Floor

When I had had enough of staring at the poet reading I stared at the books and when I had had enough of staring at the books I stared at the nifty bookshelves and the chocolate walls and the ceiling with its six hanging lamps and when I had had enough of staring at all that I stared at the floor. It was a most familiar floor. Not that I had never been in the bookstore before, I hadn’t, though I had been in the owner’s previous store, just around the corner, which was almost identical, with the same nifty shelving, only less of it, the same books, only fewer, the same implacable walls and high ceiling, though narrower, the same place all in all, only smaller. But I hadn’t noticed the floor there or if I had I didn’t remember. I hadn’t made a note of it or if I had I hadn't re-read it or referred to it or used it in any way or if I had I didn’t remember like I remember the neat marquetry of College Building 302 which I attempted to describe in writing, unsuccessfully, for twenty minutes during a night class two years ago; or the wide planks of my Victorian house, which I haven’t written about till now because it is the crevices between them, loaded with the debris of three centuries, which command my interest both in terms of what I excavate (dirt, crumbs, pins) and what I insert (rope, pencils and perhaps myself some day). By contrast, this floor was dull—grey-brown as opposed to the flaming orange of my floors at home. It was a sealed floor, though not with stain, with time. The grain bit down, as uncompromising as the walls. It was not polished but seemed clean. An old clean. The planks (I could imagine them being swept, I could imagine that regularly happening, I could imagine being the person sweeping, I could imagine being the broom, but this floor came from before sweeping, for me anyway, from when sweeping, though I was barely aware of it, would have been done by women who were not my mother, or women in black habits with their peripheral vision blocked by coifs or wimples or similar apparati with elusive names, women who could not be anybody’s mother) of this floor were neatly fitted, this floor was all of a piece, in a sense, there was not a huge difference between plank and next plank, there was no grand canyon of accumulated debris to breach, the floor was a flat floor with no rift valleys. This was the floor of an early classroom, when I was 4 and 5, and my eyes moved between floor and desk, which was more floor, and supply cupboard, which was recessed floor, and teacher’s table which was more floor too. Not when I was 6, because that year we had a new classroom and the colors were lighter and we were raised up. But maybe the floor of a classroom in a second school, when I was 7, 8, 9, a floor that stretched out into more floors and halls, transfixed in an amber of motes and polish, in another country, where schools still had windows, even if high up. That floor. So strange to see it again here.

Uncoupling

The husband was thinking of moving on. The wife didn’t know yet. He was unhappy. He tossed and turned in their East Village walkup. It was just all so stifling. The big old labradoodle and the adorable funky children and the smart and successful wife. It wasn’t the life he envisaged for himself. Or rather it was and then it wasn’t. He longed for a quiet professorship, in the Midwest perhaps, but in a very small town. He could live out his decades there, happily, move on to his next life. The reality of this one had broken down. But the wife still laughed her throaty intellectual laugh, planted kisses all round, embarked in her schooner, unaware of the dreams and frustrations of her kayaking husband, who waited for the first eddy, establishing momentum to turn.

The Men

The men stand outside the Dunkin Donuts Center on a cold sunny November morning. They stand in their shirt sleeves, skirted by wall, at the top of a broad sweep of steps. They are smoking and talking. Like men in church porches. Men in dark suits of indiscriminate fit. The pungent smell of damp and rain. Their loose knot slips further to let me pass. The church by the sea in Kincasslagh. Holding its secret of ordinariness etched in the astringent sublime.

Food + Money + Poetry

Most of the money I make goes on food. Yes there’s college. And the mortgage. And utilities. And everything else. But mostly it’s food. The Holidays are big of course. You know the ones, in the Winter, I don’t have to spell it out. They’re monstrous but mostly it's everyday stuff. Rice. Beans. Rice and beans. Pasta. Pasta and rice and beans. Pasta with sauce. I don’t even go out. Why do poets not write about this? Surely they think about it? Like along with thinking about Mad Men, Wittgenstein, and the hideous forced air heating system. Well how do you write about poetry and food, poetry and money? Say, how much food could you buy with all the money you earned from poetry? Why, I’d say we could live … more than a year on that, not eating out of course. Eating at home, the two or three of us, nutritiously, virtually meat-free (except for you know The Holidays), lots of beans and rice and pasta. Lots of apples and cheap wine. At least a year. Who knows ha ha ha maybe two.

The Middle Book

Readers expect a little more these days. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I say Web 2.0 leads us to expect a little more. Like I ordered a book from Amazon the other day. It arrived. But I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for in it. I skimmed through it. It was fine. But not exact. Not precise. I couldn’t find the name of the person I was thinking of (it was a book about bullying, I wanted to see the name of my bully there). In the old days you could turn a book upside down and all manner of things would fall out: pressed flowers, memorial cards, receipts. Nowadays you don’t get that and you don’t get Google either. It’s a lose lose situation. Oh I suppose you could write the names in. But that seems so retrograde. A bit of interactivity doesn’t seem too much to ask and I don't mean pencils. I want to hold the book upside down and shake tiny friends out of it. I want to reach into it for understanding and a hug. I want color—shiny icons up and down the margins and in banners across the top and bottom of the page. I want Facebook. Actually pencils aren't such a bad idea—I want a pen of light to write illuminated marginalia and have the authors write right back. I want paragraphs to shimmy like jelly as they dissolve and reform. I want something to do while reading—or at least more reading while reading please.

DAISY

So this yellow school bus driver puts a white daisy on every seat of the bus first day of school. A white daisy with a sparking white head and a furry curved long green stem. Some kids had never seen a flower except on TV. I mean what was he thinking. He was the sort of guy who’d wash the bus himself rather than have it grimy for the kids. So of course one kid ate the flower. No breakfast. And was sick as hell by the time he arrived in school. The driver was fired of course. Asshole.

DAISY

So this yellow school bus driver puts a white daisy on every seat of the bus first day of school. A white daisy with a sparking white head and a furry curved long green stem. Some kids had never seen a flower except on TV. I mean what was she thinking. She was the kind who’d wash the bus herself rather than have it grimy for the kids. So of course one kid ate the flower. No breakfast. And was sick as hell by the time he arrived in school. The driver was fired of course. Stupid bitch.

Family Man

Many men, though they have children, do not have the experience of fending for their family, keeping a roof over their heads, putting bread on the table, bringing home the bacon, etc.

They may not know their children, may not care for them, may care for them but not care for them, if you know what I mean, may be incarcerated, elsewhere, oblivious, incapacitated, unable, unwilling, careless, absent or removed due to sundry other conditions. It’s quite common for men not to care for their children.

I am more man than they are in this respect, carrying on in the tradition of my father before me, though not his father before him.

Comfort

When they moved to the new country, who can blame them if they took their names with them, or sought out places with those names? If they were in wide open spaces, clearly they were free to snatch names out of thin air, or memory, or religion, just as they snatched cabins, or farms, or families. They could invent or they could duplicate.

And who can deny the power of comfort in a familiar name, like a too thin sheet, but just about sufficient. The name itself would give rise to the bed, in time, and the room, and the walls, and the roof.

In the cities, the names were set. There was not that freedom to name. In a small town, perhaps, a group of influential townspeople could assemble and vote to name, or change a name. Thus did a town that wanted a university become Oxford. But in a city, it could take a lifetime to acquire the status to name anything but your own child.

People sought out addresses that were ready-made. Sometimes they had to hunt for a very long time. There were those who wanted not only the street but the right number too. That took longer. But the solace derived was considerable. If your sister lived at 11 Pleasant Street in Xantia say, it could be terrifically comforting to live at 11 Pleasant Street in Zumtia, even in a shabby part of town. You would never want to move.

But there were complications. What if your sister visited? Would there be embarrassment, however slight? And what if your sister moved? Imagine the phonecall? The tight anxiety at the news. The sickening information. Oh to Jellyoppity Street. And what number would that be? 279½? Oh, that’s unusual. You feel your heart freeze solid in your chest....

We don’t take cabs

The family visited their daughter in New York. They walked all over the city. Uptown. Downtown. Midtown. West Side. East Side. Central Park. It began to rain very heavily. The sky darkened and locked. There was thunder and lightning and pelting rain. The sidewalks were wiped of people like a Powerpoint transition. Everyone huddled under awnings and overhangs and store entrances. The streets ran like rivers and yellow cabs sluiced water up over the sidewalks almost to the walls. The family pressed themselves into a doorway taking the least amount of space without actually touching. Suddenly the daughter leapt out and hailed a cab. It stopped and she hustled the family in. Next minute everyone, scattered with diamonds of rain, was wedged shoulder-to-shoulder in the cab. There was an awkward silence. Then, We don’t take cabs, someone ventured. I know, said the daughter. But that rain. And I thought …. Everyone sat tight-lipped, hurtling through Manhattan under the slicing rain.

CIJITQBIRCTAAIJDTIWTTAERNA

(handy acronym)

Programmable Thermostat

I'm hot.
I turn the heat down.
Now I'm cold.
I turn the heat up.
We're going out.
I turn the heat down.
We're back.
I turn the heat up.
We're off to bed.
I turn the heat off.
It's 6am.
I turn the heat on so it's warm
when Clio gets up.

Google

I am not
a Divine Being.
I have help
w/ these poems.

Carrot

I opt for more sleep
                                       + the Muse dangles
                              a readymade poem
                     in front of my face.

Then the snooze button kicks in.

Bunch of Carrots

3 more
+ i'm wide-
awake

Jobs where you sit, stand, or walk

A graphic designer would stand a good deal at a high table in the old days but would be more inclined to sit at a desk with a computer now. The furniture would still be quite good, or at least tasteful though it would be less likely now there would be drifts of paper on the ground.

A teacher stands quite a lot, and walks, and can sit too though not so frequently as before, and probably walks less too, now, within the classroom but may walk a certain amount without, so to speak, especially at college level, from room to room, to meetings, between buildings, to the car parked afar, etc.

A shoe salesperson stands behind a counter, or stretches to get high boxes, or stoops to measure feet or feel the space between the big toe & the tip (to make sure there is enough room).

A sailor rolls with the sea & heaves rope onto docks & hauls it away again.

A doctor can be any height (within reason) and stands, walks, and sits.

A farmer used to get a lot of exercise & dig & bend & necessarily have competent fingers for milking but now there is machinery & any number of implements for that.

There are more jobs than this and further analysis will follow in future weeks.

CAREERS FOR YOU

My oncologist was wonderful. Extraordinary man.

My personal trainer is wonderful. An extravagance but worth it.

My physical therapist is fantastic. More of a friend really.

My plumber is wonderful.

Our realtor was fantastic.

My secretary is a gem.

My tailor deserves kudos.

Our tax guy is worth every penny.

My wife has been indispensable.

We have this great upholsterer.

My proctologist is a stickler.

Our veterinarian is so cool.

My therapist is on vacation.

My wine merchant recommended it.

My cardiologist is in Boston.

Our cleaning lady comes Tuesday Thursday.

Our contractor was marvelous. We knew his work from __________ and _____________.

Our dentist is excellent.

My dermatologist mentioned it.

My doctor is very careful.

Our dog walker is coming at eleven.

Our electrician is the best.

My gynecologist called.

My hairdresser knows everything!

My husband does that.

Our insurance broker is terrific.

Our lawncare guy is top-notch.

Our mechanic is great. 30 years he’s looked after our cars.

The Azores of Toes

On the great flat sheet of the beach almost like a bed flat sheet in fact, the toes disport, comport themselves looking for all the world like waves of headstones in a perhaps military cemetery except with sunglasses, aviators probably, given the military issue. The male toes are cool in their aviators and bare-chested, sporting only swimming trunks. I was never a fan of aviators for the ladies but fetishes and inhibitions are sprouting like cauliflowers round me at this stage so don’t mind me. The tots are the best, I mean toes are small so toe tots just about disappear (through binoculars from the slopes of Pico which is our vantage point) were it not for the puffs of sand they squirt up as they race about and disappear into all over this surfside arena stretched and marked with broad striped beach towels the bright colors of which make the scene a festival. That and the Latin music. If you’ve never seen a big toe belly-dance you haven’t lived. Of course I mean chamarrita, larum-tum-tum, and pezinho. But the great thing about toes you know is how completely silent they are. You hear the music of course. Then the toes like giant erasers rubbing it out.

Illegible Colors

Bitterness

If you would drink the tea of bitterness you must have a residence with a rosewood cabinet of fine china and a silver spoon.

To drink the tea of bitterness in a chunky old mug would be too jolly + wouldn’t do.

DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME

Okay so in April at 7am it is getting light & at 6pm say it is getting dark so if you lose an hour which is what happens when Daylight Saving Time begins and it begins in March or April even though you might think it begins in November because why would Daylight need Saving in the summer when there is plenty of light morning and evening but apparently it is light in summer that’s saved not winter we revert to Standard Time actually in November, Daylight Saving Time ends then not begins as you would think, it’s a little counter-intuitive at least according to my intuition, you kind of think it should start in November when you can really save money on bills and things and end in April when things get easier but the opposite is the case. I suppose it’s a bit like wealth. You save while you have it and make the best of it when you don’t or the way when you have money you get deals and when you don’t you pay twice as much for everything like mortgages, another traditionally hard thing to understand. Anyway in April if, I should say when because it does, when we lose an hour and the clock goes forward—another counter-intuitive thing because you don’t associate losing with going forward though in recent times maybe so anyway in April (it used to be March I think) you lose an hour, the clock goes forward so if it was getting bright at 7am your watch (yeah right who has a watch) your phone or your laptop or your toaster or whatever now says 8am when it’s really 7am so at 7am by the clock it’s really 6am so maybe not as bright as it was before Daylight Saving Time but summer is coming anyway and will iron that out. Then in the evening whereas at 6pm before Daylight Saving Time it was getting dark now 6pm is called 7pm and the 6pm on your clock means 5pm so it’s actually quite a bit brighter so you can say you can feel the stretch in the evening though the days are getting longer anyway as summer is coming as I said. Then the Winter situation is as follows, in November it is getting bright at 7am and when you gain an hour that is when the clocks go back—you know when you wake up and you can say Gee it’s not really 9am it’s really 8am I can go back to sleep yippee (you don’t have to get up for work because the hour changes on a Sunday, actually at 2am but I haven’t used that as an example here because things kind of shrink at 2am, like the options of what people do kind of shrink so if I was to use 2am as an example I think people would be saying why would I be sitting at the kitchen table in my pajamas with a pen and paper trying to figure out the time I’d be asleep at 2am for God’s sake even if it was the weekend) which again is funny because you don’t associate going back with gain (unless you go back for something you forgot which is not exactly a gain because you had it anyway only not with you) so when the clocks go back in November you gain an hour and the 7am where it was beginning to get bright is now called 6am and when the new 7am arrives that is really 8am though it is really is 8am actually because Daylight Saving Time is over in November and 8am is now 8am Standard Time, which is as real as we’ve got, compared to 8am during Daylight Saving Time which is really 7am. So in November the new 7am is 8am so it’s definitely brighter and you definitely notice it (I did this morning) and then at night the way it was getting dark at 5pm now 5pm is really 4pm except as I said Standard Time is realer time in a sense so 5pm actually is 5pm but it seems as if 5pm is really 4pm because of the change so you get some extra light in the evenings too but of course the winter is drawing in and the evenings are getting shorter at the same time as they are let out a little by the end of Daylight Saving Time but there is a little cross-over where we benefit from the difference if you know what I mean. So that’s basically it, that’s the story with Daylight Saving Time. Hold on, is it Daylight Saving or Daylight Savings? Does Daylight Savings Time sound right to you?

DREARY

Since my life has become accounts & schedules & more bills each month than it is possible to pay largely for more house than it is possible to clean & maintain let alone decorate though there’s also of course clothes / food / health / the usual suspects multiplied by two or three & debts, I subscribe sometimes tentatively to the chat of colleagues who say time time time & time for because there is no time anymore to read anything except email or bulletins or maybe a few minutes of the New York Times online on Sundays so we lament our salad days of Dostoevsky & Derrida & Wittgenstein, the days when we could plunge all day & half the night in books & read right to the end waking up at nine or noon or three next day with that sweet weight of done while now even when we rise at four, am that is, the day one rapid stream of ruthless interruption, all of it banal or nothing to do with us really and we are no longer conscious of having a soul or even drawing breath to question but still we don’t get done but tentatively I say tentatively because even way back then in my leafy chlorophyll days I wondered about work & and was mighty impressed by friends who could buy big breakfasts, big fry-ups & toast & coffee—I once saw chocolate cake but it was his money he had the right to eat a hunk of chocolate cake for breakfast if he liked—in Bewleys not once in a blue moon but every day as a matter of course and think nothing of it but satisfaction this was their due and what else would you expect I’m going to work, half-read newspaper under arm & they would—in studio or newspaper office and even in my first graduate writing workshop when asked what I was working on I said my schedule and so tentatively not quite agreeing with my colleagues not quite disagreeing but in abeyance, I look back on Dostoevsky and De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre those starter documents which delivered me, after decades, to the over-scribbled date-book, detritus, of today.

FAMILY STORY

Your father. Your poor father. Your father.

His mother. His poor mother.

His father.

Lights—Camera—Action

My alarm is set for 4.30am. I hesitate for a few hours, then open my eyes. My tiny room is a furred sketch, palpable rather than visible. Another hour goes by. I turn on my side to enjoy that side. I open the door of the room of anxieties + spend a long time there. Bored, I enter my small workroom and spent a while powdering a last, the finished upper replete with repressed anticipation standing by. When I open my eyes again it is noon of another day. I just breathe for a while. Two years pass. It is time to get up and I think about that. I imagine myself getting out of bed, putting on my blue cardigan which wraps around tightly and ties at the back. Then my scarf which is actually a shawl, with all the origami properties of that. I spend five hours folding myself into cultures across the globe but wind up looking like a peasant every time. Then there is the door to be opened. I hesitate for a year. I imagine my hand on the gold knob. Turning. Turning. I imagine the edge of the door springing a slat of light. I imagine the hall outside. Another year goes by. It is dark in the room. I am standing beside the bed. I keel over gently, sideways. I am half on the bed (top half, sideways) and half on the floor (legs and feet, splayed). I lie with my eyes open for a few years, thinking about direction and cold.

The Centipede + the Laptop

While the laptop is bone-white or creamy white or luminous white or blue-white, it is hard to tell what color the centipede is; it is both transparent and really there.

The centipede is long, almost impossibly long, both flat and round, obviously capable of going in any direction at once. The laptop is quite sedate by comparison, slightly oblong, occupying space neatly and tactfully, withholding its giant secret of connectivity, somewhat gleefully I suspect.

The centipede is dead. Or could be dead. Until it moves.

The laptop comes to life, like a woman, on a finger-stroke.

There is a space between them but they occupy the same plane. The laptop has the character of a platform, the centipede more that of the feather.

LUCKY

I’m not exactly a lucky person but I feel I may be lucky. I mean I never have been actually very lucky but I’m lucky in that I’m not very unlucky either. At least not very unlucky. Like I might be inclined to buy something the week before the price is halved or get my house insulated the year before the tax-break or buy the house at the height of the market just before it crashed but I’m not unlucky. I’m actually quite lucky. Not that I ever win raffles or lotteries, not lucky like that. Or not lucky like being in the right place at the right time or having fortuitous accidents or lucky breaks. I’m not the sort of person fortune smiles on exactly. If I was going up a hill and Fortune was coming down I’d probably glance over. Fortune might be busy or preoccupied but I’d certainly glance over I think. There are different kinds of lucky. Like I think if I did meet Fortune coming down the hill when I was going up I’d know it was Fortune like I wouldn’t just trudge by. I’d probably stop and look after it a while. I’d probably think about it all for quite a while, even when I got to Wholefoods or wherever I was going up the hill to go. I wouldn’t just blow it off or worse: not recognize it was Fortune in the first place. I’m lucky in that way. I know Fortune when I see it I think.

HAPPY + NOT HAPPY

I could hear the rain falling before I opened my eyes, it was Sunday and I didn’t have to get up I was happy about that.

I didn’t get up until 10.14am I wasn’t happy about that.

I made scones quickly and neatly and they turned out well I was happy about that.

My neighbors drove Clio to the birthday party so I could chill on the couch reading the New York Times online I was happy about that.

When the time came to collect Clio and Miya the rain was still coming down heavy so I put on my new winter coat which is very cosy I was happy about that.

Between the porch and the car I put up the fur-lined hood which was fun and kept me dry I was happy about that.

I ran back at the last minute and got my new AAA map just in case and my coat and hood did the trick again I was happy about that.

The rain was relentless and the day dark with poor visibility but I knew most of the route already I was happy about that.

I spotted the big United Skates of America building through the trees and easily made the right turn I was happy about that.

My neighbor Maria needed help on the route home so I brought her son David out to our car and marked out the route on the map I had run back for I was happy about that.

Maria followed me home and I didn’t cause any accidents when I pulled over to let her catch up even though a car honked I was happy about that.

The girls were being 12 and trading candy in the back seat instead of focusing on the Big Mission I wasn’t happy about that.

Massasoit Avenue led straight to the bridge and I got us all safely back to familiar territory I was happy about that.

I did the grocery shopping and let the girls shelter while I went for the car then popped the trunk and they loaded the car it was all very competent and movie-like I was happy about that.

I called my mother as I said I would I was happy about that.

My sister called me and we talked a long time I was happy about that.

I made lentil soup and the avocado I'd forgotten about turned out to be totally on the right side of ripe and the salsa went great with the avocado no need for dressing and tortilla chips are better anyway than bread with salsa and avocado I was happy about all that.

I edited audio for a sequence of slides and video for another sequence I was happy about that.

Clio said Okay but she was doing her homework when I asked her to get her camera charger I wasn’t happy about that.

I worked on my presentation and didn’t go to bed until midnight though due to get up at 4.30am I wasn’t happy about that.

Still I watched a few minutes of Powers Boothe in Philip Marlowe, Private Eye and had a good time checking out the décor not quite Jane Austen but still interesting so I was happy about that.

A herd of small cattle

A bundle of tiny cows comes out every morning before dawn. They puddle around in the dark, I see the flash of their flanks, udders, as they turn. The dry sound of their hooves, like cork. Smell the vivid sweet smell of them. After a while, as it lightens, their speckled flanks jump into focus, down to the freckle. All this happens in my bedroom. Outside is no meadow with sweet grass, just city grime. My city is not a grand one. It is a mean one, though it has its grandnesses, its own speckled flanks and profligate sky. My cows are tiny and not quite real. They are shiny and neat, like cows in manuscripts. They smell like vellum. It is my job to milk them, which I do, in the metallic morning, the hot jet of their milk searing like lemon juice past my clunky, game fingers, into the metallic pail.

HATQUEST

I don’t have a GPS but I do have state-of-the-art millinery so to speak in the shape of hatquest (the extra-cranial positioning system). It looks very like a brain—worn on the outside of course. Other visual analogies might be: Marie-Antoinette’s wig (when her head was still attached to her body) though not so large and tall and white. Also Marge Simpson’s updo but not blue. Or an organic map. Yes, this one’s good. Imagine you spread out your map. Not your ordinary anonymous/sterile/impersonal map but a map of the exact streets you will travel, your precise route, with a little red star for your starting point, your home, your north star, your Alpha and Omega, and another for your destination, your excursion, your beta, your B. Then you put Peel-A-Way all over your map, or something that turns it into pulp. And you scoop all that up like a jelly, the bright veins of your route glistening through, and it somehow accumulates shape and you pile it on top of your head. The little red stars are like barrettes, cunningly positioned. It beats all odds. It’s also like an old-fashioned hairdryer in the beauty parlor, the kind you insert your head into. Also like a turban, printed of course. Also like those squidgy pipings of wet sand (themselves like renegade caulk from a wholewheat gun) which lugworms, compact under the compact sand, throw out. Anyway, rather than attending to a pleasant though authoritative voice, you insert your head into this pellucid wobbly confection, also strangely comforting. Like a warm diaper but I digress. There is so much brain on the outside that one might be forgiven for thinking that the space within is empty. But no. There is a driver within. The analogy might be streets are to Hatquest as car is to body and driver is to brain. Still, obviously the brain has limits, the very limits that drove the driver to the purchase of Hatquest to begin with. If true purchase can ever be had on such a glittering, slippery thing.

KEYWORDS: IRISH-AMERICAN, REPRESENTATION, VISUAL SUPPORT











Police representatives O'Connor, Killian, and Macgilvray reject the possibility that race informed Sergeant Crowley's response.

We should know our neighbors so we don't call the cops when they come home.

legend, for hart

as skyping Kazimierz Hezbollah
Realty plunge in Silensby ...

Iamb not dreadful dependence;
now dommage rugrats.  Further Maud
Ben's no more     then distill
Imp lowering flame.  And trim Russ
Indian White crawling flex
Kiss the Tzar, —
Leonie worth all grant-aid.

Catastrophe loomed—
Disk leaving and disk-burning,
Bud only buy the one Hugh
Spins out hymn south again.

Type and type
(again the smoking in the door,
Bloody Ida Long!) Anne Hartigan.
Hotel Dubrovnik is the one
In the Spring Kasimierz
Hezbollah.

Then Pop-Eye, car-sick Pop, a père-fecked drive
Jousting sub-context homily, —
Red lentils capers furbelows whose death
Deal adjunct of Beirut and to Khartoum.

for the record:

couscous@meades
soundeye festival of the arts of the word 2009
meade's wine bar, oliver plunkett street, cork
7/10/09, 9-11.40pm

closed mike w/

trevor joyce
graham allen
jaap blonk
sean bonney
jimmy cummins
ian davidson
carrie etter
sam forsythe
kit fryatt
fergal gaynor
matthew geden
seamus harrington
maria von hausswolff
judy kravis
frances kruk
swantje lichtenstein
peter manson
gerry murphy
dobz o'brien
maggie o'sullivan
billy ramsell
jessica reidy
luke roberts
jerome rothenberg
keston sutherland
rachel warriner
christine wertheim

emcee mairead byrne

THE FIRST OF THE DUDS

I told my student he was first of the duds & he was so chuffed.

I teach at the School of Knockers (not breast criticism).

I said he deserved a prize, a prize for the one that is not very good, variously called the 4th or the 17th or the 118th or the 557th place prize.

His surprise would be in the mail. Maybe 66 poetry chapbooks, home-made. Or a bouquet of 20% off coupons for Bed Bath & Beyond, that would never go out of date.

Even a nomination for a Pushcart Prize.