The Tulsa Spur
Tulsa sits on a spur branching off but still in the gravity
of the I-35 corridor, a road I was born on and have I’ve been traveling all my
life. I came here thinking it would be
devoid of any forward-thinking artistic energy, a complete DIY town where
nothing will every happen unless I do it.
Although the DIY part is somewhat true, I was surprised at the avant
garde spirit I’ve found here. I’ve
written lots of poems from this place, though not necessarily about this place,
and I have found it immensely enriching for innovation, in an aesthetic sense.
There is something about the extremities here—the weather, the politics, the
characters, the landscape the sky—that begs for new kinds of poetry. Begs, or
forces, it out of me.
For poems more about this land and life, see the ones I’ve
published in our sleek regional semi-monthly, This Land: Two Poems and Dry Oklahoma.
I’m also met many amazing artists here with which I’ve collaborated.
Both the “Tulsita” and
“Holy/Oil” animations
resulted in months-long interactions in which two poets (David Goldstein and
myself), a photographer (Mindy Stricke) and a sound artist (Nathan Halverson)
through which we attempted every way we could think of to break down the
boundaries between our media.
As many know, I’m fond of pointing out Tulsa’s innovative
artistic heritage. As a high school
junior, Ron Padgett met Ted Berrigan here after he published the first issue of
The White Dove Review, the literary
magazine for Central High that featured poems by Leroy Jones, Allen Ginsberg,
and Jack Kerouac, among other Beat luminaries that Padgett had precociously
solicited through the mail. Joe Brainard
and Dick Gallup helped Padgett publish this little journal before they, along
with Padgett and Berrigan moved to New York City to become what John Ashbery
facetiously called the “Tulsa School.”
In my view, though, the Tulsa School is still alive and well, as many
people in this city are making experimental poetic art right where they are.
They include but are not limited to
Sloan Davis
Sheila Black
Phil Estes
Victoria McArtor
Melody Charles
Amelia Williamson
Mia Wright
Casie Trotter
Bruce Dean Willis
Many more have come and gone, leaving their mark on this city’s
antinomian aesthetic.
Below are a few poems that I’ve written lately and, whether
I like it or not, they probably have the dust of this city on them.
What kind is your white? Phone in
The bringing of my thanks.
They ate the pastures to the
rocks.
Bo Barns Live Music
Come here, Cookie, I’ll bayou and
raise you.
You want to be an honorary girl.
There is latitude in your type
face.
A lot of peeing in these poems,
A string cohiscience,
Impertinent impermanence—
She doesn’t read as much as flip
Off sleeping.
What happens to all our shoes?
Put your self out on a limb
Between design and war.
Moribund is eponymous.
Silver cum pewter.
Telegraphic monotopia.
Chewy inchoate chocolate.
Catalogue every crisis.
Personal identification is the
only way to save earth?
He’s an enactualist.
* * * * *
derivative wall fleeting
rip-change
fear
deceipt upon receipt
the
market unpacked
irate vain art
fun
fans phone
delete the same
old
agony matter
retry resuscitation rehersal
atmosphere
attention attire
every generation’s toxic
intreacheration
acid echo.
There is no end
except
never.
Aging eyes again
mark
blank executive markets
spill baby spill
beard
of verbs
nouns stuck
in
the hairstand
more today than
yesterday
between cracks
our nice guitar
waste
words worn
spite my eclipse
cents
everywhere concrete
last town content
street
squat ganj
Porto-john truth squad
wishful
sound movement
Terrify empathy voice
portion
sentences perhaps
Batman meningitis tongue
super
sequel seeker
Lovely langover hour
basic
plan of being
* * * * *
onomatopoeia him thinks of
onanism and peeping through
to capture the grinding
in the words against
each other in the track of the
neck
playing so supple up tempo
the rumble of prosaic static
and eaten by entropy our
tropes and a tropical splitting
seize the sound, is the sound
of a backyard dismemberment
aye there’s a rub, substituting
scraps for scrapes, endraping, en-
dive in the garden farty and chuck
such as there is metal in the
throat
the holler started systems and
rays
though insects have in their
thorax
such synapses and silicon sighings
are alliteration and rhyme the
only
speed without time, in lines and
jacks
nosesleaves might help shape sonic
reverberations in the body politic
then fall back to 60 kilohertz at
the end
of the voting block, eye-cuts and
jumps
transpositional phrases have
echoes
in bonobo tribes alarms are pulled
when
certain social cues are not heard
wind
diminished fifths by drinking an
ounce
at a time when waves enter the ear
unsolicited males acoustic
beam-shaping
in being heard, in being. Seeing is neither
since salt water alight by radio
frequency brings balance to
relationship
interned in the aspiration of the
“s”
stress and repetition make it
music
she said guessingly resenting
resonance
the counter-chime, O Bank of
America
lost in the rush of salt water,
blood stood
aft of the massive tanker’s hull,
clanking
incessantly we speak. We speak and speak.
It all sounds like machinery. Or cats
in heat and exhaustion—the release
of air
within the English, a spin, of the
loop
returning again for meaning and
connection
in the renunciation of memory, I
recall
the woman with money, hair, eyes
encouraged
vibrating, repeating time and a
search for beauty
in noise when the harmonics are
too complex
for our ears only. when wood wonders, we
sheath ourselves. calling on
semblances
of experience from which to rent
the veil
a composition which responds to
changes
in temperature the strings resent
a procedure
that can carry us through a live
performance
is imagined in the skulls of the
dead.
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