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| Poems by Claudia K. Grinnell |
| Discourse
on Form In the darkness of the hive sight is useless-dozens of other bees crawl across the dancer's body [an image already itself a cliché] to feed and taste her: "dissolve with a few drops whatever excludes"* gluttony without aim and bite off this last touching of death-plenus poderes. The foot, the foot is not yet a foot, it's the wing of a Paleolithic bird and before that a marvelous manifesto. Brava and all that. And on the matter of form: Will you take tea? and In long nights I dread most and The lepers of Madurai- and it's all such a jumble, and o, for a moment not to think, to be at the center of this marvelous stillness can you hear it--? no sound *Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus ************************************************************** Language Lessons A word has meaning only if it excludes something: a dog [is not] a cat [is not] a triangle of birds heading south, light [is not] dark, even though it appears like that sometimes. Speak: Say you want to be a nightwatchman. Say it with authority: any man in Eden is already trespassing. Kick the dog [which is not] tongue-tied with sorrow: it wails. You compose a thank-you note: For witnessing what has become of me since the fall. I am learning-- I am learning, how to say apple and how it falls into my hand like a woman's breast. Nogoodfornothingmanblues I drink away every Sunday while I should be in church I burn holes in my socks with my crackpipe I play on every g-ddamn cliché you can think of for you see: don't we all want a piece of that cute fascist? The one with the white skin and blonde hair? The one who let's you smell who is master and who down on your knees, boy, down! is slave. The Collapse of the Wave Function Five arrows into stupid Cupid's nightly limit of ten, he lights a cigarette and points and says to no one in particular shall we their fond pageant see? His remaining tobacco-stainedarrow heads quiver, nodding up and down in agreement. Yes. Yes. Yes. We are with you! [they are easily excited]. Shoot him˜shoot! That motherfuckingcunteatingsnotsuckingbastard! Himhimhim! They are out for blood now. Action, my man! Not at a distance, but here in that dank, warm neon flesh of possibility: my father is a movie star, my mother, an Austrian waltz-estimons les ecchymoses desEsquimaux aux mots exquis! And Pepsi, the drink of the new generation. The flaneurs duParis walk in this sweet evening, surrounded by glass-roofed, marblepassages. Cupid lets another one fly, misses Monsieur Duchamp's heart by abicycle wheel, but creates a useful hole at the top of his cranium, a window ofopportunity, so to speak to make a man or woman madly dote upon the next live creaturethat he sees. Cupid is now interested in a young woman with unnaturally red hair whose tongue probes Monsieur Duchamp's hole. An odd scene, surely, and a passing mother speeds up, dragging her boy by his lengthening arm. The red woman's tongue touches brain, and a second later, anarrow hits her in the elbow. Convinced of God's presence, of imminentrapture, she begins referring to herself in the third person, and the air is suddenly abuzz with flies and a moon trying to find his way home.. A small chaos ensues. Cupid is well pleased and decides to call it anight. Write What You Know I know my foot, the right one, the unlucky one, the one broken once while skiing: a mismatch between slope and talent. The one broken again when a door fell on it. The one nibbled at, peed on, and licked by a blind, asthmatic dog. I know my hand, the sinister one, the one willing to hold the knife, the one thin like fog, early in March, the one doubting its own existence, even when held against the light. I know my eyes, more northernly than my mouth, and always ready to believe in a moon: how romantic, how sensible, how beautiful, how useful. This moon, a lantern, hanging (how poetic) from a tall pine, just for me, lighting my way. A moment comes when I forget: the places where I am mortal. What do I know. |
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Links: http://www.ulm.edu/~grinnell/homepage.htm Email: Grinnell@spock.ulm.edu |
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