of the lake. Would like to go to universe . . . al . . . ity?
She has heard there is a good one in Germany.
They stay up all night drinking some black sludge,
and grow long beards rather than look at them-
selves, and do thought experiments like: if I am not
in Scotland, does Scotland even exist? What do I look
like when no one is looking? She would listen to them
just as hard as she could with the mud-sucking holes
in her head—and they, she thinks, would listen back,
with their ears so regularly described as seashell.
The half of her that is underwater would like to be
under a desk, the head of her that is underwater
would like to be fully immersed.
I will be different there,
she thinks, with a powerful wake ahead of me.
When will the thinkers come for me. Visited only
here by believers. Is so deep-sea-sick of believers.
When will the thinkers come for me here, where
the green stretches out before me, and I am my own
front lawn. The green is a reflective green, a green
in the juicy shadows of leaves—a bosky even green—
a word I will learn to use, and use without self-
consciousness, when at last I go to Germany. I have
holed myself away here, sometimes I am not here
at all, and I feel like the nice clean hole in the leaf
and the magnifying glass above me.
She looks to the believers on the shore. A picture
it would last longer! shouts Nessie.
Does NOT believe photography can rise to the level
of art, no matter how much rain falls in it, as levels
of the lake they rose to art when Nessie dipped
her body in it. Nessie wants to watch herself doing
it. Doing what, I don’t know, being alive. The lake
bought one Nessie and brought her home. She almost
died of loneliness until it gave her a mirror. The lake
could be a mirror, thinks Nessie. Would be perfectly
still if I weren’t in it.
Bedbugs Conspire to Keep Me from Greatness
In the cities all the poets, and in all the cities,
bedbugs. Fat with their black lyric blood! Alive
at only night, and there and then not there. Better
bedbugs than the ones that eat paper, say poets—
the ones that eat paper are in our blood
and the bedbugs eat them up, rip rip, and our paper
creamily goes on whole, with not a single real space
between sentences in it. They say come to the cities
and there
become Great! The poets have money to spend
in the cities: they spend the newest American dollars,
the crisp-aired greenest American dollars, blazing
with pictures of National Parks. “The Old Faithful
Geyser almost gushes off the note!” At last money admits
the power of poetry, at last money admits it is written
on—and this piece of paper almost gushes, so go to a city
and spend it. The poets in cities save their money
and travel to National Parks, and never sleep at night
there, no one sleeps in a National Park, they stay up late
and inseminate each other with memories of mountains
and glimpses of wildlife, and human reflections in stilly
chill lakes, and afterward they lie awake, miles away
from any city, miles away from their living mattresses
where their absent shapes are getting sucked
for their blood. Oh the bedbugs are happy; in bedbug prison,
the locked-up poet is writing his poems, in blood just like
the first time. Oh the poets are happy back in the cities, there
are legible smears on their sheets every day, and a pricking
always on their skin like something is coming
for them through the grass, long green grass
of where they came from.
Last of the Late Great Gorilla-Suit Actors
Is the last man alive on this earth. He has the cities
to himself, and even has the blondes, who are over
his shoulders not kicking or screaming. He carries
them wherever he carries the gorilla. “I can see straight
tells himself. “I can see your eyes twinkle way up
with the stars. Between two skyscrapers I can see them.
By the end the audience will recognize you. By the end
they will see you as one of them, by the end they will see
their faces in your face,”
and the audience feels themselves lifted up too,
and the audience leaves one by one. “Where is the movie,
where is my movie?” the gorilla cries in despair. He beats
his bass chest, there is only silence. He opens his mouth
and makes the loud frightened music the score makes
when we first see him. He is taller than even he remembers.
Comets streak through and through his head. All the blondes
are thrown over his shoulders, the blondes he never even
liked, the bunches of blondes he mistook for bananas. What
he likes is the Chrysler Building, all nipped and shirred
at the waist. What he likes is the cool copper Statue of Liberty.
What he likes, getting bigger, is that high-heeled continent.
What he likes, he thinks, sweat dripping sky to the ground,
is the great gorilla-suit itself and its long great line of inhabitants.
The late great is alone, is alone on the earth. The sun approaches
hotter than hot, the last and screamingest of the blondes.
The last of the great is as big as deep space, the last of the late
is as big as the night, he reaches out and grabs the sun, he is
stuffed with the stars of gorilla-suit acting, all gorilla-suit
actors are moving his arms, all gorilla-suit actors are moving
his legs, and we make the sad music the score makes
when the gorilla is shot full of holes, and “Remember me!”
we cry to no one at large, and burst out of the suit at last
to breathe, last of the late great gorilla-suit actions.
Factories Are Everywhere in Poetry Right Now
We are watching a crayon being made, we are children,
we are watching the crayon become crayons
and more crayons and thinking how can there be enough
room in America to make what makes it up, we are thinking
all America is a factory by now, the head of it churning out
fake oranges, the hand of it churning out glass bottles,
the heel of it churning out Lego men.
We are watching lifelike snakes get made, we are watching
lifelike rats get made, we are watching army men get made;
a whole factory for magic wands, a whole factory
for endless scarves, a whole factory, America, for the making
of the doves, a whole factory, America,
for the making of long-eared
rabbits and their love of deep dark holes. We are watching
a marble being made, how does the cat’s eye get in the marble
and how does the sight get into that, how does the ha
nd get
on it, how does the hand attach to the child, how does the child
attach to the dirt, and how does the dirt attach to its only name,
America. The name is manufactured here by rows of me in airless
rooms. Sunlight is accidental, sunlight is runoff
from the lightbulb factory, is ooze on the surface of all our rivers.
Our abandoned factories make empty space and our largest
factory produces distance and its endless conveyor produces miles.
And people in the basement produce our underground. Hillbilly
teeth are made here, but hillbilly teeth are made everywhere
maybe. The factory that makes us is overseas, and meanwhile we,
America, churn out China, France, Russia, Spain, and our glimpses
of them from across the ocean. Above the factory billowing clouds
can be seen for miles around. Long line of us never glances up
from the long line of glimpses we’re making, we could make
those glimpses in the dark, our fingertips could see to do it,
all the flashing fish in the Finger Lakes
have extra-plus eyes in America. The last factory, which makes last
lines, makes zippers for sudden reveals: a break in the trees opens
ziiiip on a view, the last line opens ziiiip on enormous meaning.
Revealing Nature Photographs
In a field where else you found a stack
of revealing nature photographs, of supernude nature
photographs, split beaver of course nature photographs,
photographs full of 70s bush, nature taking come
from every man for miles around, nature with come back
to me just dripping from her lips. The stack came
up to your eye, you saw: nature is big into bloodplay,
nature is into extreme age play, nature does wild inter-
racial, nature she wants you to pee in her mouth, nature
is dead and nature is sleeping and still nature is on all fours,
a horse it fucks nature to death up in Oregon, nature is hot
young amateur redheads, the foxes are all in their holes
for the night, nature is hot old used-up cougars, nature
makes gaping fake-agony faces, nature is consensual dad-
on-daughter, nature is completely obsessed with twins,
nature doing specialty and nature doing niche, exotic females
they line up to drip for you, nature getting paddled as hard
as you can paddle her, oh a whitewater rapid with her ass
in the air, high snowy tail on display just everywhere.
The pictures were so many they started to move. Let me
watch for the rest of my natural life, you said and sank down
in the field and breathed hard. Let me watch and watch
without her knowing, let me see her where she can’t see me.
As long as she can’t see me, I can breathe hard here forever.
See nature do untold animals sex, see nature’s Sicko Teeen
Farm SexFeest, see her gush like the geyser at Yellowstone,
see the shocking act that got her banned in fifty-one states including
Canada. See men for miles around give nature what she needs,
rivers and rivers and rivers of it. You exhale with perfect
happiness. Nature turned you down in high school.
Now you can come in her eye.
See a Furious Waterfall Without Water
Never has an empty hand been made
into more of a fist, and Waterfall Without
it swings so hard it swings out
of existence. How will anyone get married
now, with no wall of water behind them?
How will Over Niagara Falls in a Barrel
marry Across Niagara Falls on a Tightrope?
Over the Falls would have worn a veil,
Across the Falls would have tied a tie,
hand in hand they would have poured
down the aisle to the sound of rustling
silks. Later they would narrow
to a lovely neck, later they would make
a gentle elbow in the water, later
they would pour into a still round pool,
and dance for three minutes to what they
called music. Niagara Falls is a family
member. He is drunk for the first time
in a hundred years. “I don’t call that music
I call that noise,” would have screamed
Niagara Falls, right through his aquiline
family nose. All of Niagara’s ex-lovers
are here. The World’s Steepest Dive
stands up and says, “I’ve been diving
so long now, and when will I hit?
When will you be there for me, Niagara?”
First Woman Behind the Falls stands up
so everyone can see her, so everyone
can see what has happened to her looks.
“You took the best day of my life,
Niagara.” The World’s
Longest Breath-Hold stands up,
she loves him, she drew in her breath
the first time she saw him and never
breathed out again, not ever. The furious
waterfall without water he punches her
into tomorrow; the World’s Longest
Breath-Hold is longer now and she calls
to him from the future, “You’re here,
you’re roaring again where I am,
Tomorrow.” Finally his first love the U-
Shape stands up. Stands up and she says,
“Niagara.” The sound curves down and up
again, even the shape of her voice is a U.
“I don’t call that music I call that noise,”
says the furious waterfall without water,
trembling at the very lip, unable to contain
himself, and there he goes roaring
back into her arms.
Love Poem Like We Used to Write It
Says here is a girl who gets written like palms,
says here is a girl who moves paint like Tahiti.
Teeth infinite white and infinite many and with
them she infinite eat me, and mouth full of invert
and cane and coarse sugar, and her dresses all
came from across
the water, and they rode a light chop
on the sea in fast ships, and she owns twenty
pairs of the shape of her hands, and slashed silk
on her shoulder like claws of a parrot, and here
the love poem delights:
the word parrot will never
be replaced, and will continue meaning always
exactly what it means, as none of the words
in this sentence have done—come read me again
in a hundred years and see how I keep my shape!
Love poem back to your subject, the word parrot
is not the right woman for you, hard to hold
and too much red; love poem think long arms
and flies nowhere.
I remember her now, it says, and says she is far
from me, says hear how her voice is a Western
slope, when west meant the sun it rose and set
there, and monstrous the shadows of flowers all
down it, in the days before voice meant something
you wrote with. Love poem as we used to write it
says her small brown paw is adorable, which is
to say brown a
s we used to use it, which is to say
just sunburned,
just monstrous the shadows of flowers all on it,
which is to say paw as we used to use it, which is
to say a human hand, and human as we used
to use it, which is to say almost no one among us.
Blond of course and blond. Blond as a coil of rope,
and someone hauled on her somewhere, and loop
after loop flew out of her helpless. The someone
was out at sea, and language on my shoulder like
claws of a parrot. I sailed the world over
to deliver one letter, one letter of even one letter,
one word, and one word as we used to use it:
in those days she was the only Lady, in those days
she wrote a small round hand,
and I hauled on it saw it fly loop by loop out of her.
Why Haven’t You Written
The past, when it was sick right down
to its roses, obsessively checked the mail.
We wore all of our pathways checking
the mail. We went into the woods because
we heard the letters rustling, and we swore
they sounded like letters to us. Even Thoreau,
on Walden Pond, checked his open mouth
every morning, foolishly believing it to be
the mail. We worshipped a great white
body that was an avalanche of good news,
and we slit it open in every part. “That can’t
go through the mail,” the postman gasped,
“because that is a super-stabbed body!”
The super-stabbed body rose up, with many
butterknives sticking out of it, and said, “I AM
the mail.” It had so many lovers.
Everyone alive had a finger in it, ripping it open,
sometimes with blood, deep bleeding wounds
of information all over the back-and-forth form.
It took a long time to be delivered then, and traveled
in sacks like shapes of women, and women were
full of secret sharp corners where their postcards
were poking out, and at last in their bedrooms they
sighed with relief as they shook out their sacks
with both hands, and faithfully and affectionately
and yours tumbled out, and even I am tumbled out.