Sonnets |
by Bernadette Mayer |
|
HERE’S A NEW KIND OF SONNET to bewilder the ever-present ladybugs & turn supermarkets into galaxies there’s a snowdrop coming up 2/1/09 it’s good to know there’s hope for spring darwin never knew how silly sexually we’d be it’s the only flower you might have trouble getting to; maybe I’m so old I wont be able to reach any flowers this year, even daisies will be beyond me: “I’m so close to that queen anne’s lace but I can’t reach it!” there’s always the special queen anne’s lace hotline for seniors your corkscrew penis wont fit my vagina corkscrewing the other way RAINBOWS & MUSHROOMS the weather man’s afraid to say rain today’s prediction was “dryish” but it was raining, is raining & will be raining, the mosquitoes’ve become lethal & huge, there’s flooding everywhere, trees fall down, we should be building an ark waiting for max, alyssa & marie, having started way too early, I’m bored & it isn’t raining, I miss the rain when it’s not here now that I’ve gotten used to it. melissa & mike are visiting too & today, after we eat gnocchi with artichokes, everybody but max adjourns to the NYC. here & there across the sunny field is a sign of autumn, the water’s deep & cold for august, it’s the green corn moon, the grain moon, where did I go wrong, almost harvest? now it’s wet & cold, where do I go? max photographed barn wood on old route 20 I write to kill time (erik satie) eeny meeny miny moe, are you a towhee? A - avocet B - blue jay C - chickadee, cardinal D - warbler (dendroica) E - egret F - finch G - rose breasted grosbeak H - blue heron I - ibis, icterid (blackbird) J - junco K - kestrel L - loon M - merganser N - nuthatch O - owl, osprey P - pelican Q - quail R - red winged blackbird (icterid), robin, roadrunner S - siskin T - tanager, turkey U - underwood typewriter V - vulture W - woodpecker (pileated), wren Y - yellow finch Z - zinger COULD YOU BRING THE WINE? our power our poor pourer our impoverishment went out the hungry door all sentient beings see the sun and/or feel it, it weighs a ton poor on odd days, rich on even but on the days of the month that are prime numbers, we get a little bit the way we’re not today, poor as church mice we hie to the Hannaford’s spend fifty-eight dollars & seventy-three cents for a week’s worth of food, the eggs & cigarettes got with a credit card soon we’ll be free-vores & dumpster-dive & glean CARDINAL FLOWERS when in the course of human events I summon up remembrance of the walk we took I see nothing, I don’t see, maybe I was blind or so enraptured by the sights of the creeks - how many things can you keep in mind at once? - I said I didn’t see those creeks but I did except I cant remember anything now I’ve both lied & lost this sunny memory so recently stored away in a manger no crib for a bed, the little lord pathway - “I wonder if I should drink coffee” - now I remember less than nothing, what does that mean? - I feel so attabled I might be the someone else I threatened my sister with being & nothingness SARDINES is a yellow, red, orange, black & green word. I got sardines at the dollar store where everything except sardines is more than a dollar, for sixty cents, as they should be my father used to take sardine sandwiches to work perhaps therefore, I love sardines. when people used to talk about the subway, they’d say: we were packed like sardines which send a message: small, cheap, tightly packed, anchovies for the poor or you too can be both colorful & inexpensive as a really snappy, tiny bright blue convertible in which you can enjoy the good things about feeling like a sardine but maybe you’d rather be a striped bass or be a manatee with me or a grand whale, forgetful of nothing even being so big, the ocean’s CEO, you’ll take home a giant amount of cash when the ocean goes bust so you can share it even with the downtrodden sardines who get packed in cans in Thailand & shipped to the family dollar store for Bernadette YOU’RE BORING AS A BLUE JAY day is night is different from saying night is day today is like a night, tonight might seem as long as a day, it’s raining lions & mastodons, the creek never floods in july or hasn’t but it might be turning over a new leaf next day more rain, all night, rain it’s beginning to seem too weird pain at the pump’s been replaced by rain just to distract you like the inside of a fallen trumpet flower to a blue jay when’s it gonna not rain? I cant do without food BILL GREEN money’s green as grass neither grows on trees but I’ll trade you blades for cash I need to get bill a snow globe of the statue of liberty, we’ve got plenty of tree trunks here, ones with leaves but no manufactured items except t.v.s, cars, earth movers & chain saws sinks, stoves & refrigerators bill’s got a generator & a snow-blower I have an electric typewriter & a huge inflated bee on top of the t.v. everybody has more money than me the tulips are planted by the water pump POWDERED VERMONT CHEDDAR & CELTIC SEA SALT phil and hector went to the creek I didn’t go cause it’s still too icy I’ve been burned by my last attempt today a fifty degree day in February last night I dreamt anne gave me 100 $100 bills she had some extras. sun, no, yes, maybe on their return they walk to the footprints still in the snow without apparent difficulty and, guess what? the sun comes out but not for long; the snow’s shrunk as feebly as the sun shines. let’s hope tonight’s rain washes the snow away so walk I can the ice got worse, now what? yellow & green pie with chemicals FIRST SNOW HOTLINE out the somber window that shows hibernating trees, the water pump, the road nothing falling from the gray sky yet the room I’m in’s too clean, the fire’s failed I’m doing the French fries on top of the stove the mail’s failed to come, the turkey had no liver but it may work to write this poem unless it gets stuck like a car by the creek the creeks are over the top, be wary of them, of getting mail from a bank & a flyer from the family dollar store in which everything is more than a dollar except sardines, I don’t even have a bank account but I saw a rainbow in the woods once when the sun got low enough to shine under the earth’s cloud caps, I thought that’s not a bad deal on dish detergent |
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