1 Comments:

at 3:05 PM  Alice Folkart said...

Dear Editor - another flaming success. Thanks for the introduction to so many new poets and idea. Especially liked the elderly Bukowski because I've never much liked him before - too taken up in things male. But, here, he's just a human. Liked also your frog poem, perfect ending - a honky tonk full of very dressed-up frogs (can't be responsible for my imagination). Especially liked your photos (some might be of California, which I miss) and the photos of Thomas Costales - I feel an immediate connection because I have dreamed that one of the loading dock, the one with a slight green tinge to the light - looks like the mouth of Hell, doesn't it?
Anyway, and I liked seeing my poem there, which looked better than it did the first time around. There's magic in Here and Now. And, of couse, Ellen's poem ties me in knots, isn't that the way of a marriage? She is a fine poet!

Thanks,
Alice Folkart

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You Don't Need A Weatherman   Friday, September 21, 2007

II.9.4.



Welcome to "Here and Now" on this 4th Saturday in September.

To begin, I'd like to say, I like it when readers take advantage of the comment opportunity at the end of each "Here and Now" issue. For one thing, it's the only way I have of knowing, other some dry statistical stuff the web host gives me, that people are actually reading this thing.

I especially enjoyed the comments of Lenny from Leamington SpaNearStratford upon Avon in England last week. In addition to saying nice things about "Here and Now" (aw, shucks) Lenny cleared up my confusion about the painting that made a prominent appearance in the Thomas Crown Affair remake of a couple of years ago.

I was sure (well, almost) that the painting was by Marcel Duchamp. Lenny corrected me. The painting is by Rene Magritte.

I am relieved now to definitely know two things about art. One, the Thomas Crown painting was by Rene Magritte and, second, the Mona Lisa was by Leonardo DeCaprio.

Seriously, Lenny, thanks for writing. I invite anyone who has a thought they might want to share to do the same. If you have some work coming out or if you have a blog of your own you would like to tell people about, feel free to do it in comments.

No commercial ads please and no random screams of obscenity. All that kind of stuff does is put me to the trouble of deleting it. (I have to do that every once in a while on the 7beats website which has its own comment page.)

As to this issue, I have, again, lots of good stuff. I complained last week that I hadn't had time to search for web poets to feature here. No problem this week. This week we have lots of our web-friends showing their stuff.

On with the show! (OK, that's corny. Try doing this every week and you'll discover as I have that not only does the occasional corny cliche come in mighty handy some time, sometimes it's the best you can do. )








David Kelly is our first poet this week. He is also a first-timer at "Here and Now." I met David at one of the first Monday night readings at La Taza Coffee Shop on San Antonio's northside. That's also where I first heard his presentation of this poem.

About himself, David says, I am a thirty-one year old writer, illustrator, sculptor, and composer, and as such am forced to make my living with an insurance company. Oh yes, it is a career built on the blood and misery of my fellow humans, but it pays well. This should be a clue to the direction my moral compass points.

My ability to shoot myself in the foot is unparalleled outside of Wiley Coyote, and I often do so with rather meager tools. Never the less, it is my modest hope to one day rule this universe.

We all need a hobby.

Here's David's poem.



Metric Memories


How well I remember the Alamo
Rental car clerk whom I could not convince
Or persuade to return my deposit,

And then there was the U2 incident
When that shit-for-brains security guard
Whacked me hard in the head with a bottle.

You recall the day they sent Sputnik up
To Las Vegas and he lost everything
But his mother's fine old borscht recipe?

That reminds me, the titanic sinking
Of the thirty foot putt on the sixteenth
In heavy drizzle, thank you very much!

Just where were you when Pearl Harbor got bombed
And told everyone sitting at the bar
I was just out of Leavenworth prison,

Or that fateful day at Hiroshima
Where they added my bill up oh-so-wrong
And I paid seventeen bucks for a spring roll?

I shall never forget the Bay of Pigs
On the first day of truffle season....
Oh yes, I'll say it again, vive le France!








Tino Villanueva was born in San Marcos, Texas. He had a variety of work experiences, ranging from migrant farm work to assembly line construction of furniture, before completing his education. He received his BA at Texas State College under the GI Bill (see "Old Main" pictures from a couple of weeks ago), then went on to receive a Masters Degree at SUNY-Buffalo and a doctorate at a Boston University. He is the author of three collections of poetry and is, as well, an accomplished artist with work featured in El Paso, West Berlin, and Boston.

The following is his introduction to his book of poems and prose,Scene From the Movie Giant. He first saw the movie when he was fourteen years old and the casual anti-Mexican racism of the movie, especially as it was expressed in one particular scene, had a great impact on him. He explores his reaction to that scene in his book, published in 1993 by Curbstone Press.

It will probably help to understand Villanueva and his work if I add that, when I started college at Texas State University (it was Southwest Texas State University at the time) in 1962, the little city of San Marcos (pop. about 3,500 - the University which was about the same size has grown about tenfold since) was informally segregated, not through any act of law but through social history and convention.



from Scene From the Movie Giant

What I have from 1956 is one instant at the Holiday
Theater, where a small dimension of a film, as in
A dream, became the feature of the whole. It
Comes toward the end.... the cafe scene, which
Reels off a slow spread of light, a stark desire

To see itself once more, though there is, at times,
No joy in old time movies. It begins with the
Jingling of bells and the plainer truth of it;
That the front door to a roadside cafe opens and
Shuts as the Benedicts (Rock Hudson and Elizabeth

Taylor) their daughter Luz, and daughter-in-law
Juana and grandson Jordy, pass through it not
Unobserved. Nothing sweeps up into an actual act
Of kindness into the eyes of Sarge, who owns this
Joint and has it out for our dark-eyed Juana, weary

Of too much longing that comes with rejection.
Juana, from barely inside the door, and Sarge,
Stout and unpleased from behind his counter, clash
Eye-to-eye, as time stands like heat. Silence is
Everywhere, acquiring the name of hatred and Juana

Cannot bear the dread - the dark-jowl gaze of Sarge
Against her skin. Suddenly: bells go off again
By the quiet effort of walking, three Mexican-
Types step in, whom Sarge refuses to serve....
Those gestures of his, those looks that could kill

A heart you carry in memory for years. A scene from
The past has caught me in the act of living; even
To myself I cannot say except with worried phrases
Upon a paper, how I withstood arrogance in a gruff
Voice coming with the deep-dyed colors of the screen;

How in the beginning, I experienced almost nothing to
Say and now wonder if I can ever live enough to tell
The after-tale, I remember this and I remember myself
Locked into a back-row seat - I am a thin, flickering,
Helpless light, local looking, unthought at fourteen.



(I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to continue this story within the limited format of "Here and Now," but I intend to find a way.)





Photo by Dale McLain



We welcome Dale McLain back to "Here and Now" with a look at paradise in both photographic and poetic form.



port of call

Off the scalloped coast of Brewer's Bay
I offer my gouache bones to the sea,
narrow blades and arcs beneath my tan.
This water owns me as it owns millions

of mirror-scaled fishes and anemones.
My heartbeat mimics the docile waves,
a syncopated affirmation; I am here.
The seabed is smooth, so close, I wonder

about the need for air. Could I stay
within this perfect blue, a glint
of sunlight or a ripple in the sand?
My cocktail waits, coconut
and Callwood, the local libation.

I am just a day-tripper, another migrant
with sandy feet. It is impossible
to remain, not all of me, only the part
that is rooted, a slender white cedar
on the cloudy crest of Sage Mountain.









I picked up another book at the used book store last week, The Collected Poems of Henri Coulette, published by the University of Arkansas Press in 1990.

Henri Coulette was a Californian to his core, living in that state all of his life except for military service and a short time in New Mexico. He published only two books during his lifetime, The War of the Secret Agents in 1966 and The Family Goldschmitts in 1971, which, through huge error was accidentally shredded in the publisher's warehouse and never properly distributed. He wrote almost nothing after that event and gradually faded from view, until near the end of his life when he wrote fifty new poems. Unpublished at the time of his death in 1988 at 60 years of age, they are included in this book under the title he had planned for them, And Came to Closure. The poem below is from that previously unpublished series.



At the Graveyard

      for Minnie Patterson (1875-1971)

We have come a little early. Minutes away in the small town
You painted your pictures of, where you wrote your cheerful
    verse
They are turning the screws of a gray coffin. Your coffin.

We wander among the headstones, killing time, saying what
    we have said
All day, What a beautiful day, meaning the high clouds, the
    high wind,
The blue there is no name for, except sky, except beautiful.

We have come to the stones of the far side, the stones of the
    last century.
There are so many children here, and here is a man born in
    Damascus -
A Country Doctor for 40 years to our County -

And his wife - Clara, a Descendant of Jonathan Edwards.
The day is beautiful, the sky is blue, the clouds are clouds
You cannot read anything into. They are simply clouds.

The hearse comes down the highway, and turns, and stops,
We make our way toward you, past the Lieutenant of'
    Cavalry,
The Native of Iowa, Our Beloved Father, His Sweet Child.








I was in Austin for several days last week and took advantage of being there to go downtown to listen to a band Chris plays in. I wrote this, bleary-eye, the next morning.




Austin, 6th street, 1 am

still
a good crowd out
mostly
twenty-somethings
from the University
enough business
to keep the bars
open
and the bands
playing

I came down
to listen to one
particular band
and enjoyed
their first set
but it's awful
damn late
for an old
guy
so I'm heading
back
to my hotel
to hit the sack

can't help
as I walk back
to my car
thinking back
40 years
when 6th street
after dark
was a good place
to get VD
or stabbed in the back
and not much else

it's all changed
now

6th street
means
neon lights
and music
and let's face it
some weird looking
kids
and cops
on horses
keeping it
mostly quiet
and clean
for several
blocks around
the actual street
itself
and this late
with the tourists
gone to bed
and the state
people and the
business people
in town for meetings
gone to their rooms
to drink it's a quiet
scene, mellow,
and young -
the only people
I see my age
are begging
quarters
and cigarettes
left-over
vague-eyed
burned-out
hippies
who took a
trip
in 1965
and never
made it back

it's a trip
for me too
being here
watching
the scene

remembering

things change
but they always
stay
the same

that's been my
experience





Photo by Jessica Reyna



Jessica Reyna is a San Antonio art student whose work we've featured before. Her images previously featured were taken with her trusty , newfangled digital camera. These new photos are from her first shoot using a 50 year old Argus C-3 restored by John Strieb and obtained from his collection.




photo by Jessica Reyna



Photo by Jessica Reyna



Photo by Jessica Reyna


We will be seeing more of Jessica's photos in weeks ahead, both digital and from her newly acquied antique.








I had intended to continue to post several more sections of The Coast of Texas by Gilberto Sorrentino. (I posted the first four sections a couple of weeks ago.)

But, rereading the poem, I realized if just doesn't work broken into pieces and spread over a period of weeks. So, instead, I'm going to use this stand alone poem. The Coast of Texas and this poem are both in Gilbert Sorrentino, Selected Poems 1958-1980, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1981.



A Poem to Read in August

We sang plenty old songs then
Let me
Tell you.

There is a moment at which you
Must know that things
That are gone

Are gone. Ah, the alacrity
With which
They puncture the heart.

  In the meantime: with pussy
  willows, gladioli, narcissi,
  honeysuckle, forsythia, crocus,
  peach, plum, and cherry

Blossoms, spring comes.
Check.








Fred Longworth is with us this week for the first time.

Fred has been published in hardcopy in The Pacific Review, Pearl, California Quarterly, and numerous others. He has also appeared in many online publications as well including Stirring, Strong Verse and Melic Review.

He lives in San Diego and restores vintage audio components for a living and is, he says, a youthful 60.



Don't Waste Time on First-Rate Women

Leave a two-dollar wine bottle uncorked
in a hot garage next to an open can
of paint thinner, and it's still happy
I prefer it over flat beer.

A trailer park makes a finishing school
look like sandpaper without grit.
If kids couldn't handle being alone
overnight, the human race would die out
in a generation.

Sweetie knows a store that trades good weed
for WIC coupons. Deuce, five, six, nine,
jack. No discards. No draws.

I used to raise orchids in Antarctica.
Now, I water weeds, let the garbage man
pick up the trash. I sit alone in a forest
on a pew in a church of pines.








Our next piece is by California poet and storyteller Doc Dachtler. It's from his book ....Waiting for chains at Pearl's. The book was published by Plain View Press in 1990.

I wish I could use the title piece to this book, but it's much too long. Instead, here's this.



What You're Good At

We were working calves through the chute
that laid them on their sides.
The Cowboy doing the cutting was 73 years old.
He explained soft and low to them
while operating with a small pocket knife
shaving sharp.
    See, Don, you want to cut the cord with little slashes so
    it's kinda rough; heals better, doesn't bleed too much.
    Lotta fellas get in a hurry here and it don't pay.
A stainless covered pot was filling with castrations
in cold water
    Ever had 'em in scrambled eggs? he asked.
    No.I said.
    Nothing like 'em! Then we'll have a good cup of Irish
    coffee!
We'd been working since 6 am in a bare oak cold February
drizzle.
    You know, Don, they heal up better if the sun's
    shining.

We were leaning against the fence taking coffee.
It was 10:30 am.
A shiny Ford Bronco drove slowly by the corral.
A man and woman in the back seat were talking
and pointing at us.
The cows bawled for their calves.
The realtor had on a Stetson or equivalent hat
with a plastic rainguard. It was nodding happily
because part of the sale was local color.
We didn't feel picturesque when the Nikkon came up
as the window rolled down
and the Bronco crunched gravel to a stop.
    How's the branding going?
    We're not branding, we're cuttin'.
said one of the ranch hands
tipping back his shit smeared hat.
The old cowboy folded up his arms, spit of shot of Skoal
over the split rail fence in their direction and commented
the first time that day on his disappearing range;
    I guess if you ain't good at anything else, why, you can
    always sell real estate!
The window rolled back up.
The bronco bucked its way up the hill.
We went back to work.

                        Sicard Flat Rd.
                        February, 1985








I'm happy to have Bernard Henrie back with us this week. Bernie lives in the Mojave desert. He can be read frequently on the Writers Block workshop forum using "Mohave" as his screen name.



Vocabulary and Spelling

Words come to me with shining eyes an lie underfoot
until an essay or party drags them into the kitchen
where I work, or when I am alone in the car, the radio
blocked by a mountain.

Onomatopoeia, for example, the wicked jackanapes,
or the suggestive nature of orotund, the cool dignity
and galactic calm of subrage. The black confusion
of syzygy. The fresh gale wind of the wassail,
the charabanc ridden in by plump Dylan Thomas.
The upstart popinjay at the next desk I cannot abide.


Grok and gurning, droogish of course. -
words given to us by God for some purpose
that we cannot always remember or spell, but words
that rest like books at the lending library
we plan to visit one day and to use in our next essay.

Even while my wife demands I remove garbage bags
or paint almost everything, I am already being disloyal
with these words that make my life rich. I open my arms
to receive their windy currents and wine like kiss.









And here's one I wrote last week while waiting for AAA to pick up Chris' permanently disabled car.



on the one hand



I'm at my son's house
on the south side of Austin

that's old Austin,
with small houses,
in what could be seen
as a forest of oak and pecan

beyond the trees
in the not too far distance
I hear the rattatattat
of hammers,
carpenters
framing some new structure
on South Congress

it's the sound of jobs,
pay checks,
groceries on the table,
sitting in the front yard
having a beer after work.
college dreams fulfilled,
the sound of middle class
American good life,
proud workers
and secure families

it's also the sound
of trees
bulldozed,
hills
scrapped flat,
wild life
displaced,
habitat destroyed,
acres
irreplaceable
hill country beauty
stripped bare

on the one hand
this
and on the other
that

so pick
your poison,
frying pan
or
fire








Now we have another little mystery by John Ashbery from his book And the Stars Were Shining published in 1994 by The Noonday Press.

Linda Gregerson in The New York Times Book Review referred to Ashbery's "capaciousness of spirit." That is the perfect word to use for his style and his poetry.



The Story of Next Week

Yes, but right reason dictates... Yes, but the wolf is at the door,
nor shall our finding be indexed.
Yes, but life is a circus, a passing show
wherein each may drop his reflection
and so contradict the purpose of a maelstrom;
the urge, the thrust.
And if what others do
finally seems good to you? Why,
the very civility that gilded it
is flaking. Passivity itself's a hurdle.

So, lost with the unclaimed lottery junk,
uninventoried, you are an heir to anything.
Brightness of purpose counts; Centesimal
victorious flunkeys seemed to grab its tail
yet it defied them with invention.
Stand up, and the rain
will be cold at first in your pockets.
Later, by chance, you'll discover supper
in the sparkling, empty tavern.
A nice, white bed awaits you;
your passport's in there too.









I'm also very pleased to have Beki Reese back with another of her love poems. Beki is director of the short form forum on the Blueline website and she is most often seen working with various ku forms. As this poem demonstrates, her talent is not restricted to those short forms.



Between the Silence and the Dawn

Between the silence and the dawn
words lie waiting in the shadows;
the barest whispers of my desire,
longing wrapped in a thin black coat.

I cannot sleep for wanting you,
your absence leaves a tender ache
that settles deep between my thighs.
My desire throbs to the beat of my heart,
pulsing your name like fire through my veins.

My fevered skin yearns to bare itself
to the quenching cool of your quick tongue,
to quiver-leap beneath your touch.
I long to dance a slow slip-slide,
warm and wet against your length.

Then when the moment is just right
I want you to discover me
with careful kisses and deep intent.
Chase my words back into shadows,
leaving only passion moans behind.

Urge me far beyond inhibition,
sink me into breathless sighs
until I collapse, weak and spent.
Leave me dreaming of what lies behind
doors I've yet to walk through with you.








Now we have a piece from W. Joe Hoppe, a transplant from Michigan to Texas and currently teacher of English and Creative Writing at Austin Community College.

This poem is from his book Galvanized published this year by Dalton Publishing.



Stanley Marsh's Cadillac Ranch
Amarillo, TX

The path to the Cadillac Ranch
is littered with fireworks carcasses
Fourth of July just a weekend past
barrages of bursting colors
must have been wondrous
within warm darkness

Not a bit like the blanched dome
I'm kicking up dust beneath
where even the brightest
of spray painted fluorescents
are sucked right in
to the baked steel surfaces

Of ten Cadillacs buried nose down
tailfins fanned across high Texas plains
from the first sweet swooping of 1949
rising the rear fender
like a fighter planes rudder
through '50, '54, '56, '57, '58, '59, and '62
to the sharp space age point of 1963
a triangle's ting to those halcyon days

Scrawled with Magic Marker testimony
by entire families - from France, Germany,
Australia, and Tennessee -
each member making his own signature
picture a kindergartner on her father's shoulders
"Ashley" laborious across a Coupe DeVille's rooftop

This afternoon's pilgrims walk
with the same reverence
found at Graceland or Indianapolis Motor Speedway
alone for a moment I circumambulate
turning busted tires like prayer wheels

For a mantra driven through differential gears:

O America All That You Were
O America All That You Are








And here's another one I wrote while waiting, this time waiting at a coffee shop for a lightning bolt to come crashing out of the sky with a poem for me carried on its sizzling spear point.



a crazy business

this poetry
is a crazy business,
practiced
at the whim of forces
unknown and unpredictable

poems seem
to fall from the sky
on a schedule all their own,
like solitary raindrops
on a cloudless day,
some half formed and some
complete
as they land with a
deeply poetic splat
on the white page before me

some days a storm
and others like the driest desert
of a waterless world,
and I never know
at the start of a new day
what kind of day
it will turn out to be

every day I wait
for the day to reveal itself,
trying
not to try
to do it on my own,
for that is the error of presumption,
believing that I am the creator
and not just the beneficiary of these words
that fall from the
sky








Now, a poem by William D. Barney, thirty-five year Postal Service employee and former Texas Poet Laureate. The poem is from A Cowtown Chronicle, the ninth and last of his books of poetry.

In his eighties in 1999 when this book was published by Bowder Springs Books, he has since died.



A Birthdayful of Beard-Tongues
                Oakhurst: Scenic Drive

The beard-tongues rise out of the limestone bluff
just as they did a half century ago
when I was a boy wandering on these hills.
The same of crumbling rock, the calcareous soil
have not changed. Soft rains and warming sun of April
unlock their chemistries and a swarm of flowers
covers the slope, this year in profusion.

I do not remember the passing of years.
Who that is part of the sea recalls every wave?
They arrived, surged through, moved on
much as that ancient ocean did, laying down
this chalk. I too entered this world one April
and have been ever since a disciple of green.
Only the calendar tells me on this day
I am sixty-five, and the histories say
not many times more will I find these towers
lifting their tinted bells. No difference
to them nor probably to me if they
still celebrate a good time to be born,
to spring up from the fertile earth
and silently peal the change of season.
They will not toll for any; their own delight
is their mission. Nor need they. Not far off
he will not hear, who saying his nunc dimittis,
took part of this richness where he went.








And even again I'm pleased to have Tina Hoffman back with us this week with a new poem.



Postcard from the Aegean

Dear one,

I hope you will forgive this trespass
so far from you, this trip
to blue seas and whitewashed homes,
whispered prayers in tiny chapels,
marbled rocks in the shape of gods
mesmerized by the slant of the sun.

I never thought apart from you, I'd find me
but I'm here, heady and overflowing
as pots of basil hung with honeysuckle;
in gray-green hills and prickly pear bushes,
in wild jasmine breezes and endless vineyards
where I sip from a never empty cup -
here is the essence of all I long to feel.

Ikaria, rocky island tomb
where escape means certain death
with singed wings of feathers and wax;
today I die, today I melt,
but my god, the thrill of flying free!








Last week, I featured an opening piece from Marfan by Peter Reading. In my introduction, I mentioned the mystery of the "Marfa lights." Here, from the book, is more information on the mysterious lights.



fromMarfan

One evening, back in 1883,
Robert Reed Ellison was with his wife
herding a bunch of cattle across the basin
from Alpine towards Marfa, heading west,
and, sundown coming on, stopped for the night.
As he made preparations for the campfire
he glanced up and was mystified to notice
lights flickering to and fro across a valley
along the side of the Chinati Mountains.
Assuming it was Apaches on the move,
he catnapped clutching his Winchester till dawn
when the weird incandescence fizzled out.

A short time after that, a young surveyor,
man by the name of Williams, was out mapping
round the same spot and saw the same strange lights.
His journal records how "Indians of this region
believe the luminosity to be
the restless spirit of the dead Apache,
Chief Alsate."

        Nearly a century later,
The Houston Chronicle dispatched Stan Redding -
"Check out this Marfa story; let's just see
whether there's anything in it." As he drove
along a dirt road near Paisano Pass,
Redding observed the Marfa Mystery Lights:
The darted about the ground - red white and blue,
orbs, baseball-sized. They blended into one,
then separated. One of them would zoom
high into the air, then plummet into the brush,
then rise on instant later and spin away
crazily. Unsuppoeted and unattached,
each one illuminated the black-brush clump
over which it hovered.

        Tonight, off 90 East,
a curious ignis fatuus fulminates....









Alex Stolis returns again this week with the third of his series inspired by the Tarot deck.



Card II

The High Priestess attends a Masked Ball

she believes rain dulls the edge of unhappiness and in a world
out of practice with silence, she wants to forget about words

and float beyond form or thought. she wants to sharpen
the oval face of sound, imagines herself as confessor,

the quiet muse, a journal. promising to leave nothing
to chance, she'll hold secrets speechless against her breast.

she will be the keeper of lock and key while night suffocates
the last light under a blanket of stars. she believes it's possible

to pretend herself into solitude, possible to cover small
indiscretions with a laugh and murmur thrown in the right

direction. she wants to fall in love with no consequences,
teach the moon to recite her name - a prayer for the dying.








From The Same Sky, A Collection of Poems from around the World, published by Aladdin Paperbacks in 1992, we have this poem by Stella Ngatho of Kenya.



Footpath

Path-let.... leaving home, leading out,
Return my mother to me
The sun is sinking and darkness coming,
Hens and cocks are already inside and babies drowsing,
Return my mother to me.
We do not have fire-wood and I have not seen the lantern,
There is no more food and the water has run out.
Path-let I pray you, return my mother to me.
Path of the hillocks, path of the small stones,
Path of slipperiness, path of the mud,
Return my mother to me.
Path of the papyrus, path of the rivers,
Path of the small forests, path of the reeds,
Return my mother to me.
Path that winds, path of the short-cut,
Over-trodden path, newly made path,
Return my mother to me.
Path, I implore you, return my mother to me.
Path of the crossways, path that branches off,
Path of the stinging shrubs, path of the bridge,
Return my mother to me.
Path of the open, path of the valley,
Path of the steep climb, path of the downward slope,
Return my mother to me.
Children are drowsing about to sleep,
Darkness is coming and there is no fire-wood,
And I have not yet found the lantern:
Return my mother to me.








Now we have a piece by Tony Hoagland from his book, donkey gospel published by Graywolf Press in 1998.



Mistaken Identity

I thought I saw my mother
in the lesbian bar,
with a salt gray crew cut, a nose stud
and a tattoo of a parrot on her arm.
She was sitting at a corner table,
leaning forward to ignite, on someone's match,
one of those low-tar things she used to smoke,

and she looks happy to be alive again
after her long marriage
to other people's needs,
her twenty-year stint as Sisyphus,
struggling to push
a blue Ford station wagon full of screaming kids
up a mountainside of groceries.

My friend Debra had brought me there
to educate me on the issue
of my own unnecessariness,
and I stood against the wall, trying to look
simultaneously nonviolent

and nonchalant, watching couples
slow dance in the female dark,
but feeling speechless, really,
as the first horse to meet the first
horseless carriage on a cobbled street.

That's why I noticed Mom,
whispering into the delicate
seashell ear of a brunette,
running a finger along
the shoreline of a tank top,

as if death had taught here finally
not to question what she wanted
and not to hesitate
in reaching out and taking it.

I want to figure out everything
right now, before I die,
but I admit that in the dark
(where a whole life can be mistaken) cavern of the bar
it took me one, maybe two big minutes

to find my footing
and to aim my antiquated glance
over the shoulder of the woman
pretending not to be my mother,
as if I were looking for someone else.








Here's a small little bit from me that I wrote last week while waiting for someone in a place featuring beautiful floral arrangements scattered all around.



a gift of love

flower
in a tall glass vase
dying








OK, that little piece really is too dark to be the closing poem for the week. Instead, let's do this - might be some fun.



the night I got chased out of Mexico

this
is a story
about the time
I got chased out of
Mexico
by a posse
of Mexican taxi cabs

I was a young guy
just old enough
to get a taxi license
and I was driving
cab
on the Texas side
of the border

I picked up a fare
outside
one of the hotels
who wanted
to go to Mexico
and I said
hell yes
cause it was about
35 miles
and at 35 cents
for the first mile
and 10 cents a mile
thereafter
it was a pretty good
pay-off
of which I'd get
a third
which never was
a helluv a lot
most nights
but better for a
trip
like this

so we headed out
down 281
for Matamoros
through Brownsville
and across the bridge
from where I knew
how to go two places
boys town
about which we
will speak no more
and the central plaza
which was close
to the mercado
and lots of good
nightclubs
good food
music
and floorshows
with sometimes
naked women
and that's where
the fella I was
carrying
wanted to go
so we went there
and I dropped
him off at the plaza
and while he paid me
I noticed all
the Mexican cabbies
giving me the eye
and I noticed
when I left
some of those
Mexican cabs
started following
behind
and then I noticed
I had ten to fifteen
Mexican cabs
riding my back
bumper
and I said to mysel
oh shit
I screwed up
and the way
they were following
close and honking
it looked pretty clear
that they were
pissed
about whatever
it was I did
so I took off
for the bridge
as fast as I could
trying to remember
as I flew
which of the many
one way streets
in Matamoros
were going my way
and which were going
to either get me lost
of back to the plaza
where more trouble
was sure to be
waiting
and when I reached
the bridge
I tossed my 8 cents
bridge toll
to the Mexican
border guard
without
hardly stopping

when I got back
my dispatcher
told me the rules -
cabs don't cross
borders
fares are dropped
at the bridge
where they can
walk across
and get a local
cab
so
I really felt dumb
and never did that
again
though one time
I did pick up a guy
at the bridge
who had been in
jail
in Matamoros
for three days
and was beat
all to shit
and bleeding and
barely conscious

I took him home
and dropped him off
at the hospital
and his friend
who had gone
to Matamoros
to get him out
of jail
and had ridden
back with him
gave me a $3
tip
which was pretty
good
for the time






Time to pull down the tent, rinse out the ice chest and head for home.

Until next week when we will return with more poets, more images, more.... I guess that's all, since that's only what we do.

As usual, "Here and Now" is owned and produced by me, allen itz. All material contained herein remains the property of its creators.

1 Comments:

at 10:46 AM  Alice Folkart said...

good stuff, Allen - but, where's the 'short, mean poem?' - flower in a vase? That's mean? You got my hopes up, and now, they're dashed!

But, thanks for the introduction to so many wonderful writers. And, super pictures too - really like the ladder.

Alice

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Shades of Summer's End   Saturday, September 15, 2007

09.03.07


Welcome back.

We can see the end of summer coming now, never too soon for a summerphobe like me.

I was working at my ocassional job the past couple of weeks, so haven't had time to troll through the on-line workshops for web poets to feature like I usually do. The consequence of that is you will see more of me in this issue than usual. Sorry.

But we do have a good line-up of other great poems for you to read. Here's the first.








It's hard to think of any better way to start this week, or any other week, then with a few lines from Walt Whitman. These particular lines are from Song of Myself, the poem written in 1855 which began the first edition of Leaves of Grass and was included at or near the first of every subsequent issue of Whitman's masterwork.



from Song of Myself


50
There is that in me - I do not know what it is - but I know it is in me.
Wrench'd and sweaty - calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep - I sleep long.
I do not know it - it is without name - it is a word unsaid.
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Sometimes it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death - it is form, union, plan - it is eternal life - it is
  Happiness.

51
The past and present wilt - I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself.
(I am large. I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slap.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his
  supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab
  and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound by barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back from me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.








I did this one last week. I'll bet Whitman never had this problem.



toast

it's done

it's
over

I've had this
itch
of a poem
in the back of my head
for a week, now,
and it won't come out,
won't
formulate itself
as black letters on white paper,
it just hangs back there
somewhere
right behind my left
ear,
taunting me,
with what a great poem
it would be
if I could just catch it
and write it
down

well,
enough of that

I put it to the test tonight,
sat here
for forty-five minutes
blank white screen in front of me,
waiting,
and nothing happened

that's it,
this poem is
toast









Time for some fun with Shel Silverstein. This is from A Light in the Attic published by Harper & Row in 1981.



Blame

I wrote such a beautiful book for you
'Bout rainbows and sunshine
And dreams that come true.
But the goat went and ate it
(You knew that he would).
So I wrote you another one
Fast as I could.
Of course it could never be
Nearly as great
As that beautiful book
That the silly goat ate.
So if you don't like
This new book I just wrote -
Blame it on the goat.








When we last read Blaise Cendrars a couple of weeks ago, he was in the south United States in a swamp he talked about in his poem Vomito Negro. (Which I looked up to discover it means exactly what it says, black vomit, an affliction of persons in the last stages of yellow fever. It is also the name of a rock band - can't you just wait to hear what they've got to sing about.)

We will finish his southern journey, happily out of the swamp lands, with three poems, all from the book Blaise Cendrars Collected Poems, translated by Ron Padgett and published by the University of California Press in 1992.



IV. Spanish Ruin

The nave is in the 18th century Spanish style
It is all cracked
The damp vault is white with saltpeter and still bars some traces of gold
  leaf
The lantern beams fall on a mildewed painting in the corner
It is a Black Madonna
Thick moss and poisonous striped dotted beaded mushrooms cover the
  stone floor of the sanctuary
There is also a bell with some Latin inscriptions


V. Golden Gate

The old grillwork provided a name for the establishment
Iron bars thick as a wrist which separate the drinkers from the counter
  where bottles of every kind of alcohol are lined up
Back when gold fever was at its height
When women from Chile or Mexico were auctioned off right and left
  by slave traders
All the bars had grillwork like this
And the bartenders came with a drink in one hand and a pistol in the
  other
It was not uncommon to see a man killed because of a drink
It's true the grillwork has been left there for show
Just the same the Chinese come in for drinks
Germans and Mexicans
And also a few Kanaks off little steamboats loaded with mother-of-pearl
  copra tortoise shell
Chanteuses
Atrocious makeup bank tellers outlaws sailors with huge hands


Vi. Oyster Bay

Canvas tent and bamboo chairs
Now and then on these deserted beaches you see a hut with a palm roof
  or the skiff of a Black Pearl diver

Now the country is completely different
As far as the eye can see
The beaches covered with shining sand
Two or three sharks are sporting in the wake of the yacht
Florida slips below the horizon
You take a golden Regalia from the ebony end table
You break it off with your fingernail
You light it voluptuously
Smoke smoke smoke smoke spirals away








Making his second appearance in "Here and Now" we turn now to another taste of San Antonio writer, Robert Soto.



Mute

Daylight burning, searching gray skies, never killed before. This time everything will be different in the mirror of my youth, but it never is. Scanning the horizons for definitions in my obstacles. Trapped behind well stocked bars always helped before, or at least that's what the company that I kept said. Black and white photos blur out the subtle shades of lacerated souls. Later, they become fire in front of a microphone recording the words I wanted to scream. All we heard were echoes anyway. Selected sobriety soften the pain of telling the truth to myself. Your strictest critic is your beating heart, counting down like a time bomb that doesn't explode, it just stops ticking. and I tally up all the people I just talked to but never really communicated with. But what's the point in counting when the numbers either go in circles or spiral out of sight. Weathered eyes weep with wanting, but learn not to look back. Sometimes taking the pain is better than numbing with addiction. Until pain becomes addicting that is. I'm at the opposite side of I-10, and interesting enough every thing's different now. Real change comes in being. Somewhere stillness bleeds under a street light. Everything you wish for is lost in traffic, the fog of life's rush hour. Cathedrals and street sweepers acted as alarm clocks rattling the walls of one room apartments. The waking sleep of days down the drain keep me up at night. If regrets came with mute buttons bars would close earlier.








Speaking of rants, here's a world champion rant by Audre Lorde. The poem might be a little stale since the subject of the rant is dead. But, since his death was no great loss to anyone we'll pretend, for the sake of the poem, that he's still alive.

The poem is from the anthology Making Callaloo, 25 Years of Black Literature published in 2002 by St. Martin's Press



Jessehelms

I am a Black woman
writing my way to the future
off a garbage scow knit from moral fiber
stuck together with jessehelms
come     where Art is a dirty word
scrawled on the wall
of Bilbo's memorial outhouse
and obscenity is catching
even I'd like to hear you scream
ream out your pussy
with my dildo called Nicaragua
ram Grenada up your fig hole
till Panama runs out of you
like Savimbi aflame.

But you prefer to do it
on the senate floor
with a sackfull of paper pricks
keeping time to the tune
of a 195 million dollar
military band
safe-sex dripping from your tongue
into avid senatorial ear-holes
later you'll get yours
behind the senate toilets
where they're waiting for you jessehelms
the white boy with their pendulous rules
bumping against the rear door of Europe
spread-eagled across the globe
their crystal balls poised over Africa
ass-up for old glory
your turn now jessehelms
come on     it's time
to lick the handwriting
off the walls.








Some years ago, I was appointed by a local judge to fill a vacancy on the County Child Welfare Board. It was a one year appointment, filling the unexpired term of a board member who had left. When the time came for reappointment to a full term, I declined. Too many children born into hell, living in hell and dying in hell, so much misery without there seeming to be any way to stop more than a small portion of it.

This poem by Paula Rankin reminds me of that experience. The poem is from Rankin's book Augers published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press in 1981.

For the Child Drowned in the Well of Black Water

Once I defined drowned childhood
by child starlets I saw on TV,
fame come upon them so early
that they believed all the fan mail,
pouted when on-the-set-private tutors
pushed multiplication tables,
pitched fits if off-stage mothers
fixed tuna for lunch

The day your mother brought you to me
she marked an X where her name should have filled
the blank granting permission for field trips,
Welcome, Teresa, come in, I said, offering a hub
you backed off from so fast
I saw the outstretched are
must speak differently to each of us.

You spoke to no one for months.
How many days I hid you in the bathroom
pinching nits from your hair, bathing you
in warm sink water, pinning a ribbon
in your strawed hair, easing what I could
of your smell of acrid, dried urine. You never spoke
but grinned, baring all your rotten teeth, knowing
that for one day, no one would shove his chair
away from you, no chants of "she stinks"
would machete the wax in your eardrum

When you finally talked
I found myself praying you wouldn't,
that I would miss some minimal bliss
of ignorance. You talked about fathers,
how yours walked in brand new every week, sometimes
two or three times in one day,
and that once a father who stayed a whole month
actually learned your name
and brought you a book of paper dolls
you still slept with, having never snipped
them from their backgrounds of slick whiteness.

My one hope was that you were a pathological
liar. But you weren't, and then how I needed
to teach you of other rooms
some people grow up to live in,
where supper is often tuna or a cheap grade
of ground beef, but doors are left open
for entries, exits, some approximation of love.

While all the other children were way beyond names,
could mimic Dog, Cat, Snake, any shape of holiday,
all you gave me were sheets filled with T's aimed
in all directions. All this high purpose of mine
failed so long ago that some nights I can barely
remember your face. I try not to ask
if you have a new collection of fathers
all of whom know you by name
for one night, and leave ten dollars
on the table for the privilege.
If so, I hate them most of all
because they use a name
you never wrote on a page where T's collided,

a page I still hold
in shaking hands as if fingers could braille
the secret of how you have come to be
whoever you are,
as if I could go to your mirror and stare
until glass melts into a well
of black water, where objects take turns
floating up to the surface - dolls, jump ropes,
skates, a grosgrain ribbon, a snag-tothed grin,
then plummet for their and final drowning.








Went through a couple of rain showers a couple of days ago, bringing me to this.



after the rain

I drove
in hard rain today,
twice,
each time for a distance
of only about a quarter mile
then back into bright sunshine

it was like that Dogpatch character
with that wonderful Al Capp name
I can't remember now,
carried his own rain cloud over his head
every where he went

I have days like that
but today wasn't one even with the rain
because as I drove out from under
each rain cloud
I was treated to a different kind of rainbow,
different
because they weren't bows at all
but a splash of color across the sky
in a straight line

I don't know what you'd call
something like that
but they were special and
made the day
a little special too








Next on our list of poems for this week is this piece by Alaskan meatcutter/office manager/poet Arlitia Jones. It's from her book The Bandsaw Riots published by Bear Star Press in 2001.



The Apologist

You never flinch when I come late to bed,
chill on my skin.
I slip in sneaky as a hound through a cracked
door to find you awake, waiting.

Under our quilt your body warms like a banked fire.
You're rubbing my arm
so I know you're listening, focused
as any man who works with his hands, patient
as an man who lives by his faith.

Do you remember telling me how
you set windmills in Nebraska?
You could hold two copper wires,
one in each hand, and pace the ground,
until you found the buried waterline.

When you stepped directly over it
the wires crossed of their own will.
I believe you now when you say you can do this,
witch water from the blind ground,
tap the pure stream running deep.

Your hand travels my hip and still
I'm talking it out.
Always something in me wants the world to be
different than it is: a level ground where,
the right tools in our hands,

we have the courage to use them, where together
we find the fountain-head
of what is possible, where the poem, written
for love, is the source of everything.








The next piece by James Laughlin is from an anthology of his work The Secret Room published by New Directions, a publishing house Laughlin founded in 1936 while still an undergraduate at Harvard. It is from a longer piece, Byways he was still working on when the book was published in 1996, one year before he died at age 83.



Doors

    (A divertimento from Byways)

I often find myself thinking about doors.
Open doors and closed doors. In our house
The back door is usually left open so that
Rupert, our dog, can get in or out
Without barking, or Allen, the hired man,
Can come in for a glass of water on a hot
Day, or when the UPS man comes in his
Truck with a package. But the front door
Is almost always locked. Uninvited
Visitors must ring the bell. This gives
Us time to peek out a window to see who
They are and whether we want to see them.
At night both doors are locked though
There has been no crime in our village
Within my memory, but you never know,
The way things are in this country now.

The house doors are really not very
Interesting. What's more important are
My internal doors: the door to my
Heart and the little trapdoor in the
Back of my brain in which poems
Come through.

My heart-door is like a revolving
Door, the kind you find at banks or
Big hotels. That door has been
Revolving steadily for nearly
Sixty years. It opened first when
Verna, the little girl who lived
Next door, pulled me into the woods
and let me play with her nipples.

Since then my heart-door has been
Almost constantly revolving. This
May sound unfeeling but I can no
Longer recall all the pretty ones,
And some not so pretty, who have
Set that door to swinging, around
And around.

Because there's usually a surviving
Scrap of paper with a poem, or part
Of a poem on it, I find it easier
To keep track of the movements of
The secret brain-door in my head.
It doesn't revolve. It's like a
Trapdoor that works up and down.
It's not very large, a mouse could
Barely get through it.

The first time it opened was when
I was about thirteen, my first year
At boarding school. The door opened
And out came a rhymed sailor's chantey,
As subject I'd copied from John Masefield,
Who was then poet laureate in England.
With pride I took to to my teacher,
Mr. Briggs. He read it quickly and
Tore it up. "Young man," he said,
"This isn't poetry, it's just verse."
The door in my brain snapped shut.

Since then the brain-door must
Have opened a hundred times.
Mr. Briggs is long dead but I can
Still see his eyes glaring at me
And hear his barked rebuke. Open
And shut, open and shut. Time
After time it's only verse. That
Little door is my guillotine.


Laughlin also did a lot of wonderful little short pieces, especially as he grew long in age. Before we leave him, here's one.


The Calendar of Fame

"Farewell, farewell, my beloved hands"
Said Rachmanioff on his deathbed:
And Joseph Hofmann, the great pianist,
Invented the windshield wiper
From watching his metronome.
Genius that I am, all I can do
Is hit the wrong keys on my typewriter.








With the music Johnny Cash made in the last ten years of his life, he transcended all musical genres. If if ever felt the need to describe to someone the essence of the country I grew up in, the one that seems so diminished now, I'd just point that person to those recordings. I have them all and listen to them frequently. That's what led me to this.



listening to Johnny Cash

makes me believe,
not in god,
I am too much
a rationalist
for that,
but in the possibility
of an alternate
universe,
seen through
his eyes
created through
his faith,
where god is present
and accounted for
in the lives
of people
like you and me

if I was picking
gods
I'd want the one johnny cash
talked to
in his songs








The next poem is by Brian Blanchfield from his book Not Even Then, published by The University of California Press in 2004.



The Weremen

When Mister Ya
cried in my hands
great tears as new as mine,
but like a doll's too.
Joseph Rock, the botanist,
who made Lijiang his base
for expeditions in 1922,
a magazine's man in China,
who for twelve years
hired four coolies a day
to carry his makeshift divan,
who wrote it off
and sent the Smithsonian
thousands of specimens of
shrubs and even orioles,
which mean love, who dressed
in white, which meant death,
always, and had personally
seen blue sheep in Tibet,
had personally taught
him his first english.
My name translates into a word
that means blue, but
it's only phonetic.
By virtue of his brushwork
and knowledge of the classics,
Teacher Ya headmastered
the village's school
and lost fourteen years
of prison's worth of mind.
In ten days, I could not freely
remember why I was not
whom he was sure of.
He showed me Rock's old pliers
and started me on two primers
of the Na Xi dialect, inscribed
to Student Blue. In earnest,
lessons into the chirping night
kept me. Like Zhuang zi, was I
one butterfly's worth of man.
I remember I had a shameful
wet dream in the cinderblock
hostel about lying about
pressing against a wall others
peed on, and stomach pains.
Then, earlier always
than I, was Ya at the door
with magnesium tea and
instructions for going
up a mountain,
where, at what possible time
of day! only the underbellies
of leaves were lit in an ardor
every green begins to mean,
and for coming down to find him
who shone at the bottom,
whose elbow I learned to hold
through town a pace behind,
whose students' children gave us
persimmons they had grown
for his moving past, but whispered,
whose white moons in water
under branches on rice paper
were political in ways
I do not feel as Chinese
feel. Anew, his tears. And in those
full, occluded moons
I struggle personally to find
the sky under which I
was a white man waving
which meant leaving him,
unconvinced of the end,
even of the poem I'd not slept
to write against the hostel desk.
It scared me to teach it.
I was as old as he was
when Rock left to die - far off,
at home. With gardens in his name








The Senator from Idaho got a lot of people thinking about a lot of things a couple of weeks ago. Here's my drift on the subject.



the senator

the senator
exposed himself,
the self
he kept hidden
from everyone he knows,
the self
he let live and breath
only among strangers
and the echoing tiles
of public restrooms

how sad
it is to live
an incomplete man,
concealing a hidden life
from family
and even from closest friends,
denouncing the life
in others
you must always deny
in yourself

the senator
exposed himself
and was ashamed,
and it is in that shame
where lies
the the tragedy
of his life









This next bit by Stephen Berg is hard to describe. It is from Berg's book Porno Diva Numero Uno.

The book is an internal monologue made up of 36 numbered pieces that, read consecutively, form a narrative inspired by an imaginary encounter with the artist Marcel Duchamp. Sometimes the text speaks to Duchamp, sometimes it speaks in Duchamp's vice.

Each of the pieces can also be read separately as a kind of excerpted moment in the monologue. The pieces are dense, poetic and often startling in imagery and (a warning) language. It is not work lightly read.

I'm an art illiterate, so my knowledge of Duchamp's work is mostly limited to the painting used to good effect in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair (much better than the original in my opinion) and even there, though I'm sure that was a Duchamp, I wouldn't bet more than maybe $20 that I'm right.

This particular piece of the monologue concerns another Duchamp painting, The Bride Stripped Bare with a scene (seen through a peephole) of woman, headless and naked, lying legs spread on a bed of twigs.

(I should add that the first word of this section, "cure," stands on its own and is not a continuation from the earlier section.)


33a

cure...finally he admitted that the light-on-light theme could
be seen as the entrance to hell as in Kafka's "We human beings
ought to stand before one another as reverently as lovingly as
we would before the entrance to Hell." after all it is you stand-
ing there in full possession of your powers abandoned mobile
and her abandoned perhaps even slain vulnerable if only to your
gaze which she cannot see motionless into eternity although
snapshots of all the paraphernalia the makeshift boards wire
nails bulbs and other shit behind it is a lesson in creation I have
heard those who feel she is a religious figure caught in an atti-
tude of prayer of course this goes unrecognized beseeching all
and everyone completely given over to her task of waiting sur-
render like St. Teresa inviting God into her her task of mystic
affliction which seems to use the epitome of possible pleasure
disgust whereas she is in another world of her own we fail to
realize as ours fail to share standing there seeking what she has
already found I think see what we interpret and fail to see her
condition of easy rapture we look at her release and are aware
of our attitude of high-minded scrutiny and recoiling surprise
the word fuck scrawled across our ideals subway graffiti follow-
ing her right leg up into the cunthole then fairly sharp right
along the other leg up ben