POEM OF THE DAY BY ALBERT GOLDBARTH

If We Were Honest


When I tell you that cultural ritual is an artifice
composed of simultaneous social-dynamic complexity vectors acting in anthropometric units,
I’m thinking of sex. I mean it.
We all are. It isn’t just me. Or when I say
the war, or the god, or the list with the juice and the cereal...
sex. What is it the psycho-experts are claiming?—every ten seconds?
When I tell you that I’m thinking of sex,

I’m thinking of death. Its worm is always
in my eye, its sour and dirt-blown web is always
a catch in my throat. It was always a wen
releasing a small electrical jolt to the brain
of Napoleon, Alexander, Attila. It was funereally
in the black, black ink of the Brontes;
why should I be any different? Why can’t we

be honest?—every poem is “Sex.” (Or “Death.”)
If we were honest, half of our poems would be about
the making of poems, the conference on the making of poems,
the resume of poems successfully made...you know, the way
that half of the time is actually spent. And did
ten seconds pass just now? If so, then
sex. (If so, then death.) Not too long after

the Dolphin first made port in Tahiti, it was discovered
the crew were trading its nails
for dalliances with the pliant and welcoming
women of that island—“to such a great extent, the ship
was in danger of being pulled apart.”
Inside the cradling waves of moonlight
on those waters...smiling...consummating...human

nails into smooth, bamboo-brown human grain...
how did they know, how could they foresee, that
my mother would die from her own lungs
shaping hundreds of obstinate fists in her chest,
my father would die with his own blood turning
into a useless negative of itself?
And yet they must have known, they must have seen the lesson,

they were trying to deny it with the drive of such
combustive, zealous engines! This is my topic
tonight, and how the craft of poetry and the role
of the postmodern in a society of gender-defined relationship roles is yes a bare knee like a beacon,
like a skull beneath the face-skin, and a question
from the audience on a quasi-political sense is yes in my mind, yes in yours, yes
sex and death—the one thing.


-Albert Goldbarth

THE CIRCUIT

So, there we were,

The three of us, thoroughly crammed in

And over-cooked in the cab of the old Mack,

A covered roasting pan

Situated dead center and ground zero

in the spacious, atmospheric oven of late August.

Yeah, there we were;

Me, Jimmy T. and the Old Man

Is GODDAMNIN and SHITTIN

And SON-OF-A-BITCHIN

And the truck is actin up,

Givin us nothin but grief.

Probly the transmission

Is refusin to transmit, Im thinking,

To complete the circuit,

To accept the Official General Motors

Junior Executive Pass Key

To the compost heap on the far side

Of the south field.

So, like I says, there we were,

Three surly Kansas crackers

Thatre just about to crack,

Trapped at the helm of a beat-up,

Burnt-out cargo ship full of cowshit,

Horseshit, grass clippings and kitchen scraps.

And the sun is firin down.

And the air is burnin up.

And the ol Capn is boilin over:

FIFteen fuckin years,

fifteen fuckin years,

fifteen MOTHERFUCKIN YEARS

and then KABLAM!!!

The whole tweaked-out scenario

Blows wide open and then just sorta

Sorrowfully slumps.

So here we are, me, Jimmy T.

And the Old Man is dreamin and hummin

And drummin out a slow shuffle of a beat.

Bellies and big belt buckles

Are officially to the bar down here

At The Blue Lounge and were in over our heads

In another pitcher of PBR.

And then,

Finally,

After what seems like a lifetime, it comes,

From the dark side of a looming

Harvest moon of silence,

Through the stellar gleam of a far away eye,

Out from under a foamy moustache

sometimes you just gotta walk away, boys,

sometimes you just gotta walk away.

-Jason Ryberg

POEM OF THE DAY BY ED HIRSCH

FAST BREAK


In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984


A hook shot kisses the rim and
hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop,

and for once our gangly starting center
boxes out his man and times his jump

perfectly, gathering the orange leather
from the air like a cherished possession

and spinning around to throw a strike
to the outlet who is already shoveling

an underhand pass toward the other guard
scissoring past a flat-footed defender

who looks stunned and nailed to the floor
in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight

of a high, gliding dribble and a man
letting the play develop in front of him

in slow motion, almost exactly
like a coach's drawing on the blackboard,

both forwards racing down the court
the way that forwards should, fanning out

and filling the lanes in tandem, moving
together as brothers passing the ball

between them without a dribble, without
a single bounce hitting the hardwood

until the guard finally lunges out
and commits to the wrong man

while the power-forward explodes past them
in a fury, taking the ball into the air

by himself now and laying it gently
against the glass for a lay-up,

but losing his balance in the process,
inexplicably falling, hitting the floor

with a wild, headlong motion
for the game he loved like a country

and swiveling back to see an orange blur
floating perfectly though the net.


-Ed Hirsch

POEM OF THE DAY BY ROBIN EKISS

Android Clarinetist

In that century before
we entered the innermost atom,
they played games
like Physionotrace:

assorted noses, eyes, and lips
that could be placed
on the surfeit slate
of a cutout face

and rearranged
to form a Hottentot or Jew.
The question of race
is still that inscrutable

God-in-a-box, back
to the outermost Adam,
simple body siphoned
like a water organ,

from whose subtle variations
spring the complex
machine: trunk
pulleyed by levers,

potato-headed predecessor.
In the garden, he could choose
to grow or starve
one flower

to force another
to bloom—thus today
metamorphic industry,
metaphoric as a bird

on the branch of a bare tree:
curiosity, a kind of pain
consanguineous
with conscience.

Is it sour or sweetness
we desire
when we turn back
to the code we've cracked,

as the Calvinists looked away
from the Android Clarinetist,
physiognomy free
from the defect

of imperfect individuality,
not by any definition a man—
this kind of music
wooden fingers make.

-Robin Ekiss

POEM OF THE DAY BY BOB HICOCK

GO GREYHOUND


A few hours after Des Moines

the toilet overflowed.

This wasn't the adventure it sounds.



I sat with a man whose tattoos

weighed more than I did.

He played Hendrix on mouth guitar.

His Electric Ladyland lips

weren't fast enough

and if pitch and melody

are the rudiments of music,

this was just

memory, a body nostalgic

for the touch of adored sound.



Hope's a smaller thing on a bus.



You hope a forgotten smoke consorts

with lint in the pocket of last

resort to be upwind

of the human condition, that the baby

sleeps

and when this never happens,

that she cries

with the lullaby meter of the sea.



We were swallowed by rhythm.

The ultra blond

who removed her wig and applied

fresh loops of duct tape

to her skull,

her companion who held a mirror

and popped his dentures

in and out of place,

the boy who cut stuffing

from the seat where his mother

should have been--

there was a little more sleep

in our thoughts,

it was easier to yield.



To what, exactly--

the suspicion that what we watch

watches back,

cornfields that stare at our hands,

downtowns

that hold us in their windows

through the night?



Or faith, strange to feel

in that zoo of manners.



I had drool on my shirt and breath

of the undead, a guy

dropped empty Buds on the floor

like gravity was born

to provide this service,

we were white and black trash

who'd come

in an outhouse on wheels and still



some had grown--

in touching the spirited shirts

on clotheslines,

after watching a sky of starlings

flow like cursive

over wheat--back into creatures

capable of a wish.



As we entered Arizona

I thought I smelled the ocean,

liked the lie of this

and closed my eyes

as shadows

puppeted against my lids.



We brought our failures with us,

their taste, their smell.

But the kid

who threw up in the back

pushed to the window anyway,

opened it

and let the wind clean his face,

screamed something

I couldn't make out

but agreed with

in shape, a sound I recognized

as everything I'd come so far

to give away.


-Bob Hicok

POEM OF THE DAY BY LIZ WALDNER

A Calculus of Readiness
I, too, come from the city of dolls. A small palm is my umbrella. This takes care of above but below, the blind river of sadness rolls on and in it, a hand is always reaching up to pick fish from the night-time sky. The lines on the palm of the hand lure a trout with a strand of hair from the head of a doll. The bait is the hope for a hand on your brow. Shadows play on the wall. Or the face of a doll. The plants eyeing each other is all. I would not call the stars generous. They don't cry enough for dolls to play Drink Me. They don't cast a covenant's fishy rainbow yet leaf faces watch the open window where they hang far and hard. The rein of starlight a second hand with which to play Go Fish. Now Give me a hand, plants. Now give me good-night, stars. -Liz Waldner

POEM OF THE DAY BY JOHN REINHARD

Warren Zevon and Townes Van Zandt Get Drunk in Heaven

This is where you can kick the dead dog
until it snarls itself awake,
licks its nuts, and then
heads to the creek
where the boys will be fishing
until the almost dark.
This
is where the whiskey's free
and the women are easy
company. The only hangover
is a canopy of tree limb
that shields you graciously
from God's wild and lonely eye.

Every day is your best lyric.
Townes sings,
If I had a nickel
I'd find a game
If I won a dollar
I'd make it rain
And if it rained an ocean
I'd drink it dry
And lay me down dissatisfied.
Life'll kill ya,
Warren says. Warren says,
I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Except here he is, and Townes too, not
like coyotes stiff in the back of
a pick-up headed for a Lubbock taxidermist
but trading shots, never worrying about
the sober life or repercussions,
the cancers, the heart attacks.
And though the sun
will eventually position itself
exact and low in the sky,
it never sets. Instead

the sun will scuff along the horizon
like the toe of a cowboy boot
or the last piece of ice in
two fingers of bourbon
or the truth in a song
and the stories the song becomes.

So the bottle's never empty,
the glass is never full,
and the songwriters sip at their days,
Townes Van Zandt saying to Warren Zevon,
"Man, this crazy guitar of mine, up here,
she ain't ever out o' tune."
The rhymes,
like the whiskey, offer themselves
graciously, asking only
for a couple of chords, a breath,
a hillside, a bit of faith.

-John Reinhard