What happens when poets feel the need to rebel against the tyranny of the line break? They signup for my one day prose poem workshop at UCLA Extension. It’s on Saturday, October first. I’ll be fun. Hope to see you there.
Reading at the Skirball w/ UCLA Extension
The Aerodynamics on PoemFlow
My poem "The Aerodynamics" is on PoemFlow today, (May 29th) poem: http://www.poemflow.com/1070
PoemFlow is really an app for your smartphone. But you can see it online.
PoemFlow is really an app for your smartphone. But you can see it online.
Book review of Death Obscura by Victoria Chang
Book review of Death Obscura
by Victoria Chang and posted at On The Seawall.
The url is http://www.ronslate.com/nineteen_poets_recommend_new_recent_titles
The second book I want to recommend is Death Obscura by Los Angeles-based poet Rick Bursky. At first glimpse, Bursky’s poems might seem deceptively simple, colloquial, even a bit light, to use a word that would be a slap to the face in any poetry workshop. But any careful reader who digs a little deeper and continues reading Bursky’s poems will discover that his poems are anything but light. Bursky’s poems use levity as a way to manage the darker aspects of life, of living. His poems are simultaneously funny and sad—if there was a way to bottle a stand-up comedian and a mortician, Bursky would be it. The poems in Death Obscura are death-obsessed, as in “Cardiology” where the poet begins with humor and ends much differently:
Seven years ago I bought a pair of crutches,
just in case. Each Sunday morning I practiced
walking with them, bent my left leg back
from the knee as if the ankle had been mangled
while stepping onto an escalator....
Twice each week the phone rings
at three in the morning. I never answer.
Someone is practicing sad news, I’m certain.
An oak will one day grow from my heart.
No amount of practice can prepare you
for the first push through dirt.
Bursky’s poems also evoke a sense of longing, whether romantic or not. The speakers in Death Obscura are always waiting for something to happen, longing for a different life without loneliness, as in “The Waiting”:
Standing in front of the toilet urinating, I lowered my head and my glasses fell into the yellowed water. So much for beauty. There are parts of ourselves we don’t want to touch, stories told in small gestures. Using the tips of two fingers I fished them out, let them soak in a sink of cold water. That was over a year ago. The past smells like a lost dog. The past is so damned tired, following us around. The past can be forgotten for a while, like you can forget you’re wearing glasses …
Bursky’s poems may have thematic preferences across Death Obscura, but he never dwells or lingers too long within his poems, especially within poems that focus on love and relationships. The reader only receives small scenes and we are left puzzled, in the same way the speaker is often left puzzled. Bursky captures the mysteriousness of love through these small glimpses, as in “Heroine in Repose”, here in its entirety:
I wasn’t sure if she kissed me
or simply used her lips
to push my face away. Yes,
the moist warmth was enjoyable,
but when my head was forced
back over the top of the sofa
the intention grayed.
Earlier that day I planned
to quit my job and pursue
a career writing romantic novels
that would be confused as memoirs.
But if I couldn’t distinguish
between a kiss and a push
what chance do I have
or writing romantic novels
that would be confused as memoirs?
After the kiss, and I prefer
to think it was a kiss,
she sank back into the pillows
and watched me
out of the corner of her eye.
In the end, what I love about Rick Bursky’s poems is his ability to take life seriously, yet to poke fun at himself and his travails. So many poets focus solely on the dark (I am quite familiar with that terrain myself). And rarely do poets inject humor into their poems, a task that poets seem to know is fraught with danger and failure. Bursky uses humor successfully to counter the darkness in his poems, in the same way that comedians use humor to break discomfort. He is a master of this and poetry is fortunate to have him.
[Death Obscura by Rick Bursky. Published November 16, 2011. 88 pages, $14.95 paperback]
by Victoria Chang and posted at On The Seawall.
The url is http://www.ronslate.com/nineteen_poets_recommend_new_recent_titles
The second book I want to recommend is Death Obscura by Los Angeles-based poet Rick Bursky. At first glimpse, Bursky’s poems might seem deceptively simple, colloquial, even a bit light, to use a word that would be a slap to the face in any poetry workshop. But any careful reader who digs a little deeper and continues reading Bursky’s poems will discover that his poems are anything but light. Bursky’s poems use levity as a way to manage the darker aspects of life, of living. His poems are simultaneously funny and sad—if there was a way to bottle a stand-up comedian and a mortician, Bursky would be it. The poems in Death Obscura are death-obsessed, as in “Cardiology” where the poet begins with humor and ends much differently:
Seven years ago I bought a pair of crutches,
just in case. Each Sunday morning I practiced
walking with them, bent my left leg back
from the knee as if the ankle had been mangled
while stepping onto an escalator....
Twice each week the phone rings
at three in the morning. I never answer.
Someone is practicing sad news, I’m certain.
An oak will one day grow from my heart.
No amount of practice can prepare you
for the first push through dirt.
Bursky’s poems also evoke a sense of longing, whether romantic or not. The speakers in Death Obscura are always waiting for something to happen, longing for a different life without loneliness, as in “The Waiting”:
Standing in front of the toilet urinating, I lowered my head and my glasses fell into the yellowed water. So much for beauty. There are parts of ourselves we don’t want to touch, stories told in small gestures. Using the tips of two fingers I fished them out, let them soak in a sink of cold water. That was over a year ago. The past smells like a lost dog. The past is so damned tired, following us around. The past can be forgotten for a while, like you can forget you’re wearing glasses …
Bursky’s poems may have thematic preferences across Death Obscura, but he never dwells or lingers too long within his poems, especially within poems that focus on love and relationships. The reader only receives small scenes and we are left puzzled, in the same way the speaker is often left puzzled. Bursky captures the mysteriousness of love through these small glimpses, as in “Heroine in Repose”, here in its entirety:
I wasn’t sure if she kissed me
or simply used her lips
to push my face away. Yes,
the moist warmth was enjoyable,
but when my head was forced
back over the top of the sofa
the intention grayed.
Earlier that day I planned
to quit my job and pursue
a career writing romantic novels
that would be confused as memoirs.
But if I couldn’t distinguish
between a kiss and a push
what chance do I have
or writing romantic novels
that would be confused as memoirs?
After the kiss, and I prefer
to think it was a kiss,
she sank back into the pillows
and watched me
out of the corner of her eye.
In the end, what I love about Rick Bursky’s poems is his ability to take life seriously, yet to poke fun at himself and his travails. So many poets focus solely on the dark (I am quite familiar with that terrain myself). And rarely do poets inject humor into their poems, a task that poets seem to know is fraught with danger and failure. Bursky uses humor successfully to counter the darkness in his poems, in the same way that comedians use humor to break discomfort. He is a master of this and poetry is fortunate to have him.
[Death Obscura by Rick Bursky. Published November 16, 2011. 88 pages, $14.95 paperback]
Death Obscura Review from Booklist
Bursky’s unflinching honesty is certain to resonate with readers as he crystallizes the fleeting moments of life and then cuts to the quick with both precision of language and depth of thought in poems that are at once unsettling and comforting. The collection begins with snapshots of the everyday, then expands into a series of prose poems about death and the supernatural. A woman returns from the dead, another writes her own obituary, and the past smells like a wet dog. Bursky manages to be otherworldly without being inaccessible, somehow making strange phenomena feel all too familiar. The theme of death swirls throughout, yet the poems do not dwell on darkness. Rather, they are revelatory, pulling back the curtain to illuminate troubling and mysterious facets of life we usually choose to keep in the shadows. --Alizah Salario
See You At AWP
If you're going to AWP drop by the Sarabande table (A29, A30) Thursday at 1 p.m., Ill be signing Death Obscura. See you there.
Interview
I was interviewed by Beth Spencer of Bear Star Press. You can read it on her blog: www.theresabearthere.blogspot.com
The Inheritance
The Inheritance
The only known use of a Komodo dragon in war by the United States was in the battle for Okinawa. A ten foot long, 300 pound lizard named Syracuse was trained by Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Barry Fiske. We don’t know how he trained the dragon. Though we do know Fiske’s grandfather was an itinerant preacher who became a lion tamer. We do know, between whip cracks the elder Fiske shouted bible quotes, know the chair other’s kept between themselves and lions is where elder Fiske sat and read sermons to lions. In the Fifth Marine Regiment’s morning report of May 6, 1945, “… Staff Sergeant Fiske led a dragon on a raid against an enemy position at 0200 hours …” Syracuse took the foot of a sleeping Japanese lieutenant before crawling back into the night, bringing the foot, still in its boot, to Fiske. A man in San Diego, California, went 263 hours without sleep, no hallucinations. Japanese soldiers couldn’t duplicate this feat, but fear of the dragon kept them from sleeping for days, deteriorating combat effectiveness. No way of knowing if the Japanese believed Syracuse was acting on orders. The prehistoric nature of fear is handed down the generations. We know Fiske inherited the bible, whip and chair which he carried on Okinawa as talismans. At night mortars exploded above the trees, galaxies growing and disappearing in the black sky. Fiske read the bible to Syracuse at the bottom of their foxhole. After the war, Fiske left the Marine Corps, moved to Los Angeles and became a plumber. In a postcard to one of his sons, he wrote, “a man can make a life with a bible, whip and chair.”
The only known use of a Komodo dragon in war by the United States was in the battle for Okinawa. A ten foot long, 300 pound lizard named Syracuse was trained by Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Barry Fiske. We don’t know how he trained the dragon. Though we do know Fiske’s grandfather was an itinerant preacher who became a lion tamer. We do know, between whip cracks the elder Fiske shouted bible quotes, know the chair other’s kept between themselves and lions is where elder Fiske sat and read sermons to lions. In the Fifth Marine Regiment’s morning report of May 6, 1945, “… Staff Sergeant Fiske led a dragon on a raid against an enemy position at 0200 hours …” Syracuse took the foot of a sleeping Japanese lieutenant before crawling back into the night, bringing the foot, still in its boot, to Fiske. A man in San Diego, California, went 263 hours without sleep, no hallucinations. Japanese soldiers couldn’t duplicate this feat, but fear of the dragon kept them from sleeping for days, deteriorating combat effectiveness. No way of knowing if the Japanese believed Syracuse was acting on orders. The prehistoric nature of fear is handed down the generations. We know Fiske inherited the bible, whip and chair which he carried on Okinawa as talismans. At night mortars exploded above the trees, galaxies growing and disappearing in the black sky. Fiske read the bible to Syracuse at the bottom of their foxhole. After the war, Fiske left the Marine Corps, moved to Los Angeles and became a plumber. In a postcard to one of his sons, he wrote, “a man can make a life with a bible, whip and chair.”
Dean Young
Dean Young, quake-in-your-boots poet and wonderful, kind human, needs a new heart. Please consider donating if you can.
http://www.transplants.org/donate/deanyoung
http://www.transplants.org/donate/deanyoung
The Scarifice
The Scarifice
It was one of those rare tap dancing accidents – I broke both feet while transitioning from a Cincinnati time step to a maxiford with toe. As I love the sound of metal on wood floating through a quiet theater, I was rehearsing in the early morning, dancing next to the curtain where the sound is richer, muffled by the thick cloth. My feet tangled. I fell like a clown wearing bulbous red shoes rolling out of a car in a circus tent. A janitor who was about to begin mopping the aisles called for an ambulance. The driver was an amateur medical historian who had just authored an article on bone density in tap dancers and took me to Doctor Timothy Charlton, one of the few orthopedic surgeons in Los Angeles who specialize in tap dancing injuries. Doctor Charlton shook his head over the x-rays. The calcaneus in each foot pushed into the talus with such force that the nerve endings had been unalterably reversed. He had seen this many times, but only as a result of a faulty double stomp buck time step. My only hope of ever again dancing was for both feet to be amputated and sewn on the opposite leg. Doctor Charlton drew a foot on the x-ray showing me what my right foot would look like on my left leg. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I think people are admiring my shoes when they look down for a touch too long while standing next to me in an elevator. Sometimes I dream of that morning. They wheel me into the operating room. Gene Kelly is there wearing green scrubs. A mask covers the bottom of his face but I recognize his eyes. As he picks up a scalpel he begins to tap his foot and is soon doing a paddle roll. The doctors and nurses join in.
The Week of Harsh Holidays
(Originally published in the Hawaii Pacific Review, Hawaii Pacific University, Vol. 14, 2000.)
The Week of Harsh Holidays
Sunday: The Weatherman’s Holiday
In classical times this was the day
men consummated a threat and the season
changed. Bitter men call this Revenge Day.
Greeting cards are expected.
Monday: The Day of The Atoned Rock
Candles burn. Prayers end
with a name. Young girls secretly
relish this day: the possibility of aftermath.
Tuesday: Adulteress’s Day
Who wears a blindfold?
Who’s ear is cut off? Anonymous gifts.
Wednesday: The Festival of Catastrophe
Windows are covered with red crepe paper.
Babies born this day are named after hurricanes.
Lavish parties and dances are held.
Only fast music is played. When this holiday falls
on an even date people buy blankets.
Thursday: The Assassin’s Carnival
Parties and dances are also held,
though the music is louder. Promises are made.
Gifts are exchanged. Imagination
is under siege. Doors must remain open after
dark, even if no one is home.
Friday: Electrician’s Birthday
Only two traditions are practiced.
From midnight to midnight sleeping
is forbidden. What people do to stay awake
is unique. Written confessions
are sealed and left with relatives.
Saturday: The Biographer’s Sabbath.
Nothing to do with memoirs or survivors.
Families eat breakfast together. By noon,
a sigh of pity. Men are given a chance
to change their names. The lambs
are slaughtered for dinner.
The Week of Harsh Holidays
Sunday: The Weatherman’s Holiday
In classical times this was the day
men consummated a threat and the season
changed. Bitter men call this Revenge Day.
Greeting cards are expected.
Monday: The Day of The Atoned Rock
Candles burn. Prayers end
with a name. Young girls secretly
relish this day: the possibility of aftermath.
Tuesday: Adulteress’s Day
Who wears a blindfold?
Who’s ear is cut off? Anonymous gifts.
Wednesday: The Festival of Catastrophe
Windows are covered with red crepe paper.
Babies born this day are named after hurricanes.
Lavish parties and dances are held.
Only fast music is played. When this holiday falls
on an even date people buy blankets.
Thursday: The Assassin’s Carnival
Parties and dances are also held,
though the music is louder. Promises are made.
Gifts are exchanged. Imagination
is under siege. Doors must remain open after
dark, even if no one is home.
Friday: Electrician’s Birthday
Only two traditions are practiced.
From midnight to midnight sleeping
is forbidden. What people do to stay awake
is unique. Written confessions
are sealed and left with relatives.
Saturday: The Biographer’s Sabbath.
Nothing to do with memoirs or survivors.
Families eat breakfast together. By noon,
a sigh of pity. Men are given a chance
to change their names. The lambs
are slaughtered for dinner.
Reading at Beyond Baroque
I’ll be reading from my new book, Death Obscura at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd, on Nov 5th a Friday night, 7:30. I'm reading with two other wonderful poets, Diane Martin and Millicent Borges Accardi. I think they charge seven bucks to get in, but it's well worth the price . Hope to see you there.
Here's one of the poems I'll be reading
The Silences
for Deborah
She didn’t speak for twenty-four hours.
This was the first silence she insisted on.
Everything she needed to say was stored
in the cupboard with the thin-lipped
wine glasses that we never used.
Though I don’t remember if she did
actually need to say anything.
The second silence was mine,
not a word for twenty-four hours.
I should have mentioned it earlier, this was her idea.
I should also mention this wasn’t meant to suggest
that she was tired of my voice,
at least this was the last thing she said
before saying nothing. I tossed everything
I needed to say in the corner of the bedroom
with the dirty laundry. And like the dirty laundry
it was soon cleaned. The third silence,
this silence, we shared. Remember,
this was her idea, not mine.
Mine was to sing to each other during sex.
Didn’t even have to be the same song.
I was planning on Italian folk songs.
Early rock and roll would have been her choice,
something by her favorite, The Del-Vikings.
The first time I disrobed for her
she sang, “who am I, the voodoo man;
who am I, the voodoo man.” Thus my guess
on what she would have sung.
But she preferred silence.
The Glass Boat Poems
(All four poems first appeared in Poem, Huntsville Literary Association, No. 86, 2001; and are also in The Soup of Something Missing.)
The Glass Boat (I)
Everyone told him he was crazy:
the boat’s own weight would shatter it in the harbor
or the first swell the size of a tall man
would break the bow as its face slid down the windward side.
If his glass boat survived long enough to catch
a large fish surely the thrashing strength of dying muscle
would smash the boat like a dinner plate flung into a fireplace.
That was thirty-one years ago.
Now he only fishes when the late afternoon sun
slides beneath the hull,
flooding the boat with a silver light.
On the voyage home he stares
through the glass bottom
at the darkening ocean,
the resting place of every drowned man.
The Glass Boat (II)
Standing on the deck, surrounded by dying fish and ocean,
he looks like a man walking on water.
Sunlight flattening across the bow confirms
it’s glass, not faith that he pilots to the harbor.
He once broke a leg; one foot on the deck,
the other on the dock as a swell lifted the boat.
Another fisherman set the injury in wooden planks
and newspapers wrapped with old netting.
For the next sixteen days he lived in a public house
above the fuel dock. His wife worked the boat.
The fish didn’t know the difference,
not even when she shoved her fingers in a mouth
to pull one from seaweed tangled on the propellers,
nor did the ocean looking through the glass bow
when she tied her long skirt around her waist
to keep fish guts from knotting the lace hem.
The Glass Boat (III)
The differences between the fog, an ocean
and a glass boat are indistinguishable.
A fisherman on an approaching boat could see
the weather and nothing else until he notices
the dark smudge in the gray. At first he believes
it’s the church at sea priests spoke of,
a soul’s life preserver rescuing it from the weight of flesh.
His belief is like candles stocked for stormy nights.
Coming closer, the glass boat becomes clear,
forcing the approaching boat to turn away.
steam from his coffee rise, pleased
by the way it becomes the weather.
The Glass Boat (IV)
The fisherman’s wife looks at the glass boat
from the dock and sees only the ocean’s
heave and sigh and calls it Grief.
The fisherman looks down at the glass deck
and sees only the vein-like currents and skeletons
knotted in sunken ships and calls it Faith.
Fish make names, too, names with long sounds,
familiar noises inside a shell or a hand
rubbing the three-day stubble on a tired face.
When fish look up at the glass boat they see heaven;
and hear its sound, net descending into ocean.
No seagulls follow it on the journey home,
just the foamy wake growing from the stern,
furrows of a freshly-plowed field.
Reading in Chinatown
I’m doing a reading along with four other people at the Jancar Gallery in Chinatown on August 14th, 6 pm. The address is 961 Chung King Road. The other readers are Mike Alber, Karani Leslie, Ben Loory and Rachel Kann. If you come I promise not to be boring.
Poetry Worshops
As in most other workshops safety equipment is required; eye protection, asbestos gloves, hardhat, harder skin, and Xanax are just a few of the things that my syllabus suggests. The more serious you are about poetry the more important the suggestions. Poetry tourists* only need bring copies of their poem to hand out.
Everyone in a workshop falls into one of two categories: teacher or student. Teacher facilitates the conversation. Everyone else in the room is a student**. Though this title isn’t always appropriate. I’ve had accomplished poets in workshops. The conversation is the students’ poem. Again, the idea of appropriateness. What is a student poem? A poem that could improve through revision? What poem couldn’t?
In a workshop, the good poems hold their breath.
In a workshop, the weak poems have three eyes - one stares at its author, the second at the teacher, the third eye is always closed.
Are you writing to understand the world or yourself, I ask at the end of the workshop. A poetry workshop isn't therapy, I say at the beginning of the workshop. Before taking a poetry writing workshop a class in living a poetic life should be mandatory. No writing required, just reading, think and an appreciation for the world in every way. Whoever said "I want to live my life out loud" should write the syllabus.
Basically, my workshop runs like this. Student brings in a copy of a poem for everyone. Someone else reads the poem aloud. Have you ever heard your voice recorded? It always sounds different than coming from outside our head. Hearing your poems read by another person has the same effect. It sounds different. The group discusses the poem. The poet whose poem is being discussed is silent. When the poem is published and read by a stranger thousands of miles away the poet isn’t there to explain. We should hear what people think of our poems and how it affects them without our editorial. At the end of the conversation the poet is allowed to ask questions. But not many. I than offer some suggestions for revisions, and poets to read that I feel they might find inspiring.
In a workshop, most poems are narcissistic.
Most beginning poets write poems that contain too much information. So do experienced poets. Most beginning poets use too many words. Ditto for experienced poets.
Perhaps the most important thing a workshop offers is a reason to write a poem. That sentence might be better without the word perhaps. How long should a poet remain in workshops? Until they no longer need a reason to write a poem.
A sense of community. Poetic fellowship. No one should be alone in the world. At the end of a workshop semester the women in the group decided to meet on a regular basis to share poems and camaraderie. They excluded the men. Not fair.
Another workshop transformed into an informal group called “Purgamentum Auris,” Latin for rubber ear or so they tell me. The name is based on a poem I wrote***. I’m flattered.
Students have written poems in my workshops that I wish I wrote. I often learn from them. Their enthusiasm is contagious. There are people who have been in my workshops that I am grateful for their presence. I hope they know who they are. I don’t need to be in a workshop to keep me writing poems. But I do need poets in my life.
* A poetry tourist is someone with no real interest in improving their poems and will never write a poem after the workshop ends.
** I once had a student bring her therapist to class. She had trouble being in groups. The other students thought she was a friend auditing the class. Of course, I couldn’t resist calling on her.
*** Ex Cathedra
What no one knows about me
is that my left ear is made of rubber.
The original was lost in an accident
when I was nineteen. As Dr. Gorlick
sewed it to side of my head
he said it needed to be replaced
every eleven years to appear to age
along with my face. Vanity compels me
to replace it every thirteen.
A rubber ear isn’t as uncommon as you think.
One president and two movie stars had a rubber ear.
The actors appeared together in a movie
without knowing about the other’s prosthesis.
Each morning I apply a lotion to the ear
so the rubber doesn’t discolor. Cell by cell,
the body replaces itself every seven years.
It’s simple science. I laid on my side
as Dr. Gorlick sewed. A nurse held the ear in position.
Lidocaine and something I don’t remember
prevented me from feeling the blood
run down my neck and cheek.
But I could taste it and began to spit.
The nurse put gauze pads
between my lips and apologized.
Things like this happen all the time.
Someone bleeds, someone apologizes.
Everyone in a workshop falls into one of two categories: teacher or student. Teacher facilitates the conversation. Everyone else in the room is a student**. Though this title isn’t always appropriate. I’ve had accomplished poets in workshops. The conversation is the students’ poem. Again, the idea of appropriateness. What is a student poem? A poem that could improve through revision? What poem couldn’t?
In a workshop, the good poems hold their breath.
In a workshop, the weak poems have three eyes - one stares at its author, the second at the teacher, the third eye is always closed.
Are you writing to understand the world or yourself, I ask at the end of the workshop. A poetry workshop isn't therapy, I say at the beginning of the workshop. Before taking a poetry writing workshop a class in living a poetic life should be mandatory. No writing required, just reading, think and an appreciation for the world in every way. Whoever said "I want to live my life out loud" should write the syllabus.
Basically, my workshop runs like this. Student brings in a copy of a poem for everyone. Someone else reads the poem aloud. Have you ever heard your voice recorded? It always sounds different than coming from outside our head. Hearing your poems read by another person has the same effect. It sounds different. The group discusses the poem. The poet whose poem is being discussed is silent. When the poem is published and read by a stranger thousands of miles away the poet isn’t there to explain. We should hear what people think of our poems and how it affects them without our editorial. At the end of the conversation the poet is allowed to ask questions. But not many. I than offer some suggestions for revisions, and poets to read that I feel they might find inspiring.
In a workshop, most poems are narcissistic.
Most beginning poets write poems that contain too much information. So do experienced poets. Most beginning poets use too many words. Ditto for experienced poets.
Perhaps the most important thing a workshop offers is a reason to write a poem. That sentence might be better without the word perhaps. How long should a poet remain in workshops? Until they no longer need a reason to write a poem.
A sense of community. Poetic fellowship. No one should be alone in the world. At the end of a workshop semester the women in the group decided to meet on a regular basis to share poems and camaraderie. They excluded the men. Not fair.
Another workshop transformed into an informal group called “Purgamentum Auris,” Latin for rubber ear or so they tell me. The name is based on a poem I wrote***. I’m flattered.
Students have written poems in my workshops that I wish I wrote. I often learn from them. Their enthusiasm is contagious. There are people who have been in my workshops that I am grateful for their presence. I hope they know who they are. I don’t need to be in a workshop to keep me writing poems. But I do need poets in my life.
* A poetry tourist is someone with no real interest in improving their poems and will never write a poem after the workshop ends.
** I once had a student bring her therapist to class. She had trouble being in groups. The other students thought she was a friend auditing the class. Of course, I couldn’t resist calling on her.
*** Ex Cathedra
What no one knows about me
is that my left ear is made of rubber.
The original was lost in an accident
when I was nineteen. As Dr. Gorlick
sewed it to side of my head
he said it needed to be replaced
every eleven years to appear to age
along with my face. Vanity compels me
to replace it every thirteen.
A rubber ear isn’t as uncommon as you think.
One president and two movie stars had a rubber ear.
The actors appeared together in a movie
without knowing about the other’s prosthesis.
Each morning I apply a lotion to the ear
so the rubber doesn’t discolor. Cell by cell,
the body replaces itself every seven years.
It’s simple science. I laid on my side
as Dr. Gorlick sewed. A nurse held the ear in position.
Lidocaine and something I don’t remember
prevented me from feeling the blood
run down my neck and cheek.
But I could taste it and began to spit.
The nurse put gauze pads
between my lips and apologized.
Things like this happen all the time.
Someone bleeds, someone apologizes.
Reading Tonight
I'm reading at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program 17th Annual Publication Party tonight, 7:00pm – 9:30pm (Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 7:30pm) It's at the Skirball Cultural Center is located at 2701 North Sepulveda Blvd., just off the 405 Freeway and Mulholland Drive.
Night
Night
In 1889 it snowed twenty-three times in Cleveland, Ohio, and each time only at night. Yet newspaper articles from that year make no mention of this. One hundred years later, 1989, it snowed exactly twenty-three times in Cleveland, and again, only at night. Professor Beth Wingate, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, wrote in a scientific paper, “the author unfortunately is unlikely to be alive in 2089, but if in that year it snows twenty-three times in Cleveland and only at night, this will be a phenomena not a coincidence.” Where science ends faith begins. This never changes, and is the reason most ghosts are seen in the dark.
The Democracy
The Democracy
The election is finally here. Once and for all, it will be decided which pencils will be legal, the softer lead number four or the hard number two. The count stands at 763 for the soft and 879 for hard. If the number fours become illegal I’ll move to a place where the smudge of a word won’t make a man a criminal. I can’t understand why some prefer to write words barely dark enough to be read. This is the same way we decided the size of napkins in cafes, and learned to drink without spilling, not even a drop.
Gatherings
I'm in Denver for AWP 2010. I thought it was spring but it's snowing outside. Something uncommon for a man from Los Angeles to see on an April morning. What do you call a gathering of poets? A stanza would be a good answer. I haven't written anything for Ironomgery for months. It's time to gather the words and see what they say. Soon.
The Man in the Vat of Honey
(First appeared in Press, Issue 2, Fall 1996; and is also in The Soup of Something Missing.)
The Man in the Vat of Honey
The nurse sat in the waiting room writing
to her sister. In a small and glorious handwriting
she wrote that she hadn’t yet found a husband
among the injured men; and she was disappointed,
a sailor she liked drowned when his ship broke apart
in heavy winds. His body was now held
in a tall vat of honey behind the clinic. This was the way
corpses were kept during monsoons when the ground
was too thick with water for burials. She imagined him
sticky-sweet and folded at the bottom of the vat
as he might have looked on the ocean floor before his body,
released of fear and breath, ascended. She once sat
with her ear against the vat, hoping to hear what the dead say
to themselves, waiting as she would wait for the ground to dry.
But the only sounds were from alley cats stretched
across the lid, their coarse tongues licking the dried honey.