NOT READY TO GO BACK


It's barbecue weather

or one can be lazy

all those overturned steel umbrella's blowing smoke

the trees mingle with the smell of the meat

perhaps a boat drips in the driveway

not one single bird is singing anywhere

whatever you have to do

it can wait

CALIFORNIA PASTORAL


it's alarming for all of those reasons

Venus de Milo

sinking through the garage filled with reconstituted coral

deep psychoanalysis

the pill gets lodged in your throat

a pinhole of mist like a pituitary introvert turning aquamarine

the lawn hums along

oh summer house

the green bridges stand shaking in the air-conditioning

your density of scripture is the blue

of David Hockney's eyes

POEM FOR THE END OF JULY


green dark in the pleasant humidity of chatter

a summer's "abundance"

all's worth lasting through these thousand millions

(bereft as at a window)

the crowds start drowning in it

the columns of Samson get cracking

while five out of eight flights are cancelled due to sincerity

(thy navel was not cut)

it's anathema, the smoke in her pocket watch

Virginia creeper and a lot of, well, gagging on that visual bile

it's better than last weekend's glissando of jet skis

the pages barely stuck together

a forgery on e-bay

buy one funeral, get the second two free

like a photo of her smiling in a pickup truck

furious, and soft, as laundry


***
Ezekiel (16, 5) and Catullus

BOYER RICKEL

I can't recommend Boyer Rickel's remanence
highly enough. Elegant and subversive, gorgeous
poems. Some of the most riveting stuff I've
read in a while. John Gallaher recently posted
a couple of these on his blog.

NO CRITERIA


there is no such thing as a beer imperative

perhaps autism

or Tourette's

the mime was "singing" when suddenly he produced a carrot

you can guess all night

the shining city with its glass facade

the heart speared turning in a mine shaft

efficient apartment life

a closet for Seth Rogen

my student said "If it feels like I can have a beer with him he
000ain't worth meeting"

I'VE NEVER BEEN TO NEVADA


I woke up alive in
this boiling canyon

leopards and other constituents shadowy in my passsst cups

otherwise

like flirting with an albino police woman

the ______ of the dusk grows long

we are not amused

we are not a queen bee

we do not condone the pretzel logic of the seat belt/no helmet

it's a paradox of monumentally tiny proportions

landlords with crazy ladders

Robert Duncan riding a unicorn through northern Nevada

another citizen afraid

of the league of explorer babies

my condolences go out to the von Trapp family

LOSING MY RELIGION


My nerves are about shot

so I arrange for a "plant"

this way, like an attic's spring-ladder unfolding all on it's own

I'm telling you, my pattern of moles makes

I miss painting

I miss saying the word "trowel"

Twenty-Nine Toilets, Incorporated

you wouldn't hit a woman wearing glasses would you?

time to sit Zazen

the way a real road runner looks like a muscle bound reptile

I regretfully resign from my
position as ship's doctor

a turtle sunning on a log looks plenty sovereign to me

STONES


I shan't return?

drink this

sitting dreamily inside my Stark County playpen

headquarters is requesting a confirmation

the ice melts on the sidewalk like a diminishment of need

it creates its own fence though

outside

inside

the ribs form a gatehouse for the abolitionist heart

And so my job, as I saw it,
was to begin painting stones

I'll tell you what's real

war does that to people

stones in the breezeway, stones looking into the classroom

stones reading in every stall at the university library

I like to stay grounded

it depends on what the meaning of the word is is

I'm two months from fifty

I deserve a toy gunboat

CHILD'S DRAWING


two hardware stores--I can't
find the past in the older one

the other is a drawing

the wind pulls at the branches of trees

there's a child waiting to be born

in any case the storm swept through

and the traffic lights stopped directing anything

they were swinging in the dark of the steel rafters

a creature sits
next to a sac of air

the house is a basket of feathery red lines

upright casket with two blue legs

pinwheels of gold like stars spinning

or roots tugging at something

the soreness in a nipple

it's too dark in this submarine

Nobody can hear me

quoteth Hopkins: Time past she has been attempted and pursued

he wants to go with her

POETRY DAYDREAM


reading Arthur's Left Wing of a Bird

when a plane stops in the sky

the skittery dream of living so close to the land while feeling
000unmoored

in kindergarten therapy
they call these flying dreams

you might be watching a bead of her sweat from your Adirondack
000chair

attending catechism

or say the bodies keep piling up

dark clouds of gnats swim over the limitations of space

a baby noose swings in the breeze near the fish hatchery

cut to a fork shining on a black napkin

wings on the pterodactyl fall right off in the moonlight

the eyes on a pig flow imperceptibly inward

the dead fish in the tanks begin eating the shadows of all the
000other dead fish

that's when a branch snaps you in the face

the plane in the sky begins breaking in half

you're not going anywhere

THE DISSEMBLING LAMPSHADE


Kill them, or kiss me

watch me
entertain you

windmills turning out a series of quacking sandhill herons

there are no cranes left on Andromeda

bird nest inside the refrigerator

the eucalyptus thong

next "album" by The Killers

I blew song bubbles

and the result of such high stepping are Gypsy moth monologues

listen to the rain

her whole living room is a depository of dropped garter proposals

I want you to do me a favor, the baroness quipped

on your mark get set

2 % of bank tellers are unionized

nine carat pose at the Wilmington dog show

A JUMPING FLEA?

maybe

'cause I've got this ukulele in a bucket

star light, star bright

I've got a ukulele in a bucket

and this very small songbook

he's a police officer

riding a horse down old Seville Parkway in the dead of summer

the crab grass blossoms in her hair

the smell of heavy sedation

then I think to myself, self

the wagon sits in its own tropical shadow

does the ground see the wood, the wood look down at the ground?

there are many quarters falling out of the moon

and into the galvanized moat-of-the-lute

that cemetery seems like a dream to me now

but only on the real object

do the spokes fly backwards

THE PINE RIVER


half deluded on the lees of his wine

the sedan sinks in the back yard

tiny pool of blood in the ashtray

her libretto

the seats in those buses are soldered in place

so what

he's unstitching his signatured Norm Cash baseball

she feels like an arthroscopic cloud

this antenna is freezing

she chews on him

but that's not the dinner I was trying to supplant

1979

it's mostly about brake pads

the instinct to herd after midnight

let's look at your x-rays

there are no bells in my bedroom

his Confirmation name is Running Mouse

ELECTIVE AFFINITIES


stuck in that style of

poems and the influence of other poets

sandbagging

the sounds of construction drift in through the screens

I want mayapple

her hand in my chest hair

the lawnmower begins downloading Resveratrol

I can't stop anything anymore

The Poseidon Adventure for instance

starring Shelley Winters

or wearing my Hawaiian shirts

written in honor of

a certain fundamentalism of lightning bolts and protuberances

the Japanese Maple waiting in line at the bank

Linda McCarriston with her big pencil shaking

I think we'll go skinny-dipping

some idiot threw

the New York Times on top of the garage again

no more role models anyway

please pass the cilantro

HYACINTHS AND A BOWL OF SOUP


you're that hungry,

waves dashed off rocks,

and the pretty little scars and the feckless navels

sorry about the smoke in my hair

your eyes, are they

burnt umber?

the flowers with bees shrugging symphonies of lavender fertilizers

isn't it at least a little like the corn swamped deep in this chowder

I dreamed I had a glass skull

Then I watched a man in suspenders at an estate sale
light a ship in a bottle on fire

the blossoms slide recklessly over the ocean

as smoke pours skyward from the eyes of red-faced fish

blue boulders rising and falling against her breastbone

she and I had simply come in out of the rain

I looked on the desk at the fake newspaper

(nine planets added to our solar system)

and the water from her hair was running down my cheeks

I need to think, I thought, and closed my eyes

trees started crashing past my first storey windows

now her mascara began streaming

THE SEASON


Testing, Testing, sibilance . . .

like a pattern the bird shot flies opening out of

the tracks spreading in the night

I hit the pole with my rear bumper

(I didn't want to wake up)

and like a rising tide

where are the concertgoers

vestigial arms buried in the pliable leather of wings

It's so cold

stall after stall in the dead of winter

a woman with her face inside a purse

Welcome to What's Inside Your Mouth

ball peen hammers

an epidural

cracks spreading over the windshield

the sound of a firearm being discharged out in the country versus
000the city

the T-shirt hung on her frame

birds on the furniture
birds in the bathtub
birds inside the oven

they did weep a little bit, put everything into storage

ON PLEASURE BEING PREFERABLE TO PAIN


You can double back

a sturdy foundation makes for

and those candles, out in the dark

knowledge you are waiting to find

You, sir, a friend's professor father once said to me

are like a five paragraph essay

ouch

dialectic is just another word for form

but it's sunny and gorgeous in Indiana today

you can wait patiently

pedestrian traffic lights

The White Stripes

"It all started with Lionel Trilling"

then we went sideways

I was filling a bird bath when a remote controlled car came
000right down the street

Trilling had A.D.D.

hallway leading to hallway leading to a forest of stones . . .

it was just me out there, and a female cardinal

DYNAMISM OF A DOG ON A LEASH


Could be an allergy to pecans

or that herpes zoster virus

the domestic triangle is on balance fluctuating according to lipids

(everything revolves around these signaling "frog" men)

for instance--

Henry Miller has a stroke at Big Sur and falls into the ocean

Every bedbug wears a hairpiece

but seriously, if I knew I'd get the chicken pox again at 38

Yes, we keep leaving

Yes, dinner will be on time again

The gravity is set on "Loud" once again

Cornrows streaming off a foot and a half tall biped

Simultaneity

like the moment when the frankfurter

goes into Anaphylactic shock

so good to see you playing Emma Bovary this evening

(I really need to apologize)

don't sweat it, dude

so your dog has gas

TRANSPARENT APPLES


Now it's bedtime for real . . .

Satellites, key holes, a slight pause in the decorative plastic

It's bunched to her thigh

And with a pin

The arrow melts into the wall

But not like a book

The afternoon is not a tunnel

It goes right through bone

I find them heartbreaking, what with the seeds and everything

The lights of Alpena

Like tar bubbling

Two wrappers tied into bows about equidistant

Oh heavenly cleft!

And how drunk they all get

But what happened to all of our horses

A copy of Candide is set out on the chopping block

Voila!

***
first line by Ron Padgett, while below (Acid poem) he writes the tenth

ACID FLASHBACK IN A MICHIGAN BASEMENT

Gutenberg swallowed a baseball

his brethren

a tit rises in the shade like a mouth without teeth

and so he approached the next moment directly

ripping paper in a port-a-john

using a finger to connect to most lanterns

But, you know

he is sitting down

he could say almost anything

partake of the bean of understanding

to work at Johnsonville Brats or not to work at Johnsonville Brats

he's got The Story of O autographed by John Mellencamp

then he opens the chapbook of flaming parchments

that is the question

FASHION


People wear suits, but with sandals

a bicycle helmet

while out in the dark decolletage called Yard Nature

the butterflies crash

Hawk bounces right off of Rock

this and an ambulance bed full of non-dairy creamer

the bow-tie blows up in your loan officer's face

OOPS

That didn't really work out, that last post (gone now).
It would have helped had not some rogue tree trimmers
convinced my neighbor to simply get rid of a mammoth
walnut tree rather than trim it. As soon as I saw the
truck rumbling by five feet from my front window I knew
I was in trouble, and soon they knocked my
DSL lines down. They did nothing to correct the problem.
So I wasn't connected for two days. That's not the biggest
deal in the world, but I got stuck mid-draft and then
wasn't able to check the bad draft. It will probably turn
into something, but I'm too tired to mess with it now.

THREE RUN HOMER (and a double)


Ordonez, Ordonez, Ordonez . . .

It's that clutch hitting, Smitty . . .

St. Joseph River

FIRST THING

I heard--after I'd taken some pictures around ND's campus--
on NPR, upon starting the car--and so the radio blared on--
was an interviewer, interviewing a woman who wrote a book
on the Declaration of Independence, saying, "As you were
saying about your clamdigger." (I heard it as one word.)

on the campus of notre dame (so what's the big deal?)

AWP JOB LIST


came out. There's one position--for one year--teaching poetry.
Yes, I know that's been coming, yes, yes. I do recall, six or seven
years ago even, there'd be fifteen or twenty positions at the end
of June, some old ones still pending, and some new visiting
positions. Sign of the Times. Great Bryan Ferry song, btw,
"Sign of the Times" . . .

*

Here's a link to the latest Robot Secretary installment--watch all
of them. They're amazing . . .

*

A break on the poems, arranging them into manuscripts. Time to
get things moving.

*

There is a new poetry book contest/press at IUSB, Wolfson Press.
Believe me, the contest is required to justify the thing (starting out)
to the administration. Ad forthcoming in Poets & Writers. There's
a March 1, deadline, and I am sorry but students at IUSB (past and
present) and friends of the editors are not eligible. There will be
valuable volunteer opportunities though--from reading the slush
pile to logging in data, various office-type duties, some managerial
assistance--all of it quite valuable on any writing resume. The press
will publish a "winner" as well as, most likely, an additional book.
I, personally, gave of my time to Passages North (when it was coming
out of Kalamazoo College, headed by Mike Barrett (some of you
remember Mike when he read fiction at IUSB)), and Third Coast after
that. I also did some behind the scenes work early on at New Issues
(editing books by Malena Morling, John Rybicki, David Marlatt,
etc., selecting and editing a Michael Burkard book (Pennsylvania
Collection Agency). Anyway, you know how to reach me if you want
to help.