ANIMAL MAGNETISM


My analyst:
cheese curd capital of Wisconsin

a little levered
risible

"do you haf racing thots?"
as colonial as a matter of taste

(or Nature as entitlement):

take the
belletrist attitude--

pinpoint where a word became
the book you loved--

and shove it so the son
can't shine--

Dear Bruno S.,
It's like you can't grasp

the metaphor of these giant water bugs
dying in the author's

half-ton bed,
a hat that opens followed by a singing

H-Bomb--

And then it's winter--

Asbestos

Propane

Those same elephants once crossed these frozen plains


***
the poem references Herzog's film, Stroszek

BEATTYVILLE


Magazine, and ye sody
pop, she spill . . .

Spring, like the just naked body

calico, plaid, ric rac

sliding over the delicate map

Lie down, through the dark (walk-in closet)

Boy meets this Girl

and they sit in the Natural Light eating Apples

Verily

Blinds hung over earwig husks wings in the sink cold pilot light

Beetle that just gave up (put him in a tiny coffin)

And then it thunders

Rain beats through the downspouts and then sun

We play with our own peril

Thumb, and the yellow wax

Mayflies of happiness
swarm up out of the quarry

human bones turned to ash

I drive down the road with the windows open

Every seventh house quitclaimed in southeastern Kentucky

no roses

no Vargas Girl


***
2 lines from Ovid's Metamorphosis, p. 177

THE SCAR


Tossed on the rocks, next to
a tunnel of mirrors . . .

still, shiny, shiny

hairdo on her like an "Act of God"

followed by eggs and juice out on "the waterfront"

I did get to
the end of it all

Rapid-Eye-Movement
and her bowdlerized spider . . .

you'd think the universe revolved around the gaffer

that whole drunken
thing with the abs

and his Richard Simmons-in-a-trailer-park sense of the mise en scene

the poppy-seed panties

and the seagull with its frozen wings

leaves, leaves

the beak open and gold in the hushed black water

I couldn't get the smell of alewives out of the blankets

or my fake British accent

Waves like foothills froze under the stars

Pontaluna Road and no license

In the morning vultures were circling the dunes

The coffee tasted like mud

and a rusty can opener

THE INVENTION OF AMINO ACIDS


Criminal democratization

is not in the milk

But I know what you're thinking

re-charge golf cart

and

The indigo bunting doesn't even use a blow dryer

the back light in your mirror shows

a frightening display of deep woods
000000000000000000000000000000000"woods"

The gardener whispers in the morning breeze

and that other wan meta-fiction

ectopic

the boy scout with his matches and good will

there's no love of self

because truth isn't measured by feeling

It's00000not00000the00000Moon . . .

hive bobbing on a branch

0000000000000000000000like a missing ovary

a thousand starlings swim through the honesty of the naked trees

He's gradually leaving you . . .

the dimming first in one eye

the mouth disappearing as it opens

invisible in this new spring snow

XANAX


You can't split the time that way,
Before Coffin, and After Debt

even in daylight

The top half of the tablet is smiling

Cha-Ching!

it's like an eclipse--

an aphasic in mourning

like smoke sucked into a straw . . .

Oh, I remember
I remember it fine

We stole the harps, and we beat them . . .

one hymnal per finished pew

an ISBN for each bleeding knee

like Frederick Church

or the Oakland Raiders in swim suits

And still the births came

I'm thinking of a liver the size of a pencil eraser

I choose extra crispy

This is the migration of Eros

A LARGE WHITE ROCK CALLED
"THE SLEEPING ANGEL"

Gregory Orr

He lay down in this field to rest.
Seeing an ant carry
a white egg the size of a rice grain,
the angel believed it was a sign
the animals of this world
wanted to make him their king.
While he slept sheep licked
his salt wings.
Only these stubs remain.

THIRD PERSON


The economy is born

there are days

dear plasterer

the wedding of a bunch of hats . . .

and then
and then

fleas, or something like a flea

I had a thought

and then I had a squid floating inside my mouth

(love = tentacles?)

like that

like the hand that feels around and finds the shore of heaven

(they have football!)

a mastiff, but with a bow tie, and a pointer in its paw

a real butt-sniffer . . .

but willing to go further

faster

THE INVENTION OF MILK


In conversation, the egg, and the density of cells

Amphibious

the moon doesn't rise, or argue

dazzling as it is, water shining
under the waterlogged floorboards

pieces of blood, esophageal violence, and star-drunk

knee deep
00000000knee deep

He used a piece of laminated
cardboard and told us to Breathe . . .

Held him down hard by the shoulders

made a stent out of cartilage
and some rarefied bone

an accidental infatuation--

indented where the face
meets the upper lip

It's the water an injury of the heart produces . . .

The gas would drip on the creek

bloom into rainbows

if you huffed hard enough

THE SLOWER THE FAN BLADE . . .


You could be dying in a hospital

so far there
you’re elsewhere

the praying of the leaves, heard even through glass

the trees standing in the rain

good-bye

it is almost winter

the lady bugs die
and dry up—

wing shells piled on the alluvial plain

five days into November . . .

the brain, and the tongue
the spleen
wrapped in butcher paper

and the maple leaf spreads itself over your face like a human hand

a fish, with its red mind, under the shadow of an oar

Callisto, Gandymede, Io

Europa

Another shovelful and we’re done—

the hereafter smells like the absence of ice

THE INVENTION OF ROPE


Consultation green

the social evolution of the modern den floating on water

and the milk of the dreaming spider lily . . .

Endorse here

the pulse in his neck
the pulse in his wrist

the lengthening roots like an eel in his jaw

because of the damage to the hull his dreams were a compound

incompleted by spinal

(spinal deliberate

(spinal ignominious

the little key was as thin as a dime

and her face like an expression of fire

the air popped in each joint

he couldn't even say what was happening while the sunflowers swayed

moored there

living like the king of the underground

one exploding boat at a time

THE MARKETS


Seems the world was boiling with greed, hotheads with their
brains steaming, then Stewart started throwing grenades
at CNBC and all the conditions that have caused the words
"cognitive dissonance" to rise up and float around like the
New Reality (just accept it), are rather spilling off each coast
and bobbing around in the oceans. Take the apple out of
the pig's mouth, ride your Hummer off a dune where it splits
into dust, and sit down--watch the keypads shiver
near the day old donuts Wally's been downing while he day
trades. Why does it take so long, and what might we do
for fun instead? You could write a poem. Something like
this James Tate thing:

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems


They didn't have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
"You look like a god sitting there.
Why don't you try writing something?"


There you go--it's free. No, it won't change the world. But
let's just see what's in our own desks for once--an orange,
some pencils, a picture of Beth (or Andy), some Skittles--and
scattered and lonely verses scribbled on the insides of matchbook
covers (everyone's been smoking down at the creek).

Everything's getting so mellow! It's almost as if, soon,
one might be able to sit on one's porch and watch the birds
for an hour with nothing at all planned for after. Oh my.

Cassavetes


I found Woman Under the Influence, a John Cassavetes' film,
to be one of the best movies about conformity I've ever
seen--chilling, hard on the nerves. And the performances--
even though the characters are outsized--dialed to a crazy,
fly off the handle precision that is scary. There is no person
inside the Rowland's character, just somebody WANTING TO
BE. And I mean, from an ontological perspective.
I kept thinking, could everyone just leave these people
alone, projecting my own loner-ness into the film.
But then the husband, Falk's character, keeps shuffling people
into and off of the stage that is this couple's life.
You can feel the tenderness when they are alone,
some kind of correct match here, two crazies made
crazier by the presence of other people and/or what
is expected of them concerning the mere presence of others.
The film is bigger than life, absurd, truthful, naturalistically
(especially as concerns the nuanced acting)
accurate within its context of meaning-making, and dead on
in its portrait of contemporary anxiety as a sort of
contemporary cultural social disease.

THE WAY THINGS ARE NOW


FORT PIERCE, Fla. (March 3) - Authorities say a Florida
woman called 911 three times after McDonald's employees
told her they were out of McNuggets.