The Grand Marquis Coterie: Home of the Hits
One banana, two banana.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Poem in the Middle of the Afternoon
so I open the window to my bedroom
and feed a pigeon named Rex, “a flying rat,”
as my octogenarian neighbor calls it,
and yell to the super down in the courtyard
that the actress I am seeing,
a leggy, toothsome brunette from Estonia,
or perhaps the former Czechoslovakia,
I don’t remember which one, exactly,
because maps are confusing to read and borders
are always redrawn to suit the wishes of military
strongmen anyhow, has asked me
to marry her, even though we’ve never
met in real life, as the kids like to say—
just in the pages of the local celebrity
magazine, each new edition of which I keep
in a locked, lead box under my bed
in the event that I miss her and feel the need
to rub my face with a picture of her
at the Oscars or a charity golf game,
even though I don’t particularly like popular films,
and despite the truth that golf is meant
as a leisure activity for the bourgeoisie. My super,
who goes by “Papi” or “San Isidro,” depending
on the weather forecast, yells something
in Spanish (Quechua?) so twisted it sounds
like he’s repeating a recipe, one which does not
call for capers, despite my fondness for them
and for exotic tastes in general. As a way of saying
thanks, I call him a “son of a bitch” and an “asshole,”
because this is how men in New York behave,
even when there is nothing to be angry about;
“such are the vagaries of language and the human
spirit,” I add in the event that he expects a healthy
tip, during Christmastime, for his efforts. I then close
the window, making sure Rex remains on the ledge,
and later wonder, while sitting in an E-Z chair,
what to make of this American malaise.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
It's a Plath Christmas
I Want, I Want
Open-mouthed, the baby god
Immense, bald, though baby-headed,
Cried out for the mother's dug.
The dry volcanoes cracked and split,
Sand abraded the milkless lip.
Cried then for the father's blood
Who set wasp, wolf and shark to work,
Engineered the gannet's beak.
Dry-eyed, the inveterate patriarch
Raised his men of skin and bone,
Barbs on the crown of gilded wire,
Thorns on the bloody rose-stem.
--Sylvia Plath
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Knock, knock. Come in, Old Man Winter.
The Snowman
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
--Wallace Stevens
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Sudden Death
1. Miami Horror - "Sometimes" - [Caroline]
2. Tortoise - "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In" - [Thrill Jockey]
3. Fucked Up - "Police" - [Deranged]
4. Basement Jaxx - "My Turn" - [Ultra]
5. Panthers - "Panther Moderns" - [Vice]
6. Jim O'Rourke - The Visitor - [Drag City]
7. Wilco - "Solitaire" - [Nonesuch]
8. Mariachi El Bronx - "Cell Mates" - [Swami]
9. The Aggrolites - "Mister Misery" - [Hellcat]
10. Grizzly Bear - "Two Weeks" - [Warp]
Italics denotes full album. All noise, surface or otherwise, is intentional.
[D | R]
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The Other Side.
Earlier this evening, as I was coming in with my laundry, I heard her say, to me I think, "They want to kill my mother." Like so many things I ignore about New York, I pretended not to hear a damn thing.