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I
could’ve sworn there was something I needed to tell you
but now I only feel my
face and neck burning in the tumult of a
bright sunlit afternoon I’m wearing a t-shirt and jeans, not a suit and
tie, and nobody seems to care that it’s green-y late
April, all
of them sleeping through my lecture on Spring That’s also when I realize that the motorcycle
cop, up fast behind me on my way to work this
morning, was a bad omen
After that, even James Schuyler couldn’t save the day “His poems,” I said, “are beautiful and shy, full
as my eyes are
full of dogwood blossoms and fog-radio voices not catalytic converters and omelets for
breakfast (when simple scrambled
eggs will do)” “In a dream, I
loved a girl, but she exploded,” said my friend Scott Dennis,
“over and over
It was all very innocent, but how distraught it
made me” I have a feeling, and
this is me again speaking in the present, that I’m failing
vividly, or I’m not enough revelated, or I’m just
not The gloom inside me hits the sidewalk, as the shit hits the firmament (and
sticks there) I’m no ostrich I can take a punch
Mine is only one vision of paradise tossed, a
kind of asthmatic misery, a kind of aesthetic grimace-ry Welcome forbearance to the treehouse of
my disappearance, my delight in substance, my barrel of walls When my wallet falls out of my pocket, I have (I realize suddenly) a million and a half
things to lose but
not one of them is money, not one of them matters in the eyes of the world—I mean,
that is, if the
world even has eyes, which it doesn’t, or if the world has a clue, which it never will, and by
the world, there, I almost mean God Dear sir, I have a question, Do I sadden myself, or is it You in
charge Among the bad dreams of exploding true loves and bad omens of
lawmen and
amid reports of another teenager missing in Florida, another car bomb in Baghdad, these
words, a fragile construction, may in fact collapse on
my head at
any minute For Christ’s sake,
somebody
give us a break it’s
Spring * Elephant That the elephant’s
upon me is no accident. I’ve been wishing this
big game on myself for a long time,
reinforcing the floors, marking clearly the
exits. So come on out, Loxodonta africana/ Elephas
maximus, I know you’re in
here. What is it you want to talk about? Ponderous participles, clumsy quotations? I’ve been
putting you off for weeks, but now you’re too
much? Let the games begin. I’ve already told you
I’m terrible at anything that involves
strategic thinking. But did you know that in the Chinese
version of chess there’s a game-piece modeled on you? I can’t remember whether it’s the knight or the
rook, but sometimes it runs amok across the board trampling
everyone, including the royal family and
the human cannonball. Anyway, I’m
sorry. You’d be better off playing the poachers. At least they engage the text and con- jugate correctly. If you want to find them they’re over in that
white space just off to the left. Today they’re
disguised as crows, tomorrow gazelles or delirium tremens. People say elephants never forget—is this
true? I don’t forget much either, and I believe
everything I hear, to boot. But with
you is remembering always
knowing how to walk tail-in-trunk with your fellows in a
circle, or do specific instances pop uncontrollably
into your head, like having giant ears as a kid and
being called Dumbo, or the night your mother
sacrificed herself so that you could
escape from the fire? Hey, Elephant, are you still with
me? You might as well keep staying at my
place. At least here you’re safe from predators, and no
poacher, even out of his mind, would expect to find
you living in a row house in inner city
Ohio. You like it here don’t you? With your view of the
skyline. With your tusks in their place. Elephant, my little secret, you aren’t even pink. Thank you for
coming to my party. * To
the People Who Know Me Better, Let Me Say in My Defense I am of the mind and then sadly insufficient. I am of the gut and then glued to a wall. Or plastered like news to the bottom of a birdcage, I am the shadows of things in space. There are no more birds. The sky is a big holy mouth. I am of the testicles. As a result something swims for its life and expires. But before that it cries in a garden under water. Everywhere there are other crying, swimming things and beautiful flowers, simmering. There are no more birds. My bone has some meat on it. The dog dotes. The cat takes a bath. She is what I call Disinterested. Disinterested, come and get it. Disinterested, have a treat. The ball- of-yarn cliché is Disinterested’s favorite. I am my own dish rag. I am my own bent spoon. I am of the nostrils and as a result often get sucked into mazes. Monsters attack me, and always it amazes, but always I prevail, for I am of Disinterested’s ball-of-confusion
cliché, and I do creep. For I can swim against the wood grain, for I can cry myself to exhaustion under the stars, and, fact of all facts, for I have done nothing wrong. I am of the bed sheets, the rabbit hole, the sewer hole, the Epsom Salts. My bones become the dogs of disinterest. Two blue feathers are all I have left. When I hurt it’s bad, but when my love hurts it’s worse, almost a hearse-hurt. I take a new breath and give it to her. She would do the same for me. In this way, we rely on one another. But in other ways, we are of the difference. Sometimes between us there is friction in the kitchen, and thus we roast a sea bass or thus we cook a stew. Sometimes we make our friction into what she said and what I didn’t say. Always there are words: I am of the heart, the kind with wings, the inefficient splattered kind, the heart with its agenda bringing prescriptions to the world, the heart with its notions about new kinds of birds and yanking those wisdom teeth out. I am of the toy chest, treasure chest, amplifier, ear drum… Listen. Okay. I have a key to a door in the Bahamas. I have a makeshift water lily in a glass. You can look at my chassis and I will look at your under
carriage, and everything will be alright. Everybody needs adjustment sometimes: Twist these hairs for lightning. Tighten this hinge for love. In the end— is it the end? I am of the sincerest apologies and best wishes always, also pronouncements unbelievable and long and disagreeables living in the same parking lot, like a litter of squirmy new kittens and a hearse. Disinterested isn’t a fan of my kittens, but I will defend them at all costs. For I am of the mind that belief is better than the heavy truth of cream— and then I change my mind. I am of a new sort, one that hasn’t even been invented yet, one that will cover the dance floor and one that will sing in the surf. I am pleading with the surf to respond in kind. I am pleading with the dance floor to commit. In the end— is it the end? No, it’s only the sentimental fadeout, and I am very new to this sort of demonstration— how to dust a
landscape, how to build a q-tip. how to be of the world outside and also of this one I found in a drawer. You who know better, know more, how to do this correctly, and how to undo it perfectly, how to go about it in history, what measures to take. Write me about anything. The sky is full of
words. I am awaiting your reply. ** Matt
Hart is a co-founder and editor of Forklift Ohio: A Journal of Poetry,
Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety. His work has appeared or is forthcoming
in The Butcher Shop, The Canary, and Ploughshares, among other
journals, and can be seen in such online journals as Diagram, H_NGM_N,
and Typo. A chapbook of his work, Revelated, was just published
this Fall by Hollyridge Press. His first full-length book of poems, Who's
Who Vivid, is forthcoming from Slope Editions. He teaches writing and
aesthetics at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Archived
at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/hartm_poems.htm |
