helper in need

the wind passes over the land. drilled granite. the looping
particles. or tongues sinking in gullets in gurgling
gulches. just to rest; to lave eyes; change
clothes; to so much as set foot at home
again. at last.

bit of thomas kling’s manhattan mouthspace 2

as the sky goes black

fixed in place

or running

half a man

& half

a crazed

machine

he feels himself

becoming

what he ran from

breaking free

of bones

& skin

a solitary

eye

that looks out

at a street

covered

with tiny birds

yammering

chirping

whose screams

call him

to life

& always birds                            (Han Shan)

my burden

more than

yours

a life

so poor

& pure

succumbing

to their

sounds

their wounds

will raise himself

by inches

sail aloft

the dream

is over

with our hands

we touch

the earth

beneath us

paw it

watch

in wonder

as the sky

goes black

25.iv.13

-jerome rothenberg

new apartments

They converted the brutalist hospital
into apartments carted up the hill
to the village where I was raised
tidy boxlike houses up till then
perplexing to see the poor living among us now
It was winter in the field behind the apartments
the field all white, pathways coated in a thickness of ice
the ice as clear as glass, or clearer, when I looked
the property of the ice that kept me from touching the gravel
forced me to see each pebble entirely as it was

-jana prikyl

wild in the grips of a god

Once, once somehow I lost both of them, a man was saying as he came out of the elevator that morning. He was alone. He flicked his eyes on me, off me. He had a furtive tinge and a swank black overcoat – I thought at once of Joseph Conrad, as he is in formal photographs, with the not-quite-Western eyes and virtuosic goatee.

Once I attended a christening at a farmhouse in a country far away. I saw a stack of white bread on a table in sunlight. It made me dream about Europe and history, dark mornings, other people’s wars, a glitter of exile. I myself had no history. I had kept safe, in the middle of my life, all my life. Kept away from endings. Other people had these. I envied them. It occurred to me other people each felt they were in the middle of their life too, not elements of history, but I didn’t believe it. The white bread was an indicator. Some history there. I’ve generally been a self-heeding person. I don’t even see the situation of others until long after, for instance when writing it down – look, even now, it’s only because I’ve got to that point in the white bread thesis where I’m glancing around for grips.

Once Conrad shot himself in the chest. I don’t know much about that. A friend of mine came near suicide because he could not stop smelling.

Once ‘wild in the grips of a god’ was given to me by a student translating Euripides on a mid-term exam. Those were the days.

Once Thomas Hardy was strolling on the heath with a telescope and he put the telescope to his eye. He saw a man in white on the gallows at Dorchester and at that moment the man dropped down and the town clock struck eight. ‘Faintly.’ A faint note from the town clock. A man has lost things.

Once I began wondering about history, endings, I couldn’t escape the feeling that we only call it an ending when things have gone wrong. Is this realism? A salty attitude. That moment in a film noir when a woman flips open her compact to refresh her lipstick. But maybe it’s just more entropic drift. That idiot wind keeps blowing, the sound of it can drive you mad.

Once I was waiting for the elevator in my building and Joseph Conrad came walking out.

Once the horses of Achilles, who were immortal horses and not supposed to bother with death or know what it was, got dragged onto the battlefield by Patroklos (Iliad, Book 17). Patroklos fought. Patroklos lost. The horses smelled Patroklos die. Rage foamed in them. They bent their heads and filthied their deathless manes in the dust.

Once you stare at white bread for a while you feel the grip go sharp through, sharp through you.

Once I had accepted that a glimpse of Joseph Conrad walking out of the elevator would not enter me into history, I thought to reverse the terms. I already had the overcoat and exilic tone, I gave my beard a nautical trim and spent four mornings emerging from the lift at random times. I practised a frisking glance. I moved with faint purpose. Whether there was no audience waiting, or one or two women with prams who pushed, or a solitary soul who reminded me of me – nobody reacted. Not one soul. It was hot in my coat.

Once you’ve grown up in a chemical manufacturing town you can recognise every known chemical compound. My friend who could not stop smelling would announce gravely, upon entering a room, what brand of floor cleaner they used. Burning pudding foamed in him. Lying on the kitchen floor in tears, he’d say he might as well die right there.

Once I dreamed of an animal, a curved silver animal, that had to be got out of my house. The business of eradication filled the dreamplot but it was just a blind. I woke without knowinghow or why. More seriously, I could not locate the animal – its species or its name – these questions went blank. The dream closed its lips.

Once I was embarked on the elevator experiment I had time and occasion to ponder inside and outside, those very different theatricalities. Entering the elevator (on the eighth floor where my own flat is) was a backstage moment, people still zipping their coats or turning to check their makeup in the mirrored parts of the walls. To exit on the ground floor was to step onstage: in the glare of the lobby, with its guards and armchairs, it was always the start of Act One.

Once you stare at white bread a while you begin to hallucinate its value.

Once Charles Hagberg Wright realized the Gorkys were going to be not just late but very late, did he try to get a conversational crackle going between Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad? History is blank.

Once I encountered the term ‘counter-espionage’ I became confused about what ‘espionage’ was. How many sides can a piece of paper have? Why put a mirror behind your head? When I wish to report that I as Joseph Conrad never pick up the cheque in a restaurant, whose dossier do I put it in?

Once you add the adverbs, you start to get a grip.

Once I started speculating about inside and outside, there was clearly research to do in the opinions of Freud and Lacan on the psycho-pianoparts of everyday space. But I got not much further into it than the mirror behind Freud’s head would allow when I wearied of mumbo jumbo and quit. Or rather subsided into the ‘evenly suspended attention’ that Freud recommends for research in a clinical situation. And just at that moment an envelope dropped through my mail slot inviting me to a christening in a country far away. I saw I had a clinical situation at hand. I would send Joseph Conrad.

Once I decided on a double life, I read spy novels to get the skills. A spy needs a sense of humour. Ice is thin. I would be spying on myself. This was humorous.

Once I was weeping (again) over the silver animal, other secrets began to tremble in their places.I saw it was dusk in the room, guests dispersing, white bread as yet untouched, spoons and crumbs here and there over the cloth.

Once somehow, once somehow, actually on my second or third elevator emergence, I resolved to speak or murmur Joseph Conrad’s line. I couldn’t do it. The surfaces were all too glassy.

Once Freud understood how repression works he was surprised and saddened. Should we think of ourselves as always hiding a part of ourselves from ourselves? Yes.

Once you touched Thomas Hardy he recoiled, so a childhood playmate records. This peculiarity never left him. I doubt he offered to shake hands with Joseph Conrad when introduced to him in the drawing room of Charles Hagberg Wright on a January night of 1907. It was a dinner for the Gorkys, who were late.

Once white bread is placed on a table in sunlight, you can hardly smell anything else.

Once as a child I went to a birthday party at the house of the child across the street. Halfway through the party I left quietly, returned to my own house and stood in the front window watching the other house, sucking on the thought of how they would miss me.

Once (on Freud’s example) I relaxed re. counter-espionage, I could enjoy gazing down through the layers of myself at Joseph Conrad going about his faint preconscious tasks. Several ladies at the christening found his faintness attractive. Standing by the cake table chatting about the blue of the sea, the tumbling of the sea, redemption by sea, he did not let on, nor did I, how gloomy it made him to be the guy to go to for all this sea stuff, whereas Thomas Hardy published novel after novel on any topic he liked and they sold and kept selling.

Once I was telling Joseph Conrad about my silver animal dream and he started to sing, faintly, some verses of Heine. He sounded like a phonograph. I too had wept in my dream, I was reminded by the song.

Once the analysis is over, said Freud to H.D., the person is dead. And H.D. said, Which person?

Once I was shattering and read Lacan for help. Ce que je cherche dans la parole, c’est la réponse de l’autre, I read. Ce qui me constitue comme sujet c’est ma question. I felt better already. Next came something something pour me faire reconnaître de l’autre, then a bit of French I couldn’t construe so I flipped to the footnotes and found ab1y 1b view ad w11t w111 ie. Ib ar1er ta d1b1 11d.

Once the party ended and I was clearing plates with the hostess I asked her about the white bread, its signifying supremacy, its itinerary as a fetish, I may even have quoted Lacan. She laughed. No, it was just a mistake. Her sister had misheard her on the phone, she’d been exasperated at first but then it didn’t matter, there were too many cakes anyway.

I X 30 by anne carson

the world is waiting in line / at target

imagine us in the car a sunny day the windows down

driving to the beach 88.3 driving and all those cars next to us driving

always in movement the highway is always full because the more

lanes we build the more cars are attracted to the smell of concrete

and white arrows painted over seemingly endless black surfaces:

the original infrastructure of future battlefields

imagine thousands of small highways running inside of you

all those cars driving somewhere taking something someone like us

perhaps to the beach with your mother so we would have the cooler

and the tent the umbrellas and the surfboards imagine all those cars

going somewhere taking something driving someone imagine all that

movement all that continuous movement the displacement dislocation

bodies inside metal vehicles on black surfaces running

imagine thousands of small really really small

a huge conveyor belt a network of swollen arteries imagine an open pit

an open wound the skin rupturing imagine your leg imagine your arm

imagine my leg imagine my arm

a big bag of tendons and ligaments necrotic tissue a bundle of nerve

tissue imagine bags of plastic inside your stomach lining your

intestines and climbing up your esophagus through the larynx

the lack of oxygen

imagine these huge pond type structures with plastic geothermal

liners stretching across the mountains dissecting the mountains

becoming the new mountain the only landscape leaching ponds laid

out in endless geometrical patterns

imagine every single muscle every fiber every synapse every neuron

needed for you to type with your right index finger:

n. n. n.
the letter n

imagine thousands of small highways pulsating inside of you

imagine it never stopping

thousands of small highways and the cars and the people and the things

and the places they want to take those things to because that’s what we

do we go places with things and we use metal vehicles that travel on

seemingly endless black surfaces just imagine all of this happening all

the time all the time happening all the time always

this highway

 there’s no outside

this open pit

this wound this rupture this crevice inside body this highway all the time

always

what i’m trying to say miqel is:

just imagine thousands of small highways always running inside of you

imagine everything that’s needed for this to happen

all the time

always

now imagine an open pit a large open pit in the middle of a valley

surrounded by fractured mountains

i think that’s how it works

we have that pit

we keep running: faster faster faster

birds die and their stomachs are filled with plastic

whales die and their stomachs are filled with plastic

the united states economy gets a billion-dollar daily shot in its arm

imagine your arm

i’m thinking of mine

we have that pit

and we fill it with these things

we keep running faster always faster

now imagine us at the beach, imagine it being sunny again but not

too hot, imagine the sky punctuated by a few curious clouds, your

mother would be smiling, she’s beautiful when she smiles

it’s still happening

i don’t know what it is

i’m not sure what to do about it either

but i know it’s happening, all the time, always, relentless

we have that pit, it’s open, really open

and things are exploding and people are breaking and burning and dying

and we’re distracted

because we love the sand

the salt in the water

the cool air

-Jose Antonio Villarán