Girly Man

GIRLY MAN

GIRLY

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CHARLES BERNSTEIN

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MAN

 the university of chicago press chicago and london

Charles Bernstein’s many publications include My Way: Speeches and Poems and With Strings (both published by the University of Chicago Press), Republics of Reality: Poems 1975–1995, and Shadowtime. He cofounded and edits PennSound (http://www.writing.upenn .edu/pennsound) and the Electronic Poetry Center (http://epc.buffalo.edu) and is the Donald T. Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2006 by Charles Bernstein All rights reserved. Published 2006 Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06

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ISBN: 978-0-226-04406-4 (cloth) ISBN: 0–226–04406–8 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bernstein, Charles, 1950– Girly man / Charles Bernstein. p. cm. ISBN: 0-226-04406-8 (alk. paper) I. Title. PS3552 .E7327G57 2006 811’ .54—dc22 2006006208 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

C ON T E N T S

l et ’s j ust say In Particular Thank You for Saying Thank You Let’s Just Say “every lake . . .”

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som e of t h ese da z e It’s 8:23 in New York Today is the next day of the rest of your life Aftershock Report from Liberty Street Letter from New York

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wor l d on f i r e Didn’t We The Folks Who Live on the Hill One More for the Road In a Restless World Like This Is Ghost of a Chance Choo Choo Ch’Boogie Stranger in Paradise Broken English Lost in Drowned Bliss Sunset at Quaquaversal Point A Flame in Your Heart

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wa r r a n t Warrant Fantasy on Nightmare on Elm Street Theme “Cum ipse . . .” He’s So Heavy, He’s My Sokal Why I Don’t Meditate Questionnaire Language, Truth, and Logic from Canti Antichi Slap Me Five, Cleo, Mark’s History

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i n pa rts Reading Red Pomegranates In Parts 122 Photo Opportunity

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li k e n ess Castor Oil Shenandoah Jacob’s Ladder Don’t Get Me Wrong Interim Standoff Should We Let Patients Write Down Their Own Dreams? Bridges Freeze Before Roads Pocket in the Hole Evening Sail with Prawns Secrets of a Clear Hand Rain Is Local Set Free (Knot) If You Lived Here You’d Be Home Now The Warble of the Ammonia-Bellied Barkeep “And if then . . .” Comforting Thoughts

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117 118 120 121 123 124 125 126 128 129 131 132 133 134 136 137

Further Color Notes Likeness

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gi r ly m a n

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War Stories There’s Beauty in the Sound of the Rushing Brook as It Forks & Bends in the Moonlight Sign Under Test A Poem Is Not a Weapon Emma’s Nursery Rimes Wherever Angels Go Death Fugue (Echo) The Beauty of Useless Things: A Kantian Tale Self-Help The Bricklayer’s Arms The Ballad of the Girly Man

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Notes and Acknowledgments

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L E T ’ S J US T SAY 

for my father Herman Joseph Bernstein (1902–1978) at 100 beyond any blessing or song

In Particular “i admit that beauty inhales me but not that i inhale beauty” —felix bernstein “my lack of nothingness” —the genie in the candy store

A black man waiting at a bus stop A white woman sitting on a stool A Filipino eating a potato A Mexican boy putting on shoes A Hindu hiding in igloo A fat girl in blue blouse A Christian lady with toupee A Chinese mother walking across a bridge An Afghanastani eating pastrami A provincial walking on the peninsula A Eurasian boy on a cell phone An Arab with umbrella A Southerner taking off a backpack An Italian detonating a land line A barbarian with beret A Lebanese guy in limousine A Jew watering petunias A Yugoslavian man at a hanging A Sunni boy on scooter A Floridian climbing a fountain A Beatnik writing a limerick A Caucasian woman dreaming of indecision A Puerto Rican child floating on a balloon An Indian fellow gliding on three-wheeled bike An Armenian rowing to Amenia An Irish lad with scythe

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A Bangladeshi muttering questions A worker wading in puddles A Japanese rollerblader fixing a blend A Burmese tailor watching his trailer An Idaho man getting a tan A Quinnipiac girl with a bluesy drawl An Arapahoe whaler skimming failure An anorexic man with a remarkably deep tan An adolescent Muslim writing terza rima A Scots pipe fitter at the automat A gay guy in tweed boat A red man with green ball A dyslexic sailor with an inconsolable grin A Northumbrian flier heading for Tipperary A Buddhist financier falling to ground A curious old boy jumping into threshing machine An Hispanic sergeant on lookout for a cream-colored coat An addicted haberdasher eating soap A Peruvian child chewing gum A Sephardic infant on shuffleboard deck A Mongolian imitating Napoleon An anarchist lad with skewed glance A Latvian miner break dancing with the coroner A poor girl eating apple pie and cream soda A Sudanese fellow with a yellow stroller An atheist with a flare for pins A Bahamanian on the way to inordinate machination A stuttering Iranian in blue and gold fog A tell-tale somnambulist rehearsing Gypsy A homosexual child in a taxi A Wiccan matron swimming in glue A Moravian procrastinator practicing jujitsu A Syrian swami on Lake Origami A flirtatious gentleman spinning wool A colored youngster admiring a toaster A Danish designer in a diner

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A Montenegrin taking Excedrin A D.C. dervish dribbling dodecahedrons A Denver doyen davenning defiantly A Bali busboy getting high An Iraqi contemplating hari-kari An Ojibwa pushing a button on the Trans-Siberian A harried officer somersaulting on banister A moldy Whig directing catfish An agoraphobic professor on cruise control A feminist in a rocking chair A Burmese cook in bobby socks A teenager infiltrating an air mattress A pro-choice guy reciting rimes A dog-faced Finn in shining car A Czech man in a check suit A Pentecostal lawyer jogging in his foyer A communist wearing a sad apron A Canadian woman with a nose ring A ghoulish girl dating a dentist An idiot in a closet A Moorish magician in her kitchen A sorrowful soldier with a morose clothier A dilettantish senior washing strictures A socialite on routine imbroglio A bicyclist hoarding hornets A toddler pocketing the till A hooded boy eating cheddar cheese A balding brownnoser in tutu A brunette chasing choo-choo train An Argentine dancing on a dime A bespeckled dowager installing Laplink An australopithecine toddler grimacing in basement A Nicaraguan pee-wee with preposterous pipe A kike out cold on ice A Hoosier off the booze A swollen man with an impecunious grin

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A Burmese fellow with face of terror A lost poll in the forest A dilapidated soul drinking rum A pistolero with folded heart A Shockwave momma hunkering down on puck A vellobound baby two-facing the cha-cha A postcolonial fiduciary eating a plum A maladroit Swede coughing bullets A hexed Haitian on involuntary vacation A Persian oncologist in metrical parking A Peruvian French hornist sipping Pernod A Terra Haute charmer with infinite capacity to harm her A Mongolian chiropodist at a potluck A São Paulo poet reflecting on deflection A white man sitting on stool A black woman waiting at bus stop

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Thank You for Saying Thank You

This is a totally accessible poem. There is nothing in this poem that is in any way difficult to understand. All the words are simple & to the point. There are no new concepts, no theories, no ideas to confuse you. This poem has no intellectual pretensions. It is purely emotional. It fully expresses the feelings of the author: my feelings, the person speaking to you now. It is all about communication. Heart to heart.

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This poem appreciates & values you as a reader. It celebrates the triumph of the human imagination amidst pitfalls & calamities. This poem has 90 lines, 269 words, and more syllables than I have time to count. Each line, word, & syllable have been chosen to convey only the intended meaning & nothing more. This poem abjures obscurity & enigma. There is nothing hidden. A hundred readers would each read the poem in an identical manner & derive the same message from it. This poem, like all good poems, tells a story in a direct style that never leaves the reader guessing. While at times expressing bitterness, anger,

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resentment, xenophobia, & hints of racism, its ultimate mood is affirmative. It finds joy even in those spiteful moments of life that it shares with you. This poem represents the hope for a poetry that doesn’t turn its back on the audience, that doesn’t think it’s better than the reader, that is committed to poetry as a popular form, like kite flying and fly fishing. This poem belongs to no school, has no dogma. It follows no fashion. It says just what it says. It’s real.

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Let’s Just Say

Let’s just say that every time you fall you never hit the ground Let’s just say that when the day ends the night refuses to come Let’s just say that if all else fails you at least you can count on that Let’s just say that a bird in the fist is better than a bird and a foot Let’s just say that the scarlet ambrosia of your innermost longing is the nectar of a god who never chooses to visit Let’s just say that if chance accords possibilities, melancholy postpones insomnia Let’s just say that sleep is the darker side of dreams Let’s just say that sometimes a rose is just a read flower Let’s just say that every step forward is also a step nowhere Let’s just say that the thirst for knowledge can only be quenched if one learns how to remain hungry Let’s just say that green is always a reflection of the idea of green

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Let’s just say that I encounter myself not in the mirror but in the manure Let’s just say that each door leads to another door Let’s just say that we think it before we see it or better we see it as we think it Let’s just say that a stone’s throw might be a world away Let’s just say that love is neither here nor there Let’s just say that the girl is the mother of the woman Let’s just say that without disorder there can be no harmony Let’s just say that the aim is not to win but not to lose too bad Let’s just say that a knife in the back is better than a knife in the heart Let’s just say that between sleep and dreams is the reality behind reality Let’s just say that I am very weak and want to take a bath Let’s just say that the truth is somewhere between us Let’s just say that the top of a tower is not a good place to hide Let’s just say that mankind suffers its language Let’s just say that a bird cannot always be in flight Let’s just say that we’re not far from where we would have been if we had lived better lives

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Let’s just say that pretty ugly is an aspiring oxymoron Let’s just say that if the sun is a rock burning in space then the earth is a shard hurtling from its designation Let’s just say that little is gained when nothing is lost Let’s just say that the lie of the mind is the light of perception

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every lake has a house & every house has a stove & every stove has a pot & every pot has a lid & every lid has a handle & every handle has a stem & every stem has an edge & every edge has a lining & every lining has a margin & every margin has a slit & every slit has a slope & every slope has a sum & every sum has a factor & every factor has a face & every face has a thought & every thought has a trap & every trap has a door & every door has a frame & every frame has a roof & every roof has a house & every house has a lake

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S OM E OF T H E SE DA Z E 

It’s 8:23 in New York

What I can’t describe is how beautiful the day is in New York; clear skies, visibility all the way to the other side of wherever you think you are looking. Or looking away. After the long and strange Odyssey back from LaGuardia airport this morning, I went to a jammed local upper west side coffee shop. A family was eating, deciding, loudly, whether to get the chicken or tuna salad; the mother expressed great disappointment that there was no skim milk. The coffee shop was packed and the mother said, “Well, it’s OK, at least we’re not in a rush right now and after all the restaurant probably has more people than they are used to handling.” Outside, two guys with work boots and cell phones strapped to their waists yelled toward the coffee shop, “I can’t believe these fucking people are sitting in a cafe when the city is being blown up.” I can’t imagine Manhattan without those two towers looming over the south end. As I was walking across the 59th Street bridge I couldn’t stop thinking of that Simon and Garfunkel song named after the bridge, “Feelin’ Groovy” (“Life, I love you . . . all is . . .”). It was hard not to feel like it was a movie, and one with an unbelievable plot at that. All the airports closed; the Pentagon bombed; four commercial jets hijacked on suicide missions. The bridge was overflowing

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with people streaming out of Manhattan, a line as wide as the bridge and as long as Manhattan itself. If you looked out to the left, there was a big plume of smoke over downtown Manhattan. You couldn’t see that the Towers were not there. And it didn’t seem possible that this had happened either. Even with all the people streaming out, and the small clutch of us walking back to the island. The FDR drive below us was empty, with just the occasional emergency vehicle. The UN Secretariat building looked naked, vulnerable. Why wouldn’t a plane smash into that while we walked across the East River? The skies unnaturally clear of airplanes, though every once in a while you hear the ominous swoop of a jet overhead, presumably military. Once in Manhattan, the entrance to the bridge was mobbed. But walking west, people were quietly hanging out on street corners. Most of the avenues were cleared of traffic and quiet, except for the sirens of an ambulance or fire truck racing downtown. While the phones are not working very well (so much of NYC communication is streamed through the World Trade Center), the email is working fine. There are notes of disbelief and worry from people from all over, especially Europe. My friends Misko and Dubravka from Beograd write and I remember their emails when their city was under fire. And various friends we had just seen on our recent trip. As I was walking home, about half a mile from our apartment, I stop by the storefront hair salon of Andrew, who lives upstairs in our building. I had been trying for a couple of hours to get Susan on the phone, to see if she had picked up Felix at school. But neither the cell nor land phones were working. Andrew said Susan and Felix had just walked by and were heading home. He said he was going to stay open just because he thought people would want to have him there, standing in front of his shop.

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At about 6, Felix, Susan and I walked down to the Hudson. I wanted to see New Jersey, to see the George Washington Bridge. The sun gleamed on the water. The bridge was calm. Folks were bicycling and rollerblading. The scene was almost serene; just five miles from the Trade Center. Uncanny is the word. What I can’t describe is the reality; the panic; the horror. I keep turning on the TV to hear what I can’t take in and what I already know. Over and over. I don’t find the coverage comforting but addictive. This could not have happened. This hasn’t happened. This is happening. It’s 8:23 in New York. (September 11, 2001)

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Today is the next day of the rest of your life

all of a sudden tonight the smell of burning plastic pervades our apartment, making eyes smart. is it something in the building? no, a neighbor explains, that’s the smell coming from downtown.

* Mei-mei Berssenbrugge calls; she’s OK, hanging in a couple of blocks from the epicenter. I say to her I have trouble imagining what is going on. She says, oh you can imagine it all right, from the movies. You just can’t conceive it.

* I see Andrew, the hairdresser, in the lobby of our building. He says things were on and off today; several appointments were no shows. “Maybe they’re not coming back.”

* A friend in Berkeley asks me how things are going and I write back. The reply is immediate: “automated response.” It is entirely blank.

* We drop Felix off at a friend’s across from his school on 77th and Amsterdam. The fire station on the block, which we pass every day, is empty, with piles of flowers in the doorway. A wave of terror sweeps over us; after all, 200 to 300 firefighters have died. Later in the afternoon, I come to pick Felix up, and there are ten or twelve firemen in front of

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the firehouse, calmly, so it seems, washing the two fire trucks parked in the middle of the street. It’s a relief to see them. Then we hear that nine of the thirty men stationed there perished.

* The most frequent analogy is to Pearl Harbor, though the London blitz might also be mentioned. I keep thinking of something else, not something that happened but something I expected to happen. In the 50s, we were trained to prepare for a nuclear attack on Manhattan. In elementary school, we had drills in which we were marched into the halls and all the window and door glass was covered with wood. Others were told to crouch under their desks. The events of yesterday seem to finally play out that fear.

* A psychologist friend is on extra duty through the weekend. Those at the edge are going over it. “I may be paranoid but there really are people out to get me.”

* “It’s a bit ominous,” a friend writes, “the way the politicos are speaking about talking with one voice.” —I am just trying to get by talking with no voice.

* Many of the officials on TV say we will come out of all this stronger. But it won’t be the same we. Stronger or not.

*

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Jerry and Diane Rothenberg come by. We finish off the bottle of “reserve” Stoli I bought just a few weeks ago at the Moscow airport “duty free.”

* On the Poetics List someone quotes the Tao Te Ching: “Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear.” I can’t help thinking— give nothing evil to oppose and it will crash the program

* the image is greater than the reality the image can’t approach the reality the reality has no image

* our eyes are burning (September 12, 2001)

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Aftershock

Thursday night it started to pour. The piercing thunder claps echoed over Manhattan. We all woke up with a start and couldn’t find the way back to sleep. Andrew tells us the story of a British man who showed up on time for his hair cutting appointment, 4pm, Tuesday. He had been on an upper floor of the Trade Center when the jet hit. By mistake I first wrote “Word Trade Center.” Tuesday morning I rouse my friend Stu from a profound slumber to tell him what has happened to the twin towers.— “They’re ugly,” he says, after a pause, “but they’re not that ugly.” In the last few days, everyone I know seems to need to be in touch with everyone else. At first, it was mostly calls and emails from outside the U.S. Now there is a steady stream of local calls: where were you when, how are you feeling now. Every story is riveting, from the ones where the people were alone watching live TV to the many who watched the events unfold, how to put it?, live and in person. Those who saw the towers collapse, who saw the people jumping, were seared in a way the rest of us have been spared. A visceral need to lash out, to strike down, to root out, to destroy in turn for what has been destroyed, seems to grip so many, grips part of me. When a co-worker expresses just this sentiment, someone com-

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plains to her, “Don’t you think we need to find out who is responsible before we do anything?” She shrugs: not necessarily. It’s as if the blasts occurred dozens of times, the actual blasts being obliterated by the constant replay. I feel like I am going through those stages in an unwritten book by Kubler-Ross: first denial, then manic fascination, then listlessness, then depression. Now denial again. And then I realize that of course the book had been written. Many books. I can’t get the film out of my mind. You know, the one in which a crackerjack team of conspirators meets in an abandoned hangar and meticulously plots out the operation on a blackboard. Synchronize watches! This image stands in the way of what occurred in the way that a blizzard stands in the way of the sky. Out of the blue, flags everywhere. Things I do everyday like make airplane reservations on the phone are now fraught with an unwanted emotional turbulence. In some ways the blasts are a natural disaster, like an earthquake or volcanic eruption. Though we might wish to fight it, human beings and what they do are also a part of nature. The “letter” trains are mostly running but I always think in terms of IRT, BMT, IND. Well, the A is OK from 207th to West 4th but the C’s down; the D now ends at 34th. The E’s canceled service below West 4th indefinitely. As to my local trains, no service on the 2 or 3 and the 1 stops at 34th. After the crash, an official period of panic set in. During this time, all bets were off. We were told to expect anything, any target next. This period of official panic has set the tone for the days after and may have a more profound effect than the initial events.

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Now, Sunday, it’s cold for the first time. The summer is over. I bomb you bomb he/she/it bombs we bomb you bomb they suffer We’re ugly, but we’re not that ugly. &, hey, Joe, don’t you know— We is they. (September 13–16, 2001)

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Report from Liberty Street

I took a walk on Liberty Street today. Only it was not the same place as I had known before. They thought they were going to heaven. Large crowds surge inside the police barricades, stretching to get a glimpse of the colossal wreck. All that remains of the towers are two lattice facades standing upright amidst the rubble. These vast and hollow trunks of steel are mocked by the impervious stare of the neighboring buildings that loom, intact, over the vacant center. National Guard troops, many no more than teenagers, stand over us, the dazzled onlookers, the voyeurs of the disaster, shouting gruffly, yet with a strange and unexpectable kindness, “move on, move on, can’t stop here.” We look on, perhaps not yet ready for despair, against our stronger instincts, which well up, boundless and bare. They thought they were going to heaven. There are so many troops that the metaphor of a war zone dissolves into an actuality.

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Liberty Street is an occupied zone. We have occupied ourselves. At Pier A on the Battery, there are two giant Apple “Think Different” ads with blown-up pictures of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, who preside over the scene with unflinching incomprehension. Across the way, the sign on the almost completed “The Residences” at the Ritz-Carlton Downtown says: “Live in Legendary Luxury / Occupancy Fall 2001 / Spectacular Views.” They thought they were going to heaven. At the checkpoint at Bowery and West Street, four soldiers inspect the passes of every vehicle wanting to go north, and there is an endless stream of cars, busses (filled with workers), pickups, dumpsters, flatbeds. Even police in uniform show their IDs to the soldiers. Battery Park has become a military staging ground, filled with jeeps and tents and soldiers in combat fatigues. Because the park is closed, it’s impossible to get to the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. They thought they were going to heaven. If downtown seems oddly detached, out of time or frozen in it, one of the most affecting sites is at the Times Square subway station. Around the cold tile columns in the central atrium of the station, people have put up dozens of homemade signs, each with a picture of someone. They say “missing”—not in the sense of “looking for,” but rather, feeling the loss. The grief surrounding these columns is overwhelming and we look on as if hit by a wave of turbulence. Yet, despite the votive lights and candles in coffee mugs, which, remarkably, the transit authority has left undisturbed, these are secular shrines, in the most pedestrian and transient of all places in the city.

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We are overwhelmed by explanations for things that, at the visceral level, can’t be rationalized. Anyway not yet or not quite. Almost everyone I know is on their own particular edge, our preset worldviews snapping into place like a bulletproof shield on one of James Bond’s cars. Only the presets aren’t quite working, which makes for an interesting, if unhinging, shimmer at the edges of things. We hear a lot of one song from 1918 by Irving Berlin, but not a hint of “How Deep Is the Ocean” or “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” much less “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun.” They thought they were going to heaven. The movies keep playing in my head. Not Towering Inferno, but do you remember in Fail-Safe where the President, played by Henry Fonda, launches a nuclear attack on New York to show the Russians that the U.S. attack on Moscow was a mistake? “Mr. Chairman,” Fonda tells his Russian counterpart, “my wife is in New York today on a shopping trip and I have her on the phone right now. . . . Mr. Chairman, the phone has gone dead.” So it’s almost no surprise to see someone with a T-shirt that says “What Part of Hatred Don’t You Understand?” I guess when two planes filled with passengers and tanked up with more fuel than it takes to get my moped from here to Mars and back hits skyscrapers with 20,000 people in them, it doesn’t take a political scientist to know there’s a lot of hate there. The scary thing is that maybe what they hated most about America is not the bad part. They thought they were going to heaven. I find myself walking around making up arguments in my head, but

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when I try to write them down they dissolve in a flood of questions and misgivings. I value these questions, these misgivings, more than my analysis of the situation. A new sport is checking not what stores have put up flags but which ones don’t. Still, there is one Afghani joint in midtown that has no flag in sight. Stu and I head over to try out the lamb kebab. In the media, there has been a good deal of flap over the use of the word “cowardly” to describe the people that commandeered the planes. I notice that on television this weekend the term of art is now “dastardly,” though that is probably better applied to the villain in Perils of Pauline. Certainly these men were not timid nor did they turn and run like rabbits (the root of the word coward). But I think the fact that no one claimed responsibility has made it harder to react, which is part of the effect. The seeming cowardice is not in the action but in the refusal to take responsibility for the action; it’s strategic rather than tactical. They thought they were going to heaven. “We got what we deserved,” a shrill small voice inside some seems to be saying. But surely not this person, nor this one, not this one, nor this one. Nor this one. No one deserves to die this way. I think that goes without saying and yet I feel compelled to say it. Even if “we” and “they” have felled many, too many (any is too many) in this way. Not people willing to die for a cause (a fairly large group), nor even those willing to kill for a cause (also a fairly large group), but people willing to do this (a relatively small group).

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They thought they were going to heaven. Not cowards. Men of principle. Oh yes, you may say, what’s monstrous to one may be expediency to the other. I too have read Merleau-Ponty’s Humanism and Terror and watched Burn and The Battle of Algiers. But that makes it no less monstrous. They thought they were going to heaven. Still, I don’t think this form of monstrousness is only “out there.” We have our own domestic product. We call it KKK or Timothy McVeigh, Lt. Calley or Dr. Strangelove. They thought they were going to heaven. Manhattan as transitional object: Both my parents were born and grew up in New York, their parents having found sanctuary here from places that proved . . . inhospitable. The ghosts of these transplanted souls, along with the ghosts of their many compatriots, haunt the Holy Warriors with a fury that drives them to seek refuge through the Gates of Hell. The question isn’t is art up to this but what else is art for? They thought they were going to heaven. “The lone and level sands stretch far away.” (September 18–October 1, 2001)

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Letter from New York

November 22, 2001 Dear Arkadii, You ask me to give you a report on the holidays from New York. This is not an easy topic for me as during these days I fall into a kind of haze, lost in my thoughts, trying to lose my sense of where or when or what, at least momentarily. You see, I’ve never liked holidays. The problem is not so much the false cheer; grimness is not to be preferred. No, the holidays, the days off from work, always hold the hope of catching up–with my sleep, my reading, my writing. But all that is absorbed in compulsory socializing. Before you know it, you’re further behind than when the holiday began. By this point, late in November, everyone is exhausted over the topic “9-11.” Everything is subject to the “9-11” test–how does this read/sound/ play after September 11? One has to fight ferociously with oneself to take the time our from 9-11 consciousness. But without taking a break, there can’t be any perspective. Today my son Felix went to the annual Thanksgiving Day parade, presented by Macy’s, the big department store. Hundreds of drum majors and majorettes are flown from the South and Midwest to pound out marching band tunes to an adoring, but apparently tone-deaf crowd. Almost unknown celebrities from daytime TV wave expansively at the

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cheering crowds, who turn to one another and say, “Who is that? . . . I’ve never heard of him!” Huge balloons of popular movie and TV characters float above Central Park West, a reminder that we inhabit a world of Disney Gods who live in a DVD Olympus. A large native Hawaiian contingent does walking Hula dances in skimpy attire that is no match for the New York’s autumn chill; we all say, as in a round, “Do you see what they’re wearing? . . . They must be freezing!” Felix eagerly thrusts his hands out to all the passing clowns and gets many big shakes. It is all exactly as always, exactly as I first saw this parade almost fifty years ago. The same grand boulevard running along the park, the same tunes piercing the crisp air. Life has not proceeded at all and I feel as if I must not yet be born. My brother teaches at an elementary school a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. When the buildings got hit, the children had to be evacuated. The school has been flooded with assigned condolence letters from children across America. “Now children,” the teachers say, “let’s send a letter to the downtrodden youngsters of SoHo.” Bags of letters on identical size cards with chocolate candy kisses arrive with such sprawled greetings as, “My name is Billy. I am sorry your parents or close relative died. My favorite sport is bungee ball. What’s yours?” Of course, such letters cannot be passed on to the kids and besides no one in the school lost parents. The school is also being flooded with gifts, even though these kids are quite well off; the gifts would be better directed to the poorest schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx or uptown Manhattan. But holiday giving is directed obsessively, almost manically, at the 9-11 victims. As a result, the homeless and poor, a growing number these days, have even less help than usual. November 22 is one of those days etched into the consciousness of many of my generation, since on this day thirty-eight years ago John F. Kennedy was shot. It’s odd perhaps that this year the anniversary falls on Thanksgiving, that quintessential American holiday that recalls the pilgrims eating turkey their first years after landing in a very harsh New World. The New World has always been harsh, too harsh for too long for too many. But it also offered not just the promise of something dif-

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ferent, but more important the start of something different. Starts and stops, it’s true; and no destination in sight. But we continue anyway. We have no choice, there is no place to which to return. Anyway, isn’t this the time to say: We are all getting back to normal here in New York. I am feeling absolutely normal. Totally and completely normal. The problem is: I never felt normal before. In a little more than a month, by my count, we will come to the end of the first year of the new century. It seems like a very long time from now. My love to you and to Xena. We think of you both and of our happy days in Petersburg in August, especially that day we drifted aimlessly down the Neva. Or did I just imagine it? Charles

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WORL D ON FI RE 

Didn’t We

Inch by inch, the paths breaking into patches of blue and green then black and brown, then over the pass to the top of the remotest interior, accustomed as we are to torrential indifference and beatific familiarity. “Look up in the sky”—another ad for vinyl tubing, pillow talk of Whosits & Whatsits of Nob & Kebob, Insley & Ufragious, Ackabag & Boodalip. Bump right along, pondering your song, while roasting toast or grinding sand or polishing the fabric softener that stands between you and your self. It was in 1943 and then again one more time. Beat bird without a

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feather to call its own, a miser who lives on a pile of mylar, the studio with the view of the studio, my electric blinker maker, strapped in for take off. no floating allowed. As quiet as the steps to indelible vanishing.

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The Folks Who Live on the Hill

It’s still the same old lorry. Astronaut meets Mini-Me in a test tube in Rome, Regis spurns Veronica, Merv buys casino, goes to another season, but in the previous year. The crab cakes were never as fresh again but it continued to pour even after the flood expired. Anyhow, spoilage is never as bad as outright chicanery. Follow the rules then go straight to the linen closet for folding. For example, the cedar chest on Pine street, or the thumb wrestle of a misplaced mid-afternoon, competitively anchored in java applets for the price of a used backhoe.

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Hey! What’s the use in a clothespin when you haven’t got even the idea of a line? “And Darby and Joe, who used to be Jack and Jill . . .”

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One More for the Road

Like comedy never strikes the same place More than a couple of times unless you Change costumes and dance with me, dance Till the furniture turns to props and All the mops are a chorus of never Before heard improbabilities, honeyed alibis For working too hard, mowing the Astroturf, Cranking the permafrost, watering the microprocessors On the kids’ conveyor belts. The bird never Flies as high as an old-fashioned kick In the carbonization.—They gave me till Friday to let them know if the job would Ever be complete. We’re getting there, just Fall a little further behind by day And after dark it’s a mule’s paradise.

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In a Restless World Like This Is

Not long ago, or maybe I dreamt it Or made it up, or have suddenly lost Track of its train in the hocus pocus Of the dissolving days; no, if I bend The turn around the corner, come at it From all three sides at once, or bounce the ball Against all manner of bleary-eyed fortune Tellers—well, you can see for yourselves there’s Nothing up my sleeves, or notice even Rocks occasionally break if enough Pressure is applied. As far as you go In one direction, all the further you’ll Have to go on before the way back has Become totally indivisible.

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Ghost of a Chance

The silent ending came as fast as the cold click of a Beretta. In those years, before the war, it was the custom. An entry point could always be found—a ways down the road, hidden by the side of a steel-gray tool shed, or in warehouses near the waterfront. The days always went like that. And if the money was in the wrong horse race at least it would be kept quiet, for a while. The perfume smell was all but unendurable, when the door opened and the room flooded with neon and icecold air. Behind the camera the men joked about the almost bitter coffee.

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Choo Choo Ch’Boogie

“You gotta girl now, Dave?” spills out to summer’s plain completion, the auguries of trounced and trudged, a minute away from destabilization, “dangerously low resources,” time to shut down. But not the radio, not the radiator, not the true-love plug-in, not the defector detector. When in a race with cartoons and French fries, spackle before autoeject. Hold tight! The rink around the posing is closed for retrofitting. Refurbishment is just around the hospital coroner.

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If bald, bring hat; if not, ignore this sentence but be sure to complete the rest of the lines in the poem before going on to part four. Rubber replacements are available on the third consecutive level. Gel before warp speed. Overcome fears of cloning by using patent leather shoes. Don’t sail boat without buckets of water. And in the shank of the evening, gather all available stems but refute closure.

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Stranger in Paradise

“Call them clamdiggers if you like, but I’d Say her pants shrunk or she just got real tall All of a sudden.” The bus came late, left Early—when all our cares were theirs. LingerIng by the gate of another fly swat, Possum fry, lateral dodge. “My balloon

Is stuck and I need someone to get it Down.” As if the trees torched the sky and the Boiler ran on lost facts. Depend upon It, lest it depend on you, whom the sun Has never touched nor the mist betrayed. Turning tales into tokens the moment The fire hydrant slides in safe at left Field. Drunk with promiselessness, fat on tears. Capris? Isn’t that when whimsy gets lucky?

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Broken English

What are you fighting for? The men move decisively toward the execution chamber. Joey takes aim but muffles his fire. Overhead, the crescent moon cracks the unbroken sky. A moth beats its wings against the closed door—intransigence its only lore. What are you fighting for? The sirens cry wolf to the obedient masses who sway, hysterical, in synch to the boys on the back streets and the ladies of mourning. Brushing up fate pixel by pixel, burnishing dusk: the sum of entropy and elevation. Tony takes it in his intestine, the sharp pain in his body like ripples in a sand dune, his face exquisitely detached from any sign of the sensation. What are you fighting for? The market plunges, savings

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slip away like a greased pig in a taffy pull. Sometimes the easiest thing is just to stop thinking about it. Then it can just think you. Depending on the angle of incline and the rate of decomposition. Wives to each other, husbanding the fear that feeds upon itself and its prey. Doesn’t that count for something, even in these pitched accommodations? What are you fighting for? What are you fighting for?

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Lost in Drowned Bliss

“Things are what they are, but we are never what we are,” she said as she wrapped the sandwich in plastic and tucked away the tears in a flute. “No it’s things. They hourly change before our eyes while we stay stuck in who we are and where we have been.” “Things are solid; we stumble, unglue, recombine.” “Or what we see is no more a part of us than the baby who beckons from the forest: we splinter in the void to catch the light, then hail the sparks as paradise.”

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Sunset at Quaquaversal Point

Intends by onset to skip over busted rhymes Like a snail coats its belly with preconscious Worm-envy on a plate engaging its met mat, The gnat her pinky ring. One sting more And the wave goes on periverbal autodeterrent Chin by the tension fanner, two for fiveFifty, lend me a lip retractor. Gosh, I’m Gonna have to get you later, for now Hold that thoughtlessness one more beat. At the end of the day the pegs left standing Form an arc around the moat till the rooster Comes home with the mocking birds. Then Fill the balloons with ludic runes and I will Take her with mine left and lose her with mine Right. Focus, then bend, the bear to the north Wind, with sullen yet courageous élan. Surcease Surcease—with a sneeze & a pleat & a pike, a

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Spat & a spore, then no more. It’s over & Over & then it’s not, as long as you never— Well sometimes endeavor—as long as you Never, as long as ever, say never nor ever again Again.

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A Flame in Your Heart

As slow as Methuselah and as old as molasses, time passes but nobody ever does anything about it—the soda water at the club on Tuesday so much more fishy than it used to be and the giant marmoset in the bedroom wants more cookies and milk before fading into memory’s skipped disk. Once you came to me in a shadow and I don’t know how to count the years since, since counting is just the thing I am learning not to do. Your bracelet adorns your wrist like a knight in ardor crying for a key to the tumbledown cabin on the dunes. A bonnet repairs what the billy goat embargos—ocean of this close and then again, until all the folds

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are rounded into the bend. And we meet, like actors in a made-for-TV mini-series, at the end of a pier on a blind alley or on a steamship or in a crowded piazza in an unidentifiable Italian city that turns out to be Bayonne. You’re there in the final scene and so am I but we don’t recognize each other because we’ve gone beyond all that. Then the signal blasts with unendurable music and we collapse into the sound, into ourselves as make-believe as any devout hugamug with a hankering for infinite finitude: just a walk down the street of the imaginary enclosure that becomes real when shared.

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WA RRA N T 

Warrant

I warrant that this poem is entirely my own work and that the underlying ideas concepts, and make-up of the poem have not been taken from any other source or any other poem but rather originate with this poem. I further attest that no one except me, the author and party to this binding agreement, has any title claim, or proprietary interest in the poem. I hereby indemnify the publisher against any action that can be taken against the poem, warranted or unwarranted, including libel, defamation, or infringement on any trademark, copyright

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or patent, irrespective of any intention or lack of intention, state of mind, or aesthetic philosophy. I further attest that this poem has not been previously published, in part or in whole, in any print or electronic form, or in translation, or performed as part of a reading musical, review, lecture or show. I grant the publisher worldwide rights to the poem, including serial, periodical, newspaper, magazine book, bookazine, poster indoor and outdoor display rights, and also digital, paradigital, and postdigital rights, as well as the rights to use the poem in secondary publications and markets including franchise and commercial applications. The poem will be copyrighted in the name of the publisher and the author hereby and forthwith without prejudice or duress

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and with full consent agreement, acquiescence and concurrence relinquishes rights to republish the poem in any form, print or electronic, or perform the poem at any fair show, reading, lecture musical, or review, without permission, notarized and in writing, from the publisher. I agree to furnish the publisher at my own expense and expeditiously an electronic copy of the poem as well as one hard copy or print-out. I agree to review proofs of the poems and return them, at my own expense within 36 hours of their receipt. The proofs will be delivered any time from later today until 3 January 2010. In exchange for granting the publisher the aforesaid rights, I will receive, as payment in full, and as full recompense against any claims, levies, fees honoraria, emoluments endorsements, rights permissions, or royalties domestic or global, printed or electronic, digital paradigital, and postdigital—

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the opportunity to subscribe to the publication in which the poem will first appear at forty percent discount from the full subscription price. To exercise this option I agree to make payment in full in the next thirty (30) days.

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Fantasy on Nightmare on Elm Street Theme

There is a place not here nor near nor far Goes and comes wherever you are Don’t go don’t go don’t go

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Cum ipse plectrum maribilus factotum Grandio decorum ludicare plenus est Amo digitalis flagrantia moribund Ammo ipse luminatti finitudo Regio masturboris terminus reglutino Habitatio potentia paternitus mea Quod perpetuo obduro nunc nobilis Causam Excrucio belle fugit veritas Quisquam fortunatus modo pumex Ave mediocris grammiticus Opera circumsilliens modo quamquam Proximus nostrum ignorare arbitraris

This fragment has been reconstructed from documents recently discovered near Rome. It is believed to be derived from a poem by Caudio Amberian, who was an advisor to Nero, although little else is known about him. Many lexical and grammatical irregularities characterize this no doubt debased text; my translation tries to remain as literal as possible, providing in English an experience close to what it might have been like for the first Latin auditors of this self-cannibalizing work.—Ch.B. With itself plucked marble, factotum Grand with ludicrous decoration, is full I love ‘finger stimulation’ without shame, deadly

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Ammunition itself enfused with final light The king handles himself terminally, comes unglued My fatherhood enhouses my potency On the grounds that perpetual obdurance is now To conduct torture a pretty flight to truth Anyone blessed just pumice Farewell grammatical ordinariness Works wobbling with only little qualms Near our arbitrary ignorance

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He’s So Heavy, He’s My Sokal after danny kaye and milton schafer

Please, please don’t Sokal me Sokal the baby, Sokal the priest But don’t, don’t Sokal me I’m laughing so hard I could cry If I Sokaled you You wouldn’t like it You wouldn’t approve If I Sokaled you You’d Sokal so hard you would split O, O let go of my ‘no’ It isn’t so funny you goof Oh, no, I’ve misplaced the sunny Stop or I’ll fall up through the roof But please, please don’t Sokal me Sokal the baby, Sokal the priest Sokal your mother, Sokal your brother Sokal some other guy But don’t, don’t Sokal me I’m laughing so hard I could sigh

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Cut it out now, cut it out now! I’m historicized, I can’t take it anymore! Come on, beat it, get out of here! You’re symptomizing me! I’m practically reified! Wait until I get you, you piece of . . . Cut it out ‘cause I’m getting sore And please, please don’t Sokal me Sokal the baby, Sokal the priest Sokal your father, Sokal your sister Sokal some other guy But don’t, don’t Sokal me I’m laughing so hard I could cry

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Why I Don’t Meditate

Mental health is probably overrated—a little anxiety is a great source for poetic composition & besides I prefer sitting on chairs with heavy cushions & a footstool if at all possible.

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Questionnaire

directions: For each pair of sentences, circle the letter, a or b, that best expresses your viewpoint. Make a selection from each pair. Do not omit any items. 1. a) The body and the material things of the world are the key to any knowledge we can possess. b) Knowledge is only possible by means of the mind or psyche. 2. a) My life is largely controlled by luck and chance. b) I can determine the basic course of my life. 3. a) Nature is indifferent to human needs. b) Nature has some purpose, even if obscure. 4. a) I can understand the world to a sufficient extent. b) The world is basically baffling. 5. a) Love is the greatest happiness. b) Love is illusory and its pleasures transient. 6. a) Political and social action can improve the state of the world. b) Political and social action are fundamentally futile. 7. a) I cannot fully express my most private feelings. b) I have no feelings I cannot fully express.

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8. a) Virtue is its own reward. b) Virtue is not a matter of rewards. 9. a) It is possible to tell if someone is trustworthy. b) People turn on you in unpredictable ways. 10. a) Ideally, it would be most desirable to live in a rural area. b) Ideally, it would be most desirable to live in an urban area. 11. a) Economic and social inequality is the greatest social evil. b) Totalitarianism is the greatest social evil. 12. a) Overall, technology has been beneficial to human beings. b) Overall, technology has been harmful to human beings. 13. a) Work is the potential source of the greatest human fulfillment. b) Liberation from work should be the goal of any movement for social improvement. 14. a) Art is at heart political in that it can change our perceptions of reality. b) Art is at heart not political because it can change only consciousness and not events.

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Language, Truth, and Logic

I. Why did you steal that money? You know you acted wrongly in stealing. Stealing money is wrong. You shouldn’t do it, shouldn’t have done it, not what you did. And you promised you wouldn’t. You ought to keep your promises. Really should keep your promises, when you say you will, when you promise. Promise? You know I took what you said as a

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promise. I mean, you promised, didn’t you? They say I excuse you. Excuse me! I can’t excuse you for acting wrong. Stealing money is wrong. You acted wrongly in stealing the money. I took what you said to be a promise. You promised! You ought to keep your promises. Promise! Why did you steal that money? II. You’re mistaken. I shot the horse accidentally. —There was no mistake. It was no accident. I mean I shot the horse by mistake. It was an accident that I shot the horse by mistake. I did not mean to shoot the horse.

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—Mean it or not your mistake is no accident. It was the wrong horse that I shot. I was mistaken. I accidentally made a mistake. —The only mistake you made Is no accident. You’re mistaken. Make no mistake about it. The horse was shot by accident. I held the gun but I was not aiming for the horse. —So you’re saying it was an accident? That you shot the horse by mistake? I admit to my mistake. It was an accident.

A Note on the Poem The first part relates to the central argument in A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic (1936): “The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, ‘You acted wrongly in stealing that money,’ I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, ‘You stole that money.’” The first section also refers to David Ross’s discussion of the statement “You ought to keep your promises” in The Right and the Good (1930). The poem’s second part takes up J. L. Austin’s distinction between accident and mistake in “A Plea for Excuses” (1956). Ayer goes on to say: “In adding that this action is wrong I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. . . . It merely serves to show that the expression of it is attended by certain feelings in the speaker. . . . If now I generalize my previous statement and say, ‘Stealing money is wrong,’ I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning. It is clear that there is nothing said here which can be true or false. . . . We can now see why it is impossible to find a criterion for determining the validity of ethical judgments. . . . And we have seen that sentences which simply express moral judgments do not say anything. They are pure expressions of feelings and as such do not come under the category of truth and falsehood.”

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from Canti Antichi by antonio calvocressi (1538–1574)

O! Heart of mine Is cleaved by your betrayal! The pigeon engorges its wings To our exhausted sentiment! My head is broken on the cement! O! Heart of mine In yearning my visage fractures! We leapt together like matching porcelain doves Before the curtain ripped To its predestined hemorrhage! O! Heart of mine Is drenched in your evasion! The bludgeon unravels its stings On our pathetic pediment! My head’s exploding in deepest lament! —Trans. Ch.B.

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Slap Me Five, Cleo, Mark’s History



Hello, my name is Michael Anthony and I have in my hand a cashier’s check for one million dollars made out in your name. There are no conditions on the use of this money. You can spend it any way you want, even give some to the Memorial Art Gallery, which needs your support, but you know that. Donations to the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo are also welcome, and for donations of 500 or more we will include you or your loved ones in our poems, or, if you prefer, we can compose more poems relating to this painting or other paintings in the collection.—But hold on a minute, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me

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back up. There is one condition on the million: you are not allowed to reveal the name of the benefactor. If I tell you his name, I’m counting on you to keep it to yourself. Anyway, maybe you’ve already guessed that it’s John Beresford Tipton. You’d know the name if you watched The Millionaire on TV in the 1950s. (I don’t think the show’s made it yet to “Nick at Night” or “TV Land,” but then I don’t follow their programming that closely. But I’m sure not getting residuals, that money dried up a long time ago.) Of course a million isn’t what it used to be, but what is? Anyway, you know, enough about me. You didn’t invite me here to talk about myself, well you didn’t invite me here at all. So let’s get on to the subject at hand, because we haven’t got all day. We see before us Bernard Duvivier’s Cleopatra.—Hey, Jimmy! Get up from the bench, take the headphones off, and come over here or you won’t be going to the roller rink later! (Excuse me, I hope it won’t be necessary to interrupt this poem again, so everybody pay attention.) Cleopatra is dated 1789, the year of the French Revolution, so we must first consider how this painting relates to the momentous events of that fateful year, for a painting is never just about its ostensive subject, but always contains within it another, often unseen, often contradictory, subject, played out in its form or figured in its imagery. In this case, we must assume some historically specific reference, some sign of the revolution taking place outside the artist’s studio. And yet, it’s

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hard to see what that would be. Could it be that Antony and Cleopatra in some way stand for characters from the contemporary historical drama of 1789? Cleopatra is no Marie Antoinette, I can tell you that, and Antony, well he’s no Louis XVI, as I am sure you would agree if you knew Louis like I know Louis— O! What a guy! I mean human character is something I specialize in. And I know Louis and Marie, not just the cardboard images out of books but the real fleshand-blood people. Just last week, Louis, Marie, and I had a knockout lunch with Jack Tipton at Montrachet—the frogs’ legs were delicious, crisp as a Lay’s potato chip and coated with a dazzling avocado meringue sauce. And the patisserie was out of this world. “Let us eat ze cake,” Louis joked, always the wise guy, but you should have seen the look on Marie’s face: she was not amused. It was nice of Tippy to pick up the check, as the French royals have been having a hard time the past couple of hundred years. I mean whether you agree with them or not, you’ve got to respect the tradition they represent. No, if we are to look for allegory in this painting, we have to think of something different, something more off the mark. Perhaps the symbolic potential of middle-aged lovers defying society? Cleopatra and Antony look very youthful for 39 and 53—and this is way before vitamin supplements, too. But, let’s face it, this is no Citizen Cleo taking up arms against the old order

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in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Whatever virtues the pair may have, democracy is no part of them. Fraternization maybe, but that’s it. Duvivier shows Cleopatra with a knife, ready to end this mortal coil and join her beloved in that better place just outside the frame. This is not a revolutionary gesture but rather an inwardly directed act of violence, suggesting severe depression at the acute loss of a loved one in a person without the emotional resources to go through the grieving process and end up a stronger, healthier, more self-empowered individual. Such images of self-directed violence have been shown, time and again, to have a harmful effect on viewers, especially a painting like this, which romanticizes suicide. Paintings with this type of subject matter should be restricted to patrons over 30 who can demonstrate their emotional maturity; my only reservation about this course of action is that it would only draw more attention to this reprehensible glorification of self-slaughter.—I hope you will allow me to indulge in a personal note here. The shame of Mark’s suicide has haunted the Antony family for generations, so much so that when emigrating from Italy in the 1880s, my parents changed the spelling of our name, adding an “h” for our missing honor. And, speaking of families, what of Mark’s first family—Octavia and the children? Sure Queen Cleopatra is sad, but what about them? I wouldn’t waste all your tears on Cleo. Don’t get me wrong, I understand what it’s like to be so low you think down is up. After

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our show passed on—I mean was canceled, I still have a hard time saying that word—I fell into a downward spiral until I hit bottom at a dive called At Our Place on the Bowery. That’s where I met Louis, who always wore a green ribbon around his neck, although he would never talk about it. Tippy tried to do what he could, offered to cover my stay at the Betty Ford clinic, but I had too much pride to accept his offer. Eventually I landed a job as research assistant to a young scholar associated with UB’s Poetics Program, who specialized in poems about paintings and was at the time working on French neo-Classicism à la Jacques Louis David. Anyway, and correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t Cleopatra do herself in with an asp shortly after the scene depicted in this painting? When she realized that the hundreds-year-old Ptolemaic dynasty would come to an end and Rome would rule Egypt? When push comes to shove, it wasn’t romance that was on the Queen’s mind, but the imminent political catastrophe for her country. Maybe that event was to be the subject of a sequel, ready to go into production if this painting hit big box office. Anyway, not to change the subject, but, and check this out—don’t you think Antony looks more like he was caught in flagrante delicto than that he’s dead? I guess that’s poetic license (how do you apply for one of those?). Alas, none of us brings a blank slate, a tabula rasa, an unprejudiced gaze, to the reception of such an historically charged subject. For example, many contemporary viewers will have foremost in their minds the comparison between the star-crossed lovers in this painting and their representation in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s

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1963 film version of Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, with Rex (“Dr. Doolittle”) Harrison as Julie Caesar. (Many people think of Julie only as a take-charge military commander and forget that he was the inspiration for that great vocal standard, “Roman Nights of an Egyptian Queen [Cleo’s Song]”—“You came, you saw, you conquered me.”) I cannot emphasize enough that in order to properly understand Duvivier’s painting on its own terms, it is necessary to clear the mind of all such overlaid images. Try to put yourself in the position of the first viewers of this painting, who knew nothing of Liz and Dick’s shenanigans in Rome, nor of the trials of Eddie Fisher. Such contemporary images put a cloud between us and this painting, a cloud that we can only hope to vaporize by rigorous analysis both of the painting itself and the historical reality of that August day, 30 years before the start of the first millennium, when people were just beginning to face the issues around Y-zero-K (ignition, lift-off). Let us then return to this painting, with a renewed commitment to plumb its depth, scale its heights, assay its thematics. No consideration of this work would be anything but superficial if it considered only the main actors in the unfolding drama and overlooked the supporting cast. Let us then turn our attention to Faith, Hope, and Larry— the threesome just behind the stiff. Now Faith, Faith looks like she’s got Excedrin headache 49, if not a migraine (but this was before product placements and let me emphasize that there are only minimal fees being paid for brand name references in this poem). Hope seems to be

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rehearsing for a Martha Graham revival. And Larry—the guy in the lower right-hand corner— it looks like he’s trying out an early version of aerobics—“Get that knee up, all the way up. Stretch those arms.” But here’s the weirdest thing: Larry, let’s call him Larry, bears an uncanny resemblance to John Beresford Tipton. I mean Jack Tipton always wore a suit, but the guy in the picture has the same nose, the same eyes, the same build. I mean explain that. But I see I am letting the main emotional action of the painting get away from me: you know, the deep gaze being exchanged by the Queen and the Roman guard Proculeius (whose name we now associate primarily with a common skin rash exacerbated by oil paint). I mean, first Julius Caesar, then ’Tony, and now . . . ? After all, who could resist a man in a red dress wearing a helmet bedecked with a long red feather? Or would you call that a plume? I’d call it a feather, but then what do I know? I’ve never even been to Egypt and I only took one summer of Latin when I was in high school. “Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.” You can say that double for Mark Antony. And while we are on the subject, make mine a double, too, with a twist. That’s right, double or nothing, twist and shout, but be home by 11. Now, before we move on to the next painting, I want you all to notice that Proculeius’s head accessories are so much more appealing than the rubberbanded ponytail and baseball cap now standard for balding men of my generation—no offense intended to you, sir, yes you, looking away, with the bib overalls—

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but then perhaps Proculeius has one of those ponytails tucked away under his helmet. (Perhaps an x-ray of the painting is in order.) And, hey, what’s that? A miniature dragon under the plumage? That’s so cool. Anyway, one thing’s for sure, Cleopatra’s sandals are still very chic.

Illustration on p. 73: Bernard Duvivier, Cleopatra Captured by Roman Soldiers after the Death of Mark Antony (1789). Oil on canvas, 45 in. x 58 in., acc. no. 84.40. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester: Marion Stratton Gould Fund. Photograph by James Via.

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I N PA R T S 

Reading Red

1 Reading Red only event over & under fuses green with

(no idea

2 Road Show Face on face hides (divides) not what’s inside but what’s

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3 Four Foot Six Dear Blue, Dear Orange, knock me for obtuse rending (rendering) layers of treats, rips

4

5 Dear/Duet Delirium would stand for what’s next to the girl next door the boy who falls

beside oneself in a sane way

6 There is no level In the middle ground

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7 Double & Out Remove the ground triple the crack you still won’t get the middle back the pains are yellow & speak like facts flush then drained absorption’s knack

8 Side by Side The shadow falls & the object appears in the space between (don’t ever leave)

9 Blue Blue (Off the Mark) I’d like to talk to you about the mistakes We just can’t handle laminating (lamentation) warp us as humility changes We don’t have to

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10 Where the fold should be There is no fold

11 No Man’s Land (Call and Response) now that I’m old as I am the more I appreciate that moment of human life I must have lived through but didn’t experience at the time you can’t paint what you can’t feel

12 Broken Token Hush slips sealed

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13 Dear, Here if a tree could talk you would not understand its bark only its bite

14 Loopy a pine is a curve that isn’t deterred

15 color is not about the object but a part of the human being not inside but outside not outside but inside

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16 Key Lime Hide It’s about playing a game the way a lamp shines out at flight but the subject is still overlay & undercover, in which the line pertains to neither either, ether

17 White along edge Bark of tree As if blue becomes a lighter color Holds As you make your bed then lie in it Ground father to Figuration

18 The Knees Have It I had a double meter I gave my father half He put it in his pocket Then threw it in the trash Now since that time I’ve lost a dime I’ve even broke a flute

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But all I want’s that half a rime To bleat the denting out

19 Duophone East is hung & south is its torn motion belongs to Caesar neither, or north’s west passagelessness

20 This Side Up flues cross memory’s encyclopedic permutations— transparent, succumb “the body, the

21 Zone no circle no shape coming out of my mouth “the sun is but a morning star”

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22 Don’t Touch Shadow cast on black mocks line cleave, dart, splinter 23 Can’t hold what resists enclosure— a village of malcontents Dear or Don’t Agents of

24 Against Itself like a cut in skin or the bleating of edges into the frost the paintbrush is the forest of society

25 strongest attempt the work could make to destroy itself

“Reading Red” responds to each of the twenty-five paintings exhibited by Richard Tuttle at the Sperone Westwater gallery in February and March of 1998.

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Pomegranates

consoling whiff of madness thwarts the rabid dog

3 day retreats into quicksand on the good nights

3 painted lilies decorate the final impasse

3 don’t say no when you mean there’s a whole in the ground

3

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one man’s river is another man’s pipe

3 the metaphors are killing me I am reborn as myself

3 so what at least there’s sound in the verbs

3 still no salve for the salve

3 egg roll’s no belly flop

3 winsome, they call me as if entangled were a tattoo

3

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take a break think again, Buddy—

3 break neck stiff breeze

3 seldom silent golden handlebars

3 pills for the pills silt for the silt heart for the heart

3 everywhere seen nowhere hope O, Capital!

3

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much wonder about nothing much

3 help me to the ladder later

3 take your mouth off my ear

3 there’s enough solvent to unglue the host

3 fifty lashes later things mellow a little

3 toward dusk as always

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metaphysics is the busman’s pajamas, religion his overalls

3 behind every behind is a rear end

3 engulf me with your indifferent longing

3 steal yourself for more plastic

3 sensation is the biggest obstacle to sensation

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In Parts

1. conjunction of color overlaps & underthreads how one touches another or doesn’t touch so there simultaneous

double

narrative

the space between’s the other narrative as if they’re opposite whose life would be inkling (splintering)

• we call it minimalism but it’s nearly rococo

• where realism is a form of archaism

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you can see it but you can’t process it in an algebraic or binary way

2. first, space becomes the frame like every solution, it looks good at first the next step: make the frame the first layer of the visual experience the third is getting rid of it

• there is something going on before you make your first mark how to return to what’s in your mind before that mark

• it all begins with the question of how two colors meet each with an overlap the grain an accounting for language (the frame amounting to language)

• a world in which there are no narratives in which to believe simultaneous

double

negative

flop flip the exterior of the interior

•

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hiding the beginning in the end hiding the end in the beginning hiding the middle in the end hiding the middle in the beginning hiding the end in the middle hiding the beginning in the middle hiding the middle in the middle

• today meaning yesterday

3. “There are two kinds of people in the world: those that need to stop doing politics and those who need to start.” everyone leaving at the same time to beat the traffic “I don’t really like anesthesia. I’d rather feel the pain.” warning: vision cuts in and out masonry steps CONCRETE “I feel like I’m standing in the middle of the roadside after the truck took off.” Lock Safe Security (Roselle, New Jersey)

READ THE LINES

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4. the artist articulates the differences society obliterates ’68 is the crisis of the simultaneous double narrative contemporary work has to look like today but if today doesn’t look like tomorrow it quickly becomes yesterday (all art is contemporary but some art is more contemporary than others) We can’t avoid structure a void structure ’68: the crack in the Liberty Bell that lets you look into the matter in which one validates this existence in this moment by these means it’s way past time to find out

5. a series is a sequence without origin or destination simply occurrence a sequence is a series with ulterior motives

• suffused by the iridescent dissimulation of lost linguicity

• a line is borne by its field

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6. art is not a copy of nature but an extension how to make this extension concrete it will absolutely not be prethought (absolutely not be absolutely) the one an extension of the other without reference to priority

7. it speaks about something that’s surfacing at the same time the whole impulse of society seems to be to bury it (if you pretend it didn’t happen, maybe it will go away)

8. shadows create community in frame but out-of-jointed “lately we have been allowed to have more feeling” “we have been allowed to have more feeling lately” “we have been allowed, lately, to have more feeling” the belief that it could keeps me

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9. it invites you to go off but then it brings you back to make a hole that could touch everything no back no front no top no bottom undoing this flip (in and beside) it’s a kind of theory that we are trying to make a meaning for creating the between always creating always the between always creating the between every casket masking the same shadow (no two shadows ever same ever different)

• Satan’s spear is made of glass

10. the red does not touch the blue but the line that joins them is composed of green & yellow & a drawn red line & the green is pulled into the

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red so it’s discolored the red but paradoxically instead of muddying it it intensifies it

11. a new age—promising and forbidding—begins with every new instance now is the end of my life till then and the beginning of my life hereafter

• the transparency comes from doubting rather than singeing (doubling rather than hinging) the sense of color at the edges, which is not the same as for the fronts (the disappearance of disappearance) as edge becomes lip (pained ledges) so called so called so called

• a pivot is neither lock nor key but a joint of 360 degrees

• the imperviousness of meaning

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12. if the rococo has no center then the baroque is nothing but trumped centers

• the show came down before the show could open

• every single one is an emotion I’m not supposed to have

• as an edge exists between two pains

• or else the syntax inside the nouns touch

• in other words: desire to account for the nonvisible

• colors that are not allowed to have mysteries (histories)

• double simultaneous narrative: at once / in time; centered / without one

• the human crisis is not just a crisis for the human

•

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the actual in the invisible is the validation of the original

• it’s the colors inside the colors that are touching, the meanings inside the meanings

• the space between a thing & itself

• present in shadows

• the writing returns to the unwritten word

• sculpture as metaphor, under cloak of making and denial

• series syntax, sequence grammar

• (how to handle the art with gloves off)

• imperfections become virtues

• in that rare moment when something represents nothing, becoming itself

13. matter unfolding becomes form, form enfolded becomes spirit, spirit unveiling becomes matter

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you choose your limitations by realizing them at which point we turn again to the question: how do you paint a picture of a sailboat that shows it moving? at which point we turn again

• all that glitters is not surface

“In Parts” was written in collaboration with Richard Tuttle for the catalog of his show, In Parts, 1998–2001, at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, University of Pennsylvania (2002). Tuttle’s show was divided into thirteen parts.

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the swollen flotsam lies face down accordingly

incident catches stolen cues when faces drift

encroachment of care muffling shame hardened moment

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like flies in summer switching tenses touched absence

totally wasted in shadows imperceptible

uncertain future annoying complacency

neither this nor that bombs away total fright

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unendurable even if it will also pass

my elbow against your composure burns like wax

incapacity telescopes endlessly fog

counting now to five next to three then up till four

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going back to form a promise always broken

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Photo Opportunity “my pig was asleep on the doorstep.”—robert creeley

Water wets impecuniously wasted or wondering where tally sifts rue beguiles certain silly suppositions as deeds unfold arrays of slurs frequenting sibilant sap astringent help requires

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Fix prickly insomnia’s numerate blunting equation risible shun just or welsh Mosaic hamper truculent in basket’s tutor (modal resuscitation) lizard leaping line the lays lumpy luridly

sloped remorse astounding syllogism layers seawall all contend before emphatic silos motion mentions aslant idiophone who jilts jugglers left & (ripped ribbed riddled) right you’re right get back have heart take hold till tucked in bed

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limp & fast mendicantspinning grandiloquence drilled beads fizzles flint yet gorged twice melt sliced Chattanooga beyond bacon bleary bodes chatter elephantine matrix minimal discrepancy’s charm craves puddles peddle learns yodel lenses lens leans intent colours

with saucers & plenty of potatoes topped with glupey reliquaries or faked reminders slipped inconspicuously at singed alleviation lassoes unwillingness to amortize over six billion at popsicle stand lunges anywhere but out side notice colors intent

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notice slide out but anywhere lunges stand knots at “billion six” over amortize to unwillingness lassoes alleviation singed at inconspicuously slipped reminders faked or relinquishes glupey toppling with potatoes of plenty & saucers with sleds in

leans lens lends yodel learns peddling puddles craves distend discrepancy’s minimal matrices elephantine chatter bodes bleary beacon beyond Chattanooga sliced melt twice gorged yet flint fizzles beads drilled grandiloquence spinning mendicants fast & limp luridly lumpy

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muck till hold takes heart have back gets right you’re left (rippled dipped sieved) & left juggler jilts whose idiophonic aslant mentions ocean silo’s emphatic before contends all silt layers suture astounds remorse sloped requires help

lays the line leaping lizards resuscitating model Tudor baskets in truculent hamper mosaic welsh or just shun risible equation blunting numerate insomnia’s prickly fix

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astringent sap’s sibilant frequenting slurs of arrays unfold deeds as supposition’s silly certain beguiles rue sifts tally where wondering or wasted impecuniously wets water

LIKENESS 

Castor Oil for emma

I went looking for my soul In the song of a minor bird But I could not find it there Only the shadow of my thinking The slow sea slaps slow water On the ever farther shore And myself pulled under In the uneven humming Of the still wavering warps Tuneless, I wander, sundered In lent blends of remote display Until the bottom bottoms In song-drenched light, cradled fold

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Shenandoah for ben yarmolinsky

Oh Shenandoah, I long to near you Through fogged and fumbling shallows Oh Shenandoah, why don’t you hear me? Astray, I’m bound to sway Midst these stifling borders Oh Shenandoah, why must I trample All that I behold before me? Oh Shenandoah, I wish no other No other than to sway Near your wobbling borders Oh Shenandoah, I’m only moisture Only fog and fumbling shadows Oh Shenandoah, I’m all deception Astray, I’m bound to go Midst these heaving waters Oh Shenandoah, why don’t you take me? Engulf me in your weaving? Oh Shenandoah, why must I lose you? To lose, to lose myself Near, so near, your borders Oh Shenandoah, I long to near you Past the wobbling endurings

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Away—beyond the steaming shadows Away—I’m bound away Bound to these stifling borders Oh Shenandoah, I hear you coming Come and go and never touch me Oh Shenandoah, I’m more than moisture Swept away, swept away I’m more than moisture swept away From your enduring Oh Shenandoah, I’ve traveled far to hold you Don’t deny my desperate pleadings Oh Shenandoah, I wish no other Other than to sway Other than to sway Within your rolling borders Oh Shenandoah, let me forget you I want no image of your teeming valleys Oh Shenandoah, let me forget you Forget the promise, forget the promise Of your hollow heaving

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Jacob’s Ladder for nam june paik (1932–2006)

Spent light’s pooled mirror Wet green in vertical beam Chill out—chaos binds

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Don’t Get Me Wrong

Don’t get me wrong I’m never right Busted up and feelin’ slight The hay’s in the hayloft My monkey’s bent and sore But still I’m mad to see you Slumping at the door Tools are good for fixing things My life’s beyond repair Picked a pomegranate And I sold it to a bear I’ve had enough of wanting things Which never wanted before Just give me fifty dollars Or I’ll jump into a stall Too much is gone And what remains Don’t rate a faded scrawl Ain’t worth a tourniquet’s maul I’ve had enough of this and that Of what and who and all Dead tired in the morning Almost gone by night

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Yet there you are Plain as rain Hiding in the door Don’t get me wrong I’m never right Hunted down and reeling like Just like a rule that’s bust its score Just like a rule that’s bust its score But still I’m mad to see you Pulling at the chord Yes still I’m mad to see you Don’t say goodbye no more

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Interim Standoff

If discipline is required you’re more than competent less than able. Slopes that bloat the boat, or less than messed, borderline toehold. Florid floods, maladroit caterers (cavedwellers) where noise is notice. Carpetbagger wissenschaft. “He’s nothing but a Gad-dang fuzz ball.” (Hiphuggers with matched tuck-in tributaries.)

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Should We Let Patients Write Down Their Own Dreams?

You are in an oblong cylinder that projects endlessly in front of you. Handprints line the upper right arc with an insistent but inconsistent reiteration. Lances or spears seem to appear in midair, like floaters in the sun at the beach, and it is very damp, damp with a faintly metallic taste. A pool of water comes up to your ankles but your shoes are totally dry. You call out— to your left, right, left, right— but you’re not marching and no one is giving any orders. The light is tinted the color of rust but has no source. You fall to what you almost want to call the ground and push forward on your stomach. You feel anxious but after a while the lack of expectation and the warmth of the water, which leaves your clothes as dry as if you were wearing a wet suit, is unexpectedly reassuring. When the light turns white you find yourself sitting on a chair with a notebook and pencil in hand.

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Bridges Freeze Before Roads

Starlit cliffs & then, all sudden, when echo wanes & crevice depopulates surface reason, I go into the house of thick green calling, overfed by oracle crest and tendentious disclaimer. Bridges freeze but remain passable even in fog. The road goes nowhere.

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Pocket in the Hole

Reverberation sways aversion— seals still harbinger Bent dismay in a supposed zone Where tampered verity flushes conscience down A tampered tube utterly soaked in Totaled improvidence, as shimmers silence posing— Support like lucent technobubbles tolling trustMe-not but get disconnected, like A gate not strictly atavistic, a Point gutted with furious, gently furious Fools. The moment the in becomes The out & you flurry around The quagmire of your illustrious deputations— Pinched to the core yet altogether

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Stretched beyond what you remember least— The lifts recalling overcompensation in the Place of insubordinate commutation ensnaring your Ennobled intransigence in a microtonal shuffle.

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Evening Sail with Prawns

Fund of inordinate bind Blinking at the milkmen Chilled by night In recompense of toward

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Secrets of a Clear Hand

Make hay while the starts stutter. I never understood that. Remarks are not pickled hearing. Once I sailed upon a tune, not two cents overboard, then exhale rapidly. Nearly near, obsequious far. A pink camel on a pillory—as shouts down the carousing resplendence. Pay first then pay again. A miser knows the cost of slight. Coast, sigh, split, imbricate. Until you mar the mistakes there’s felt enough for lockets. The center drifts, the sentience holds— further than a run to hawed and hemmed. Sworn to disbelieving what even the crooner atomizes. (Always sour, never soars.) As sword between uggle & puggle, soup nuts to larceny. Besides, between. As still as . . . the tail on the uncle of my mommy’s monkey’s stepuncle. Break your crack, take your other back. Till the oceans pour into the sea Till I see you no more Till the door becomes a jar

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There but for the kindness of framers and the grace of the Devil.—To wit and her cousin tweet-tweet, to Villon and vichyssoise and Magritte. Just say so.

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Rain Is Local

my hand is my hand & my car is my car my boat is my boat my scare my scar

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Set Free (Knot)

Armed men’s dense void Kerchiefs counter With its own kind of Blurred emission Fills no stares Slung by rhomboid Truculence, unleavened Sentiment who cloak Flags (tendentious Aspiration, discomposed Somnambulant) as I Drip, droop or derogate Deliberate opportunity Against investment’s Detoured borders

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If You Lived Here You’d Be Home Now

imagined fields, brick walk, lines around a temporizing bar, where emblem is encaustic subsidiary to filiated abandonment. Go green, not what you’ve exteriorized, Bilko bunko, o wheel keep still.

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The Warble of the Ammonia-Bellied Barkeep

whoever falls & falling finds & finding falls— or is it just dim remainders of insolvent merriment, stray’s strays? the lair ensnares the wary, begs the premise behind the mare & enpoodled monocle of my grandma’s viaduct. a biscuit stands for a torch, all that is lit, all that is broke— bounce with me on this one, once, won’t you? on this tin floor, who swore who never swore— flush with facts worth no more than twelve-for-a-dozen gnats swanky peeves with dour means.

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then go way till the month of cans become the millionth may: in silence, or prepaid, right up until totally aggravated. little as you dance come quick, come sway well met on bend, counting till end. a wheel, a nod a seal, a cog in drift, in parry, astray. the sled so long can scarcely glide home the moment the moment (the moment the moment) surrenders its garment— not here— just hop on it— for the pale never sails nor the pelican wail till the corn outshines the wisp. twaddle by day shredder for fright in the blond plunge of skid’s feigned delight.

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And if then then then amounting to another. Or is it field you say you hold to.

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Comforting Thoughts

You can’t fire yourself—no matter how richly you may deserve it, how miserably you may have failed, nor can you hire someone else to replace you even when your job has been found redundant & no part of yourself has the strength to argue to keep you on. It was with such a notion as this that I made my way onward in what appeared to be left of life’s journeys content to hold my hand on the

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rudder of opportunity if only to feel the waters of adversity jerking it fore & aft. Early morning the smell of chlorine in the water woke me suddenly & with great violence but I would make up for lost sleep by dozing at the wheel on the way to work. It was so hot that my pipe felt strange in my mouth & my watch took five minutes of each hour to cool off; fire hydrants blasted into the empty streets providing semblance of release.

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Further Color Notes

Pg. 5, should be lighter red in circle and more orange in curtains Pg. 8, lighter and brighter overall Pg. 9, too dark, lighter, more orange Pg. 12, move up image so more of red bottom line shows Pg. 13, Blake’s babe, lighter red around the snake Pg. 14, include more of the snake at bottom, try not to cut off image Pg. 18, flowers should be more orange Pg. 20, red should be more orange Pg. 21, rainbow should have a lighter orange band Pg. 25, cross should be lighter, more orange in background behind heart shape Pg. 32, brighter fluorescent orange Pg. 33, brighter orange line from one bird to other bird, brighter yellow Pg. 34, brighter pinks and yellows Pg. 35, brighter yellow around cloud Pg. 37, orange line around type box Pg. 38, lighter if possible overall

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Likeness

the heart is like the heart the head is like the head the motion is like the motion the lips are like the lips the ocean is like the ocean the fate is like the fate the hope is like the hope the fear is like the fear the despair is like the despair the wish is like the wish the want is like the want the harm is like the harm the beauty is like the beauty the bird is like the bird the barrel is like the barrel the brine is like the brine the spatter is like the spatter the lisp is like the lisp the will is like the will the word is like the word the spun is like the spun the tube is like the tube the cleft is like the cleft the cleave is like the cleave the core is like the core the limit is like the limit

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the window is like the window the mulch is like the mulch the pin is like the pin the pine is like the pine the forest is like the forest the grid is like the grid the part is like the part the torrent is like the torrent the walk is like the walk the smile is like the smile the love is like the love the hint is like the hint the madness is like the madness the rope is like the rope the chill is like the chill the chain is like the chain the chair is like the chair the other is like the other the same is like the same the difference is like the difference the change is like the change the where is like the where the note is like the note the spoil is like the spoil the boat is like the boat the water is like the water the sky is like the sky the earth is like the earth the air is like the air the Jew is like the Jew the vale is like the vale the value is like the value the mean is like the mean the marrow is like the marrow the right is like the right the middle is like the middle

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the cry is like the cry the stuff is like the stuff the wilted is like the wilted the view is like the view the man is like the man the girl is like the girl the child is like the child the woman is like the woman the stray is like the stray the prayer is like the prayer the million is like the million the one is like the one the three is like the three the dirt is like the dirt the spread is like the spread the dread is like the dread the till is like the till the in is like the in the out is like the out the of is like the of the when is like the when the before is like the before the after is like the after the satin is like the satin the care is like the care the book is like the book the web is like the web the skid is like the skid the pull is like the pull the pall is like the pall the taught is like the taught the learned is like the learned the lived is like the lived the wave is like the wave the particle is like the particle the swerve is like the swerve

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the kept is like the kept the covered is like the covered the is is like the is the the is like the the the like is like the like the thought is like the thought the moment is like the moment the absence is like the absence the loss is like the loss the light is like the light the dark is like the dark the real is like the real the concrete is like the concrete the literal is like the literal the metaphor is like the metaphor the similar is like the similar the simile is like the simile the assonance is like the assonance the dissonance is like the dissonance the name is like the name the unnamed is like the unnamed the I is like the I the you is like the you the hummingbird is like the hummingbird the blue jay is like the blue jay the whippoorwill is like the whippoorwill the mocking bird is like the mockingbird the uncle is like the uncle the mother is like the mother the death is like the death the horror is like the horror the blues is like the blues the lens is like the lens the mote is like the mote the oasis is like the oasis the still is like the still

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the cork is like the cork the house is like the house the smell is like the smell the waiting is like the waiting the jail is like the jail the time is like the time the gray is like the gray the period is like the period the sentence is like the sentence the injustice is like the injustice the forgetting is like the forgetting the touch is like the touch the quarter is like the quarter the hat is like the hat the harp is like the harp the list is like the list the cut is like the cut the tip is like the tip the voice is like the voice the silence is like the silence the singular is like the singular the plural is like the plural the relative is like the relative the tide is like the tide the trope is like the trope the dope is like the dope the thrall is like the thrall the rhyme is like the rhyme the rhythm is like the rhythm the pitch is like the pitch the patch is like the patch the pocket is like the pocket the hole is like the hole the site is like the site the line is like the line the phrase is like the phrase

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the rule is like the rule the ruin is like the ruin the tune is like the tune the eyes is like the eyes the tone is like the tone the target is like the target the thirst is like the thirst the person is like the person the no is like the no the charm is like the charm the song is like the song the pulse is like the pulse the repetition is like the repetition the sign is like the sign the letters are like the letters the flesh is like the flesh the fog is like the fog the shadow is like the shadow the rust is like the rust the likeness is like the likeness the gun is like the gun the gulp is like the gulp the tale is like the tale the whiff is like the whiff the and is like the and the never is like the never the melancholy is like the melancholy the time is like the time the circumstance is like the circumstance the agreement is like the agreement the disappointment is like the disappointment the sadness is like the sadness the blame is like the blame the guilt is like the guilt the quilt is like the quilt the blank is like the blank

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the end is like the end the loop is like the loop the there is like the there the here is like the here the how is like the how the now is like the now

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GI RLY M A N 

War Stories

War is the extension of prose by other means. War is never having to say you’re sorry. War is the logical outcome of moral certainty. War is conflict resolution for the aesthetically challenged. War is a slow boat to heaven and an express train to hell. War is either a failure to communicate or the most direct expression possible. War is the first resort of scoundrels. War is the legitimate right of the powerless to resist the violence of the powerful. War is delusion just as peace is imaginary. “War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony.” “War is a thing that decides how it is to be done when it is to be done.”

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War is not a justification for the self-righteousness of the people who oppose it. War is other people. War is a five-mile hike in a one-mile cemetery. War is nature’s way of saying I told you so. War is a fashioning of opportunity. War is “a nipponized bit of the old sixth avenue el.” War is the reluctant foundation of justice and the unconscious guarantor of liberty. War is the broken dream of the patriot. War is the slow death of idealism. War is realpolitik for the old and unmitigated realism for the young. War is pragmatism with an inhuman face. War is for the state what despair is for the person. War is the end of the road for those who’ve lost their bearings. War is a poem that is afraid of its shadow but furious in its course. War is men turned into steel and women turned into ash. War is never a reason for war but seldom a reason for anything else. War is a casualty of truth just as truth is a casualty of war.

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War is the redress of the naked. War is the opiate of the politicians. War is to compromise what morbidity is to mortality. War is poetry without song. War is the world’s betrayal of the earth’s plenitude. War is like a gorilla at a teletype machine: not always the best choice but sometimes the only one you’ve got. War is a fever that feeds on blood. War is never more than an extension of Thanatos. War is the older generation’s way of making up for the mistakes of its youth. War is moral, peace is ethical. War is the ultimate entertainment. War is resistance in the flesh. War is capitalism’s way of testing its limits. War is an inevitable product of class struggle. War is technology’s uncle. War is an excuse for lots of bad antiwar poetry. War is the right of a people who are oppressed.

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War is news that stays news. War is the principal weapon of a revolution that can never be achieved. War pays for those who have nothing to lose. War is Surrealism without art. War is not won but survived. War is two wrongs obliterating right. War is the abandonment of reason in the name of principle. War is sacrifice for an ideal. War is the desecration of the real. War is unjust even when it is just. War is the revenge of the dead on the living. War is revenge on the wrong person. War is the cry of the child in black, the woman in red, and the man in blue. War is powerlessness. War is raw. War is the declared struggle of one state against another but it is also the undeclared violence of the state against its own people. War is no vice in the defense of liberty; appeasement is no virtue in the pursuit of self-protection.

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War is tyranny’s greatest foe. War is tyranny’s greatest friend. War is the solution; but what is the problem? War is a horse that bridles its rider. War is the inadequate symbol of human society. War is the best way to stoke the dying embers of ancient enmities. War is a battle for the hearts and minds of the heartless and mindless. War is history as told by the victors. War is the death of civilization in the pursuit of civilization. War is the end justifying the meanness. War is an SUV for every soccer Pop and social Mom. War is made by the rich and paid by the poor. War is the quality TV alternative to You Still Don’t Know Jacko: Cookin’ with Michael and Fear Factor: How to Marry a Bachelorette. War is not a metaphor. War is not ironic. War is sincerity in serial motion. War is a game of chess etched in flesh. War is tactical violence for strategic dominance.

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War is international engagement to cover domestic indifference. War is the devil in overdrive. War is our only hope. War is our inheritance. War is our patrimony. War is our right. War is our obligation. War is justified only when it stops war. War isn’t over even when it’s over. War is “over here.” War is the answer. War is here. War is this. War is now. War is us.

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There’s Beauty in the Sound of the Rushing Brook as It Forks & Bends in the Moonlight

I’ve tried to be an American. I’ve gone to Pizza Hut to “make it great” with my favorite toppings. I’ve negotiated for hours about the rescheduling of plane reservations with in-training nonunion operators. Though I’ve resisted the closures of form I’ve been told the result risks being Jello (without, alas, a nod to Jack Benny—“Jello Again”). I’ve been to Boca Raton & twice to Disney World & three times to Sea World. Soon I’ll be going to the Universal Studios, which is my

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idea of a great name. But I’ve had trouble with sincerity— people say my irony is static & that I can’t get “with” detail. But I’ve been doing aerobics & completed my third session with the chiropractor & been better in groups & started feeling comfortable sharing my high-medium cholesterol level to get support for a change to synthetic fats & sugars. When I die I’m sure America will have taken hold.

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Sign Under Test

On an evening in June, alone with anxious mediations, reading by mobbed light, I come again, taste to taste, with my own self-inoculations. Paying double but taking only half. As swill becomes saunter. The sky lies so the dirt can give the boot. Then again, there are certain things I never understood, yet lately I find myself mesmerized by these blank spots. They have become the sign posts of my consciousness. The old becomes new again when it arrives after whatever is recent and seems fresh. On the other hand, nothing is so old as that which comes after but seems as if it must have been from before. It’s so quiet you can hear the lint festering in the fog. I’ll give you a hand but only one. Fighting fire with sugar to make pie while the hay dries in the oysterman’s holiday. Winter tears, summer shadows.

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Poetry is patterned thought in search of unpatterned mind. Love is the messenger not the message. Till you get to the backside of where you began. Neither round robin nor oblong sparrow. My faculties are impolitic. But at least: for two dimes and a nickel you still get something like a quarter. Sometimes a gust is just a gust. The ghosts just left. That still, small voice may not be the root of all evil but it’s no innocent bystander either. There’s tackle in the tackle box. How can you separate the breach from the brook, the branch from the book? The haze doesn’t obscure the view it makes it palpable. It’s not the absence in the presence but the presence in the absence. When you go away there’s no back to come back to. All the addresses have changed and the locks have new combinations. A husband returns home to find a burning cigar in his ashtray. He soon discovers a man in the broom closet. “What are you doing there?”— “Everybody’s got to be somewhere.” [Henny Youngman]

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Rabbi Eliza asks, “When is a Jew no longer a Jew?”—“When the book is closed.” The pit of the cherry is like the soul of a self-righteous man: when you find it, you want to spit it out. The slips have become skirts. The dove cannot find rest for the sole of its foot. Neither can I find peace in the inner worlds beside the nearby. Inoperative nomenclature. A series of hints without a question, a slew of clues without a crime. Why did the turtle cross the road?—To find the chicken. What you don’t know’s a far cry from what you do. Desperately searching for a book that I don’t even want to read. “The world is everything that is the case.” But the case is locked in the trunk of a stolen car. Everything that happens is lost. Even what is recalled is lost in the recalling. Nonetheless, things go on happening. Memory is to life like a band-aid to a wound. A girl I once met told me her name rhymed with orange. Did I just imagine that? Complexity is a ten-letter word, like difficulty. There’s moxie in complexity and tilt in difficulty, but what difference does this make?

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I’ll give you ten minutes and if you don’t come out I’ll give you ten more minutes. My cares turned to wares. Simply stated, there’s nothing to state. It’s not what you say that counts nor what you don’t say but the relation. He understated the price of the property to be sure he got less than it was worth. This was the only way he knew for the exchange to have value. Give me a place to sit and I will look for a place to put up my feet. TILT Everything in the world exists in order to end up as an opera. An opera without music is what we call everyday life. Poetry is opera without the story, score, costumes, makeup, or staging. It’s a libretto set to its own music. The reader is both the conductor and lead singer. The audience gathers at the unconscious. Tickets are sold only on the morning of the performance; students pay half but often stand. Unsatisfied customers may claim refunds for twice the cost of admission; these are paid directly by the poet. “You’ve got a lot of moxie.” The “double silly” consists of making two complete turns with another person while walking in the street. I’ve got my next few years of work mapped out for me: figuring out what to do over the next few years. When you say baroque you’re barking up the wrong tree, which suits me.

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The station wagon stayed stationary at the station. Stunned he put down his gun and started to run. The Jew stops being the Jew when the movie’s over. No horizon on the horizon. Going to sleep to continue the story. Third eye hindsighted. Making another patch for the patch. There’s no business like no business like no business I know. Blue is no longer blue when it loses its hue. Terrible day to start the way. (Terrible way to start to stray.) If language could talk we would refuse to understand it. Hue is a property of optics not objects. As to “avant garde”: I am not in advance of anything, but perhaps close, in the neighborhood, around. Better to come up from behind than to lead. If you lead you’d have to know where you are going whereas I only know where I am not going. The politics in a poem has to do with how it enters the world, how it makes its meaning, how its forms work in social contexts. The politics in a poem is specific to poetry not politics.

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Now I am getting weary of ideology and would like to give it up entirely but it seems the more I give it up the more it has me by the throat. I write so I can breathe. And better artificial respiration than no respiration. Better imaging reparation than silence. Or let’s say trying to re-imagine the possibilities of sentience through the material sentience of language. Don’t ask me to be frank. I don’t even know if I can be myself. You never know what invention will look like or else it wouldn’t be invention. We see each other as if with hidden sensors. Those not tuned in miss the action entirely, even when it’s right before them. The Greeks had an idea of nostos, which is not quite what we call nostalgia. Nostos suggests the political and ethical responsibility of the human being in orienting herself or himself. You can’t go home again but you can stay tuned to your senses of responsibility. So much depends upon what you are expecting. The chicken she is cooked but the liver is raw. As for we who love to be admonished . . . Certain that this satin would intoxicate even Satan; the trips of the trade, the lisps of the frayed. If that’s the price I will pay it but not gladly.

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Like I told her, you can add up all the zeros in the world but it will never amount to anything. Whereas two plus two, while barely four, suggests progress. If progress is a process, what is the purpose of purpose or the allure of allure? You see I told you so but you weren’t listening or maybe I forgot to press SEND. It is equally problematic to shout “Theater!” at a crowded fire. I break for speed bumps. Eugene Ormandy wore organdy. George Solti speaks in sotte voce. Toscanini dons a bikini. Neville Marriner slides down the banister. Herbert von Karajan had two carry-ons. Kurt Mazur abhors clamor. Everything that happens in life exists to be reflected on in Boca. “Do you see that? Those people came in after us and they’re being served first.” It takes a village to read a poem. The patter of petunias in the marmalade. Everybody’s got to be somewhere. Save the last chance for me.

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A Poem Is Not a Weapon for/after tom raworth

[this poem removed for inspection and verification.]

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Emma’s Nursery Rimes

Glow worm! Glow worm! Make your mother squirm! Big Bug! Get out of my jug!

Scribble, scrabble Inner, outer Who knows left, right Cat flew off with a Bumble Bee Now it’s almost night!

Bounce the ball As bounce can be Sing a song But don’t bounce me

Silly Billy Can’t see me Don’t make me Cry again

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Saw the ocean in a rolling pin Let’s play on the jungle gym

A day at the beach Is a peach of a day To run & sing & play We’ll swim till 4 And go home for some snores Then go back to the beach again

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Wherever Angels Go

Oh, hey, buddy, can you spare me a dime? I’ve been searching for you so long Yeah, hey, sister, I ain’t into no crime Won’t you show me the way to go home Been a long time Been a long time Don’t you know I’ve missed you so Wherever angels go I will take you there to glow Oh, hey, buddy, will you spare me some time? I’ve been searching for you so long There is no climb Makes no difference no mind Wherever angels go Oh, hey, buddy, can you spare me a dime? I’ve been searching for you so long Yeah, hey, sister, I ain’t into no crime Won’t you show me the way to go home Won’t you show me the way to go home

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Death Fugue (Echo) after stefan george

In wind’s web Was my fate, In trauma’s eye, In only a smile As you gave At moist midnight When your glance ignited. Now Mays drone on: Now I grieve only For your eyes and hair All day In always longing, dein goldenes Haar Margarete dein aschenes Haar Shulamith Based on Stefan George, “Maximilian” in Der Siebenten Ring (1907): Im windes-weben War meine frage Nur träumerei. Nur lächeln war Was du gegeben. Aus nasser nacht Ein glanz entfacht— Nun drängt der Mai: Nun muss ich gar Um dein aug und haar Alle tage In sehnen leben.

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My attention was drawn to this poem by Marjorie Perloff’s discussion of it in a draft of her memoir, The Vienna Paradox (New Directions, 2004). “Death Fugue (Echo)” is as much a response to Perloff and her discussion of the European Jewish longing to merge with an “Aryan” other that was soon to crush it, as to the George’s famously homoerotic ode for the lost Maximilian who had died at sixteen, the year after meeting, and enthralling, George. The final two lines are taken from Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” (“Death Fugue”)—juxtaposing the blond object of desire and the dark-haired, now ashen Jew. Perloff provides a literal translation of the George poem in The Vienna Paradox: In the weaving wind My question was Only day-dream. Only a smile was What you gave. From the wet night A spark was kindled— Now May presses on Now must I live Day after day In endless yearning For your eyes and your hair.

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The Beauty of Useless Things: A Kantian Tale for susan stewart

Felix brought home a small piece of school-made pottery: it looked like an ashtray but he told me it was a cup (no smoking, please). Felix went on to explain that small parts of the inside of the cup didn’t get glazed, so that the cup could not be used for drinks. “So you’re saying it’s useless?” “Yes.” “Then it must be art.” “Where’s the face?” “The face is the meaning, the meaning’s the loss, the loss is the carousel, the carousel’s the beholding, the beholding is the face.”

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Self-Help

Home team suffers string of losses.—Time to change loyalties. Quadruple bypass.—Hold the bacon on that next cheeseburger. Poems tanking.—After stormiest days, sun comes out from behind clouds, or used to. Marriage on rocks.—Nothing like Coke. Election going the wrong direction.—Kick off slippers, take deep breath, be here now. Boss says your performance needs boost.—A long hot bath smoothes wrinkles. War toll tops 100,000.—Get your mind off it, switch to reality TV. Lake Tang Woo Chin Chicken with Lobster and Sweet Clam Sauce still not served and everyone else got their orders twenty minutes back.— Savor the water, feast on the company. Subway floods and late for audition.—Start being the author of your own performance. Take a walk.

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Slip on ice, break arm.—In moments like this, the preciousness of life reveals itself. Wages down in non-union shop.—You’re a sales associate, not a worker; so proud to be part of the company. Miss the train?—Great chance to explore the station! Suicide bombers wreck neighborhood.—Time to pitch in! Nothing doing.—Take a break! Partner in life finds another partner.—Now you can begin the journey of life anew. Bald?—Finally, you can touch the sky with the top of your head. Short-term recall shot.—Old memories are sweetest. Hard drive crashes and novel not backed up.—Nothing like a fresh start. Severe stomach cramps all morning.—Boy are these back issues of Field and Stream engrossing. Hurricane crushes house.—You never seemed so resilient. Brother-in-law completes second year in coma.—He seems so much more relaxed than he used to. 75 ticket for Sunday meter violation on an empty street in residential neighborhood.—The city needs the money to make us safe and educate our kids. Missed last episode of favorite murder mystery because you misprogrammed VCR.—Write your own ending!

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Blue cashmere pullover has three big moth holes.—What a great looking shirt! Son joins skinhead brigade of Jews for Jesus.—At least he’s following his bliss. Your new play receives scathing reviews and closes after a single night.— What a glorious performance! Pungent stench of homeless man on subway, asking for food.—Such kindness in his eyes, as I turn toward home. Retirement savings lost on Enron and WorldCom.—They almost rhyme. Oil spill kills seals.—The workings of the Lord are inscrutable. Global warming swamps land masses.—Learn to accept change. Bike going fast in wrong direction knocks you over.—A few weeks off your feet, just what the doctor ordered. AIDS ravaging Africa.—Wasn’t Jeffrey Wright fabulous in Angels in America? Muffler shot.—There’s this great pizza place next to the shop. Income gap becomes crater.—Good motivation to get rich. Abu Ghraib prisoners tortured.—Let’s face it, shit happens. Oscar wins Emmy.—Award shows are da bomb. FBI checking your library check-outs.—I also recommend books on Amazon.

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Gay marriages annulled.—Who needs the state to sanctify our love? President’s lies kill GIs.—He’s so decisive about his core values. Self-help.—Other drowns.

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The Bricklayer’s Arms

The bricklayer’s arms are folded into a knot. They crest across a soft, rumpled body. The bricklayer’s arms—stolid and serene—are out of joint with the quizzical expression on the bricklayer’s face. The bricklayer’s arms are heavy and slump into a wingback chair or threadbare sofa or petulant carousel or dithyrambic telescope. The bricklayer’s arms are molten, molded, mottled, mirrored, mired in unclaimed histories of insufficient estimation. The bricklayer’s arms float into suspended air; glow, from an inner right, in cascades of slate, beacons of broken guile. They are patched, poked, pummeled, pent; averse to what has been, oblivious to what will come. The bricklayer’s arms disappear behind a cloud, then return soft-focus, dusk-lit, gauzy, tipped. The bricklayer’s arms refuse to tell the secret of the bricklayer’s house.

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The bricklayer’s arms abjure exposure, encapsulate the brokered seams of a riven dream, permissible to a few, particular to none. The bricklayer’s arms court detachment, reflect closure. The bricklayer’s arms arm themselves against denial, parry promise, absorb abjection. In the torn time between never and however, they dissolve into the formaldehyde of the heart’s lost longing. The bricklayer’s arms found a moment in the quicksilver of immaterial solids: perception as flight against charter, ballast, cynosure. Falling into shadow, the bricklayer’s arms, knees, neck, mouth, scalp, shins, stomach, eyes, blend into storm, cloud, sand, crystal, fork, bend, bay, sag, sigh, coast. The bricklayer’s arms are charms of a parallel coexistence, emblem of fused incalculability. They lie low in gummed silhouette, fly when floored, sing in phrases to the apparent drumbeat of incurious imbrication. Solo flight marked of bygones, tattered torrents, embers of desuetude, the bricklayer’s arms peal a dull and somber tune. The bricklayer’s arms break

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the silence of the bricklayer’s heart. The bricklayer’s arms are every bit as dense as the vague mist that obscures the furnished hold of the bricklayer’s sight. The bricklayer’s arms are the imperfect extension of the bricklayer’s thoughts. No sea contains them, no forest is as deep or sky as boundless as the bounded continent of the bricklayer’s arms. The bricklayer’s arms signify nothing, but never cease to mean. Even the smallest grain of sand tunes itself to their contours. The bricklayer’s arms are empirical evidence of the existence of the bricklayer’s soul. The bricklayer’s arms are lost in reverie’s pale, sad, lush illusions; snap back from the blind eye or the quick retort to sail into helplessness’s velour paradise. The bricklayer’s arms are a figment of the imagination of the bricklayer’s shoulders. Buoyed by incapacity, sufficient to expectation, they are the final destination of helpless promises and muted aspirations. The bricklayer’s arms are blanched in disavowal. Without preparation, the bricklayer’s arms enfold the beached drives and mercurial generosity the age remands. Atlas of the forsaken mall

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of final detours, harbinger of ill-timed hums and oft-lorn wings, the bricklayer’s arms are stamped by the artifice of token and projection. The bricklayer’s arms cradle the soul of the lost world.

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The Ballad of the Girly Man for felix

The truth is hidden in a veil of tears The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear A democracy once proposed Is slimmed and grimed again By men with brute design Who prefer hate to rime Complexity’s a four-letter word For those who count by nots and haves Who revile the facts of Darwin To worship the truth according to Halliburton The truth is hidden in a veil of tears The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store The rich get richer, the poor die quicker & the only god that sanctions that Is no god at all but rhetorical crap So be a girly man & take a gurly stand Sing a gurly song & dance with a girly sarong

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Poetry will never win the war on terror But neither will error abetted by error We girly men are not afraid Of uncertainty or reason or interdependence We think before we fight, then think some more Proclaim our faith in listening, in art, in compromise So be a girly man & sing this gurly song Sissies & proud That we would never lie our way to war The girly men killed christ So the platinum DVD says The Jews & blacks & gays Are still standing in the way We’re sorry we killed your god A long, long time ago But each dead solider in Iraq Kills the god inside, the god that’s still not dead. The truth is hidden in a veil of tears The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear So be a girly man & sing a gurly song Take a gurly stand & dance with a girly sarong Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store The rich get richer, the poor die quicker & the only god that sanctions that Is no god at all but rhetorical crap

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So be a girly man & sing this gurly song Sissies & proud That we would never lie our way to war The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear The truth is hidden in a veil of tears

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NO T E S A N D ACK NOW L EDGM EN TS

Sound recordings of some of the poems included in this book, as well as related links, images, and critical responses, can be found at http://epc .buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/books/girly-man. Let’s Just Say was written in the spring and summer of 2001. It was originally published as a pamphlet by Charles Alexander’s Chax Press (Tucson, 2003). The poems appeared in enough, Triquarterly, Verse, and Washington Square. Some of These Daze was written in the fall of 2001. Excerpts were published in collaboration with drawings by Mimi Gross (New York: Granary Books, 2005). The first three entries were posted to the UB Poetics List on the dates given. “Report from Liberty Street” was written for the University of Chicago Press website. The final section was published by Arkadii Dragomoschenko in Petersburg na Nevskom, the St. Petersburg paper of which he is an editor; Dragomoschenko had asked me to give an account of the New Year’s holiday in New York. World on Fire was written in July and August 2002. It was originally published as a pamphlet by Peter and Meredith Quartermain’s Nomados Press (Vancouver, 2004). Individual poems appeared in Fulcrum, Golden Handcuffs, and Hotel Amerika. Warrant: Kevin Killian had the idea—for a Small Press Traffic benefit— that I should write a lyric for the composer Charles Bernstein’s most famous tune, the theme for Nightmare on Elm Street. “Slap Me Five,

Cleo, Mark’s History” was written for Voices in the Gallery, ed. Grant Holcomb (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2001) about one of the paintings in their collection, Cleopatra by Bernard Duvivier (1789). The painting has been reproduced with the permission of the Gallery. A color reproduction of the image, printed here in black and white, can be found on the Girly Man website. “He’s So Heavy, He’s My Sokal” refers to Alan Sokal’s 1996 hoax, in which Social Text 46/47 published Sokal’s essay “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” without realizing that it was a parody written to debunk what Sokal termed “currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse theory” (Dissent 43[4], 1996). The poem is based on “Please Don’t Tickle Me,” performed by Danny Kaye on his 1962 LP Mommy, Gimme a Drinka Water; Milton Schafer wrote the lyrics and music. “He’s So Heavy, He’s My Sokal” was first published as part of an essay, “A Blow Is Like an Instrument,” in the 1997 issue of Daedalus (126: 4) devoted to the academic profession. “Warrant” was included in 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Everyday, ed. Billy Collins (New York: Random House, 2005). Other poems in this section appeared in Dandelion, The Eastvillage, Electronic Poetry Review, Green Mountain Review, Jimmy and Lucy’s House of K, and Turbulence. In Parts: “Reading Red” was initially published as part of a collaborative book, designed by Richard Tuttle, with the poems superimposed on images of his painting (Cologne: Walther König, 1998); the poem was also published in Conjunctions. “In Parts” was written at the invitation of Tuttle for the catalog of In Parts, 1998–2001 (University of Pennsylvania: Institute for Contemporary Arts, 2002) and reflects extensive discussion with Tuttle about the show; the work also incorporates remarks by Hank McNeil, Bob Perelman, Jena Osman, Susan Stewart, Rachel DuPlessis, and Francie Shaw. Call: Review also published the text. “122,” first published by the online magazine Slope, was chosen by Robert Creeley for the Best American Poetry 2002 (New York: Scribner, 2002). “Pomegranates” was published in PomPom. “Photo Opportunity” was first published in New American Writing.

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Likeness. “Shenandoah” was written for musical variations composed by Ben Yarmolinsky and originally printed in a collaborative book with Susan Bee, Little Orphan Anagram (New York: Granary Books, 1997). “Jacob’s Ladder” is a response to Nam June Paik’s work of that name, installed in the Guggenheim Museum, March 2000 (view a reproduction of the work at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/books /girly-man/paik.html). The poem was written for Stuart Horodner’s “Haikucriticism” feature in Art Issues and is dedicated to the memory of Charlotte Moorman. “Don’t Get Me Wrong” is a lyric written to Yarmolinsky’s tune. “Pocket in the Hole” is based on an Italian translation of a poem by Douglas Messerli. “Further Color Notes”—with thanks to Susan Bee. Other first publications: Barrow Street, Bellingham Review, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Chain, Coconut, Colorado Review, LA Review, New American Writing, Oovrah, Poetry New York, Saint Elizabeth Street, To, and Van Gogh’s Ear. Girly Man. “Wherever Angels Go” is a lyric written to Ben Yarmolinsky’s tune. “The Ballad of the Girly Man” was written on Labor Day weekend, 2004, in response to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s August 31st convention speech to the Republican National Convention, in which he taunted opponents of the Republican Party agenda as “girly men.” C. A. Conrad awarded the poem the prize for the 2004 Sexiest Poem of the Year. “War Stories” was first published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 31, 2003. “Sign Under Test” was published by the Michigan Quarterly Review for the “Jewish in America” issue and collected in Jewish in America, ed. Sara Blair and Jonathan Freedman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004). Freedman asked me if my reference to Rabbi Eliza was an allusion to Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah (also transliterated Avuyah). In the poem, Rabbi Eliza asks, “When is a Jew no longer a Jew?” and receives the reply, “When the book is closed.” Rabbi Eliza is probably the subaltern to Rabbi Ezra, whomever that may be (but Pound would be lurking no doubt), and with a little bit of luck may even call herself Pygmalion. But Rabbi Elisha is surely a direct descendent of Eliza. For Rabbi Elisha is famous for his renunciation of the faith in the face of the inscrutable injustice of the world: “Let din velet dayan”: “There is no justice nor judge.” (I had to open the

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book to find that out.) “Sign Under Test” was selected by Lyn Hejinian for Best American Poetry 2004 (New York: Scribner, 2004). Parts of the poem were incorporated into a 2002 painting by Susan Bee with the same title. “A Poem Is Not a Weapon” was my contribution to the “Poets Against War” website, along with a “statement of conscience”: “I object.” “Emma’s Nursery Rimes” was part of a collaborative book with Bee, Little Orphan Anagram (New York: Granary Books, 1997); the poems are from July 1990. Thanks to 5_trope, American Letters and Commentary, The Brooklyn Rail, Canary, Drexel Online Journal, Interim, Milk Magazine, and Rattapallax.

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