that off

into the corpus mysticum. On the other side

Tamalpais girds the waters unobstructed.

a mother's prayer

The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered,

May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half

And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her

When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance.

Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes

And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen.

Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long,

For Childhood is short—a Tiger Flower blooming

Magenta for one day—

And Adulthood is long and Dry-Humping in Cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever,

That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers

And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister,

Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends,

For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord,

That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget.

But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen

Tina Fey, Bossypants

real & romantic

The real represents to my perception the things we cannot possibly not know, sooner or later, in one way or another; it being but one of the accidents of our hampered state, and one of the incidents of their quantity and number, that particular instances have not yet come our way. The romantic stands, on the other hand, for the things that, with all the facilities in the world, all the wealth and all the courage and all the wit and all the adventure, we never can directly know; the things that can reach us only through the beautiful circuit and subterfuge of our thought and our desire.

Henry James, "Preface" to The American