Sunday Driving
Assorted highlights of Tina Posner’s literary
life include: being mocked by John Ashbery in a elevator; disgusting Louise Glück with a pack Freshen Up “squirt” gum; getting a spontaneous kiss from John Giorno on a bathroom
line at St. Mark’s Church;
adding a line to an exquisite corpse poem started
by Robert Creeley;
drinking ouzo in a Greek restaurant with Diane DiPrima;
riding in a car with Robin Blazer
(sadly, not a Blazer);
and grocery shopping with Jack Clarke for brand-name paper products.
A Cardboard Pool
We spoke of building
a cardboard pool,
one that floats in
the air above the snakes,
not cut into the
ground with life-size Tonkas.
The sails overhead
create leafless shade,
the plantings and
water fleas clear algae.
But the overhead
sails lift the dream, cutting
into the air with a
sharp keel, a bruising tool.
The water, a
sea-glass green cools the skin,
not the hot agave
green that bleeds—its thorn,
a tearing horn. And
the dream punctures,
leaking from its
makeshift cardboard seams.
What was I thinking?
Let’s be grateful for
the sea of weeds.
Believe that we are living
life as if awake,
not paralyzed and imagining.
Nests of pet hair
catch in spider webs and
fill in corners.
Grape vines and roses arm
wrestle around the
circle fence. To the east,
the deep end of
night pools, it’s where we
sing songs for
England and drown our losses.
The setting sun sets
some flies on fire.
And I am married to
their miner.
Don’t kill them.
They will be replaced with mosquitoes.
And I don’t even
want to know what happens if you kill
the mosquitoes. The
blood of insects will be avenged.
They must be allowed
to tickle, to stick in your skin
like acupuncture
needles, give you rashes and fevers.
Dear future readers,
you already know about the bees.
Here, our fruit
tastes like stagnant water but the surface
is taut and
blushing, like plump, rural children.
We are buried in
propaganda. We cannot properly age.
The concrete world
is disappearing. If I close my eyes
and ears there is
almost nothing left. The chemical smell
blots out the wine,
the hard surfaces, armed plants,
succulents in a dry
land, the pressure dropping dangerously,
super cells overhead
to the north, not one fat drop yet.
There are rituals
for heading to the windowless center
with flashlights and
a radio. Getting in the tub like a boat
ready to set sail in
the air. It’s as humid as Bangkok.
It was a late
afternoon we spent in time, erasing
what in hindsight
not was particularly photogenic.
It’s only 14 years
into the new millennium
and we are stuck
with these decrepit planes,
their worn
upholstery and broken tray tables,
tan plastic arms
scratched. One can only wonder about
the bolted guts,
spider bites, and lightning.
Friends of Friends
Look at the sun with closed eyes—it’s a red bloodbath
of light. Dead fronds rattle medicine high in the café palm.
And now everything looks like a negative. You should not
look
at the sun even with closed eyes, scream the grackles. Some
machine
grumbles in a low E flat, I am just saying, as if I really
knew what
that note sounds like, as if the pebbles on the ground were
colored confetti.
I probably wouldn’t have been friends with Schuyler and
Dickinson,
I whisper to into my coffee. They would have been friends of
friends,
who went to better schools and don’t misread diary for dairy.
It’s a question of taste, I once heard a TV judge say, the
word spoken
in hushed tones, as if a vital organ had experienced necrosis.
Forgive me, Jimmy and Emily, for dragging you into this.
Here’s what I imagine instead: drinking with Ted Berrigan,
and flirting with his better-looking friend, laughing
in a drunken brownout, up to my brown eyes in sippin’
whiskey,
sticking my elbow in the wet spot on the table. Leaning back
into the chair until it hits me comfortably below my wings,
as the bar smoke curls into my eyes and mouth.
Yet, it’s all so light and clear here as the wind tickles my
cheeks
with stray hairs, and the grackles go off like alarms, and
the coffee now cold in the cup, light in my palms, gurgling
in my guts,
as the day grows much too warm for bare-branches now.
The sky refuses to commit to gray or blue with its opaque
clouds turning the sun into a moon.
Life Drawing
Some days there is a
great differential between sun
and shadow, pole and
equator, quiet and fear.
Water vapor droplets
hang above like tiny mirrors,
floaters on a wet
lens that burn high and dry-eyed.
A falsetto voice
tries too hard to be sincerely yours.
Riding on the waves’
assonance and interference,
the words are worn
like a lock inside a locket held
close to the heart,
where the heart feels most worn.
Children that were
are now living the mythic days
of generations to
come. I audition for talking stone,
nominate you for
singing flame; the birds whirl in
spirals above the
garden speakers, over the umbrellas.
We copy it all down
in the mud with a stick.
Let it dry into a
prologue for the unborn—each story,
like a face, has its
good side. The words spin further
from their source to
silly, surreal, incomprehensible.
Renovations layer
the place, say space (formally)
dressed in new togs
for each dance. You may think we sit
on the wallflower
side from the way we wane. But we are
nude with clues for nubby
charcoal to connect and shade.
I Ching and a Painted
Tree
14. Sun over Downpour
A lone tree with heat in its leathery leaves, keeps its
blood
cool. Not so me, Daphne. Gods
can be assholes.
if they bother orchestrating time at all without nodding out
into atonal twilight where the colored notes drain to gray,
woolgathering amid the concrete fade, modern and bright.
Let coins narrate this hard ground, hitting and ringing.
33. Heaven over Mountain
The wasps are waning like the ghosts of birds flown into
glass.
The moth living in the dashboard appears sporadically like
lust.
It’s blood moon time, the old four-cornered spiral beyond
the reach
of advertising, straining after what is beneath social
performance,
what cannot be bartered, an
out of body experience
like chasing the beloved into
the rain, breath stinging.
57. Wind over Wind
Seasons on either side of the skin, a two-step dance: slow,
slow,
fast, fast, slow. The cologne fails to mask the alcoholic
fumes,
the flowers’ scents, muted No
Toulouse of yellow/red
fire seen through closed lids. Flush of chemical breeze on
sweat.
The back kick was a nervous tick counted more than twice,
orbiting
boy with bottle and knife in
back pockets, dancing.
60. Abyss over Joy
Confidence ebbs, flows, a
musical score of musculature.
I don’t mean to scare the young women. Really I just wanted
to share
that accident of nouns, snatching
them quickly by heart
from the air, moments before conforming to
performance,
in the gray interstitials when nervous ticks are full of
kinetic potential.
A green bough yields firmly to a greedy embrace, its pliancy
fleeting.
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