Catalonian Crustaceans

Hemingway Dines on Boiled Shrimp and Beer

I'm the original two-hearted brawler.
I gnaw the scrawny heads from prawns,
pummel those mute, translucent crustaceans,
wingless hummingbirds, salt-water spawned.
As the Catalonians do, I eat the eyes at once.
My brawny palms flatten their mainstays.
I pop the shells with my thumbs, then crunch.

Just watch me as I swagger and sprawl,
spice-mad and sated, then dabble in lager
before I go strolling for stronger waters
down to Sloppy Joe's. My stride as I stagger
shivers the islands, my fingers troll a thousand keys.
My appetite shakes the rock of the nation.
The force of my fiction makes the mighty Gulf Stream.

Excerpted from FLORIDA POEMS © Copyright 2002 by Campbell McGrath.

Sixty years ago today...

Almost, almost spring

Barking Dogs in the Snow

Barking dogs in the snow! Good weather is coming!
Good weather is coming to barking dogs in the snow.
A man changes only slowly. And winter is not yet past.
Bark, dogs, and fill the valleys
Of white with your awful laments.

--Kenneth Koch

Toy George

His plane is gone!
He left it right here
on a red suitcase!
Where could his toy plane have gone?

Come on George! It’s boarding time!

George thought
if he could only
find that suitcase…
Whoohoohoohehahawah

Our plane is taking off in ten minutes!

One important rule of travel:
if you’re on a moving sidewalk
make sure you’re going the right way
or you won’t go anywhere.

Finally Hawaii!

It was just like a carousel. Except
it had suitcases. Not just any suitcases.
The red suitcase. Luggage got to have
all the fun. Maybe it was a monkey mover.

Our plane might be cancelled!

Would the parent or guardian
of a little lost money please
report to the information desk
again?

Whatever you do, don’t go anywhere.

What are you doing here? You should be
on the animal loading area.
Where’s your crate? You have a ticket?
Enjoy your flight George!

Do you have any bananas on this flight?

Oh hello there. Do you remember me?
From the line? Whoohoohoohehahawah
You left this on my suitcase!

George wants to know everything.
We bet you do too.


p.s. This is what I’m doing on my spring break…watching cartoons.

"No, it's EYE-gor."

Hello! Would you like a roll in ze hay?

Roll in ze hay! Roll in ze hay!

Notes on the People We Love

Breaking News:

1. Word on the blogosphere (such an ugly word) has it that Elaine Equi's poem, "Etudes," has been selected for inclusion in Best American Poetry 2007. This appearance marks her fourth (if I'm counting correctly) in the series. The poem was first published in the second issue of The Tiny, the literary journal edited by Gina Meyers and Gabriella Torres.

Etudes

Autumn is a solitude.

Winter is a fortitude.

Spring is an altitude.

Summer is an attitude.

Summer is a multitude.

Autumn is an aptitude.

Winter is a quaalude.

Spring is a prelude.

Spring is a lassitude.

Summer is a longitude.

Autumn is a gratitude.

Winter is an interlude.

Winter is a beatitude.

Spring is a platitude.

Summer is a verisimilitude.

Autumn is a semi-nude.

2. The Seattle Times has written a story about AK Allin and her experiences as "The Poetess of Green Lake."

Congratulations to both Elaine and Mimi.

Links:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003591052_poetess27m.html

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-havent-always-read-elaine-equis.html *

*Ron Silliman on Elaine Equi

Bowling a-Go-Go

Last night at Leisure Time Bowl, hidden deep within the bowels of the Port Authority (actually, it was on the 2nd Floor), certain members of the Grand Marquis Coterie gathered to push pink bowling balls down a smoothed-out surface for the expressed purpose of well, I really don't know.

The highlights:

Category A member Modigliani (employing the pseudonym "Chachhhhhhhhhhhhhi") got out of the gates pretty fast, notching a couple of strikes and clearing pins as though she had just spent the last week on the Ladies' Professional Bowlers Tour. Make no mistake about it: Modigliani is a total mercenary in multi-colored, yet very tasteful, bowling shoes.

Category A member Rivera, christened with the nickname "Da Fonz" (what else could it possibly be?) looked especially cute.

Category A member Lothes, after protesting the nickname blessed upon her ("My Humps"), played well enough to maintain second place for most of the match; however, her level of play dropped during the most critical of frames, and ended up in third place.

Unfortunately, no member managed to break the 100-point barrier, which could only mean that Modigliani, Lothes, and Rivera were all severely inebriated, or that they simply have no athletic talent to speak of.

The scores, kind sir:

Chachhhhhhhhhhhhhi: 97
Da Fonz: 86
My Humps: 84

The Pretty Redhead

Behold me before all a man of good sense
Knowing life and death what a living man can know
Having experienced the griefs and the joys of love
Having been able to assert his ideas on occasion
Knowing several languages
Having travelled a good bit
Having seen the war in the Artillery and Infantry
Wounded in the head trepanned under chloroform
Having lost his best friends in that frightful struggle
I know of the old and of the new as much as one man alone can know of them
And without being uneasy today about this war
Between us and for us my friends
I pronounce judgment on this long quarrel of tradition and innovation
Of Order and Adventure

You whose mouths are made in the image of God's
Mouths which are order itself
Be indulgent when you compare us
To those who have been the perfection of order
We who seek everywhere for adventure
We are not your enemies
We wish to appropriate vast and strange domains
Where flowering mystery offers itself to whoever wishes to pick it
There are new fires there and colors never yet seen
A thousand imponderable phantasms
To which reality must be given
We would explore goodness a vast country where everything is silent
There is also time which one can banish or call back
Pity us who fight always in the front lines
Of the limitless and of the future
Pity our errors pity our sins

Behold the return of summer season of violence
And my youth died like the spring
O Sun it is the time for flaming Judgement

And I wait

To follow forever the sweet noble form
It assumes in order that I may love it alone
It comes and it attracts me as a magnet does the needle

It looks for all the world like
My redhead darling my beloved

Her hair is really gold you'd say
A flash of lightning which endures
Or flames which dance a proud pavane
In roses as they slowly fade

But laugh laugh long at me
Men from everywhere above all men of this place
For there are so many things I dare not tell you
So many things you will not let me say
Have pity on me


--Guillaume Apollinaire (translated by Michael Benedikt)

Haiku by Shirao

The First Day of the Year;
Under the protection of a big tree,
People’s hearts are at rest.

The long chin performer!
It is New Year's Day!

The sound of a flute,
On a moonlit night
of mid-January.

Already in February!
Scattered soot
in my kitchen.

A rainy night
Of the Doll’s Festival;
Only the smell of candles.

The spring wind;
A hire hand
Is scattering ash.

Yearning fills my heart
When the candles are lit;
Cherry blossom fall.

A butterfly
Is floating
Above the cleaned up sink.

Calamus bath water:
Leaves of the calamus coming
Close to my nipple.

Making a sound,
The camellia fell
On the tatami mat.

In the dark garden
Of the night,
The peony remains quiet.

Among the grasses
Of passing autumn,
the stream hides itself.

To the setting sun
The scarecrow's face
Is indifferent.


*The Doll's Festival is an annual event for girls held on March 3, when people wish little girls will be happy and grow healthily.

*Japanese would often take a bath with leaves of a calamus floated on bath water on May 5, the day of the Boy's Festival, so as to exercise a kind of exorcism.

"Who's On First?"

In honor of the arrival of yet another Spring Training in Major League Baseball (Yankees' pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report today at Legends Field in Tampa), here is a poem by Donald Hall called "Ninth Inning," from his series, "Baseball."

P.S. Play close attention to this fifth stanza, which reveals not a little bit about the new poet laureate's thoughts on writing programs (such as the one in which we found ourselves).

(This piece was originally published in AGNI [issue 36], and followed in the full-length book, The Museum of Clear Ideas.)

The Ninth Inning by Donald Hall 1. My dog and I drive five miles every morning to get the newspaper. How else do I find out, when the Sox trade Smoky Joe Wood for Elizabeth Bishop? He needs persistent demonstration of love and approval. He cocks his head making earnest pathetic sounds. Although I praise his nobility of soul, he is inconsolable 2. when I lift my hand from his ear to shift: Even so, after the reading, the stranger nods, simpers, and offers to share his poems with me. Dean Gratt confided, at the annual Death and Retirement Gala: “Professor McCormick has not changed: A Volvo is just a Subaru with tenure.” Catchers grow old catching, which is strange 3. because they squat so much. “The barn is burning, O, the barn is burning on the hill; the cattle low and blunder in their stalls; the horses scream and hurl their burning manes.” Jennifer remains melancholic. Do you start to feel, Kurt, as if you’re getting it? I mean baseball, as in the generations of old players hanging on, the young 4. coming up from Triple A the first of September, sitting on the bench or pinch-running, ready for winter’s snow-plowing and cement-mixing, while older fellows work out in their gyms or cellars, like George “Shotgun’’ Shuba who swung a bat against a tethered ball one thousand times a day, line-drives underneath his suburban ranchhouse. 5. By 2028, when K. C. turned one-hundred, eighty-three percent of American undergraduates majored in creative writing, more folks had MFA’s than VCR’s, and poetry had passed acrylic in the GNP. The NEA offered fellowships for destroying manuscripts and agreeing: “Never 6. to publish anything jagged on the right side of the page, or ever described as ‘prose poems.’” Guerillas armed with Word Perfect holed in abstract redoubts. Chief-of-Staff Vendler mustered security forces (say: Death Squads) while she issued comforting reports nightly on lyric television. Hideous shepherds sing to their flocks 7. under howling houses of the dog. At the Temple Medical Center in New Haven I wait. My mother at eighty-six goes through the Upper and Lower GI again. My mind jangles, thinking of my sick son in New York and his sick one-year-old girl. This afternoon, if the X-rays go all right, I drive back to New Hampshire. 8. In New Hampshire, late August, the leaves turn slowly, like someone working to order—protesting, outraged—and fall as they must do. The pond water stays warm but the campers have departed. By the railroad goldenrod stiffens; asters begin a late pennant drive in front of the barn; pink hollyhocks wilt and sag like teams out of the race. 9. No Red Sox tonight, but on Friday a double-header with the Detroit Tigers, my terrible old team, worse than the Red Sox who beat the Yankees last night while my mother and I watched —the way we listened, fifty years back— sprightly ghosts playing in heavy snow on VHS 30 from Hartford, and the pitcher stared at the batter.

Edgy roll

oink

Many times you wake up/in February make-up...

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

--Pablo Neruda

:D

The Bridge

He paints
in big brown overalls
and thin leather boots
breasts that defy gravity.

The square house has rounded edges.

A monkey stands on his right shoulder,
her smile thin and wise beyond her years.

Mirror on bed frame reflects hand-painted
cast. Crutch and easel.

There are no lemons in Mexico.

The monkey grins in the background, knowing
yet naive. Soon, even she is subject
to silent betrayal.

Somewhere in the courtyard a baby is crying
in Spanish. He is locked out of a room.

A steep blue staircase leads to a narrow
bridge, where a glittered star plunges.

The piñata is swollen and empty.
My only loyalty is to my monkey, he said.

The hallway leads to the bathtub,
where she lay, blood running down her
feet. You can still see the red on white tile.

It is a beautiful painting.

The melons are ripe and cut in half.
The cord is still connected.
The needle is piercing heaven.

Viva la Vida is the title.

A bee is circling las bugambilias,
aged by the dust and altitude.

He is still eating sour cherries,
still missing his mujer.

casa banana

like fiddlehead ferns
smoke incense
snakes out of bottle

Coca Cola glass
curls, spiral
of the mosquito

open-air white sheets
hang sheer funk
on the coconuts

Fifty Years Later...

I meant to post this yesterday on the actual anniversary of the date in the second line of the poem, but alas I was mightily distracted.

Allen Ginsberg

America

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

I feel like you're denying a piece of me...

(Specifically the cowlick over my right eye.)

All is (becoming) well in Ohio. I miss you guys. Cheers.

Donde esta el bano?

Well kids, I'm off to Mexico with an expired passport and a camera in my pocket. I'm gone Jan 8-22 to mexico city, oaxaca and the caribbean coast (including 5 nights in a secluded eco-retreat beachfront cabana in Tulum) and cozumel. It was a bitch to plan (I read 10 different guide books that all had different info), but it's all set. I will bring you back some very nice wares. And if I dont come back, Believe me, I loved you all...
I hope everyone is having a happy and hedonistic new year. Hasta luego!,
LM