I have been willing to consider the possibility that pleasure in itself, with regard for it as something that lessens our suffering, offers a consolation, a relief—I wanted to be able to avoid a vocabulary that insists on the secondariness or the tertiariness of pleasure. I would like to say that one of the primary reasons for being alive is to experience the pleasure of being alive. I would like to write as if it were a given to rise and look out the window on a particularly beautiful light on a summer morning, or on one of those winter mornings when snow has fallen and made the whole of New York City quiet, or you name your favorite such sight. To write of the experience of these things without any instinct to translate them into a relationship to humanism or God or philosophy or any idea, but simply because these impressions or perceptions were part of what it means to be human, and maybe because they are as close as we come to understanding the relationship of the human to the divine. That would be fine. I would love to be able to do that. Pleasure is in itself and by itself valuable and important.

--William Matthews (shortly before his death in 1997)

 

 

Minuscule Things

--William Matthews

There’s a crack in this glass so fine we can’t see it,

and in the blue eye of the candleflame’s needle

there’s a dark fleck, a speck of imperfection

that could contain, like a microchip, an epic

treatise on beauty, except it’s in the eye of the beheld.

And at the base of our glass there’s nothing

so big as a tiny puddle, but an ooze, a viscous

patina like liquefied tarnish. It’s like a text

so short it consists only of the author’s signature,

which has to stand, like the future, for what might

have been: a novel, let’s say, thick with ambiguous life.

Its hero forgets his goal as he nears it, so that it’s

like rain evaporating in the very sight of parched

Saharans on the desert floor. There, by chance, he meets

a thirsty and beautiful woman. What a small world!

 

[ Irises ; Kateryna Bilokur ]

 

The Creation of Angels

-- John Biguenet     

Something, after all, had to fill the spaces,

the vacant interstices between this and that,

between looking through a window at dusk

and finding ourselves embedded in the glass.

Something had to be imagined, a face at least

if not a mouth that might explain just why

we always felt someone's eyes upon us

even if those eyes were really just our own.

Making love, for instance, how could we understand

the two breaths rising above us twined as one,

like a rope cast up into the air that for a moment—

no, longer—stood firm, erect, as if we might climb,

swim along its length out of the depths,

following the murmured bubbles up toward the light

if not to a heaven for—whom else? —others like us,

spent insubstance, sexless and unfleshed?

And afterward, in that fresh, tormenting silence,

as our bodies settled like mud in roiled water

sinking to the bed until nothing solid remained

but the thick clarity of water, and on the other side,

in the sky it seemed, reflections floating above us,

staring back, curious, uncomprehending,

reflections we could not bring ourselves to recognize,

and so we called them—us, that is—angels.

 

Nocturne

        after Ruth Awad

--Aime Whittemore

Like a violin waiting the bow,

when I thirst, I dream

of bobcats,

dream of bluegills, alligators,

whales, creeks, hot air

balloons, fatherless

animals, windless

coasts, abandoned homes.

I push into the unabashed

territories of longing—violets,

mornings, meadows, tongues—

and the world is delicious again.

We have no idea how to live here.

To forget how you tasted those leggy afternoons

when our bodies spilled

like wine across the floor,

is to admit a hawk into the house.

Is to wring a rag of water.

When I'm in the thicket

with my smaller hungers,

I don't need to know every cave

and what it stores, cool

and damp, for you. I don't need

to know how many nests

are lined with your hair.

There's nothing tame about twilight,

this old song shaking the sweetgum leaves—

when I thirst I dream

like a violin waiting the bow.

 

Entreaty

--Catherine Pierce

Dear spring, commit. Burst

your bee-and-bloom, your blaze

of blue, get heady, get frocked,

get spun. Enough with your tentative

little breaths, your one-day-daffodils/

one-day-dewfrost. Honeysuckle us

right to our knees. Wake us

with your all-night mockingbirds,

your rowdy tree frogs. Gust

and dust us. Pollen-bomb the Hondas

and front halls, but please, no more

of this considering. This delicate-

tendrilling. Your pale green

worries me. Your barely-tuliped

branches, your slim shoots

any sideways look could doom.

The truth is I don't want to think

about fragility anymore. I can't

handle a blown-glass season,

every grass blade and dogwood

so wreckable. I'm trying hard

to teach the infallibility

of nightlights, to ignore the revving

of my own fallible heart. Spring,

you're not helping. Go all in.

Throw your white blossoms

into my gutters. Flood

my garage, mud my new shoes,

leave me afternoon-streaked

and sweating. Vine yourself

around me. Hold me

to you. Tighter.

 

[ Untitled ; Samuel Buri (1969) ]

 

 

ASMR

--Corey Van Landingham

Why not climb up the mountain

            of delight? To this world’s thin

meridian, why not be

not elsewhere, not cellaring the sulk

and brood, pores cavernous

                        and visible, the rustling

aspen portentous, the sorry

            unsaid. This world. Hello.

 

"Love Letter to Who Owns the Heaven"

                        scujus est solum ejus usque ad coelum —13th c. common law

--Corey Van Landingham

Before man dreamed up the flying machine

                        we owned the air as far above our land

             as we could imagine. Up to infinity. Down

to hell. Because air, in the days of tangible

property, was nothing. No foot had emerged

                        from a shuttle onto the foreign terrain

             of the moon. No satellites passing over the garden.

No drones. The act of a horse, law says,

reaching his head into an adjoining field

                        and biting another horse is a trespass.

            A word, freed from the lips, is in the air

a trespass. Now, in a country divvying up

the sky, unmanned machines will be given

                        innocent passage. People will walk around

            whispering dominium as if to control at least

their breath. So, before the space of utterance

is duly regulated, before the 83 feet of air

                        we own above our heads begins its collapse,

            this. I love you from the depth of the earth

to the height of the sky. I love you upon

land immovable, soil open to exploitation

                        by all. I am for your unreasonable use alone.

            And, when the drone finally interferes

with your possessor’s enjoyment, to an

indefinite extent, I’ll remember a time when

                        men were the ones doing harm with

            their own hands. I’ll remember the words I once

had to give to you, on the porch, in private.

 

ASMR

--Corey Van Landingham

Hello—Tonight

we’ll trace the static bough,

temporalis to

tailbone, cool stone,

the childhood grotto

you always sleepless haunt, audible

dripping from the ferns’

pre-Raphaelite, gauzy

frame.

I’m rasping your spine

with the edge of a wooden

spoon. Stranger,

I love  you.

Even if you have no

small chimpanzee to rock you back

and forth.

 

[ The flowers of madness ; Carl Gustafsson (2019) ]

 

 

Poem

--Rachel Abramowitz

As one drunk into a carriage with no sail.

Thoughtful, I wandered then, reins in hand,

exhaling as best I could, considering.

My friends think I’m right to watch the night’s

portrait carefully as I can, barking aloud and jotting

its scuro into my hushed book. Driving by the park.

The trees scissor the sky into collage, dark blossoms,

filament, encore. Don’t set your best orchards on fire

or drown your fingers or sing to me.

I’ve seen more in the capsized moon than dark-motored history,

and when my horse gets thirsty, I lead him

to the damp earth. He knows what to do.

 

The Orange

--Rachel Abramowitz

To look or to listen? Or to touch, to offer

the soft-downed small of the back, like a canvas,

to the blood-rush of both gentleness

and pain, the same blood blooming

against the boundaries. Of course what we touch

is space only, the brain filling in because

it wants to live. We dig because we want to live,

cover because we want to live,

but as the orange on the counter begins

to whiten and fuzz, I don’t think you want to live.

You don’t want to die either, because I have seen you

look at the orange and its death

with something beyond fear

or revulsion: just a decision.

You look at me, deciding. To touch, then, to watch

oneself in another’s hands, to feel, in this moment

of decay, beloved or useful.

 

Garden of Eden

--Rachel Abramowitz

Spring, my little knife,

skittish as a criminal drunk

on scholarship, here I am

on your doorstep, bearing the warts

of our long acquaintance. The sky

negligees its way through every globe of dew

caught in the earth’s unwashed hair.

You are the season of loathing, of one

half of the brain refusing to question

the other half, preferring

to cyclops its way through the grift.

Hold this fencepost, hand me the hammer.

If God is to think about human beings

it must be in a piece of land with a fence around it. 

 

[ Landscape of Creuse at spring ; Armand Guillaumin ]

 

Our Eternal Sounds

--Adam Clay

What might all songs lean into?

 

               You scramble eggs one moment,

and in the next minute

 

               you're eating them

with dry toast and black coffee

 

               in silence.

 

                              On a day like any day,

your voice is not your own:

 

the grass clippings disrupt

 

a robin too large to fly

from worm to worm.

 

We don't know why we speak,

 

               but yet our voices

persist, even when void of substance—

                              like a dream you'd like

 

     to recall throughout the day,

 

but you don't or you can't

and after a week, it's gone forever.

 

Of course our voices

evolve years before our bodies—

 

our vocal cords vibrate like a heartbeat,

               senselessly. No explanation

needed.

 

Eventually all languages converge.

               Each thought falls

 

into all others. And what thought

               resists being built by words?

 

                              Perhaps fear placed us

               here in this room together:

 

a fear of fire at one point turned

into a fear of God. After that, a fear

 

of godlessness, a room

where a word before

 

               another word and another

 

word after the first

was all we had, all we could

imagine. Somehow

 

an image means

more than the object itself

but not because

 

               it's made of words. Most likely

it's because the act of creation

 

sets the mind down like a bird

               in a field

 

where the speed of the invasive cannot exist.

Elegy for the Forgotten Thought of What Brought Us Here

--Adam Clay 

Even if our minds do trick us, even if we act as shadows

on a wall

blindly unaware of the sun setting behind us,

the earth cannot pause without us. The earth could not be anything

without the sum of its parts

we tell ourselves. Like asking what God wants, like asking what

any of us wants. As if desire is all it takes to make any of us a god

that some insect somewhere might

bow down to. The trees all have two names that split this town-

all towns-

dissecting a story into a beginning and an end.

Yes, that perfectly.

Overhead, a single bird flaps its wings.

Overhead, a thousand birds flap their wings-

And the moment of hesitation, of action, of disaster comes and then goes

and the question mark at the end of the tunnel is in reality a single rock,

a rock that exists despite the world’s intentions, despite the direction

in which the world leans.

 

Psalm for the Silence in the Air

Before the Newspaper Hits the Ground

--Adam Clay

Where was it that I found myself face near the sand

looking for a grain of sand

among a million others? And did

I dare to remove a puzzle piece

from the yard so carefully pruned,

the yard that would have seemed

savage a year ago to any passerby but myself?

Bereft of perception, what is the sun?

What is the ideal curtain-call

of diesel fumes and worn-out railroad ties

spoken in the hinge of darkness

outside every door? At what point

do we pause to worship

the ringing phone no one else can hear?

 

[ Opus in Springtime ; Sun Ra and His Arkestra- Pit-Inn '88 ]

 

Love Poem

--Dorothea Grossman

In a lightning bolt

of memory,

I see our statue of Buddha

(a wedding gift from Uncle Gene)

which always sat

on top of the speaker cabinet.

When a visitor asked,

“So, does Buddha like jazz?”

you said, “I hope so.

He’s been getting it up the ass

for a long time.”

 

I don't own an exquisite way to move around in the night

                            —Doug Benezra

It occurs to me that,

when I die,

they might find the necklace

I dropped behind the bed

and wonder

how long it was there,

and whether I’d missed it.

But will they care

about my favorite color,

my long-range plans,

or my habit of searching myself

for signs of rust?

--Dorothea Grossman

I allow myself

the luxury of breakfast

(I am no nun, for Christ’s sake).

Charmed as I am

by the sputter of bacon,

and the eye-opening properties

of eggs,

it’s the coffee

that’s really sacramental.

In the old days,

I spread fires and floods and pestilence

on my toast.

Nowadays, I’m more selective,

I only read my horoscope

by the quiet glow of the marmalade.

--Dorothea Grossman

 

 

[ Noa ; Alfred Freddy Krupa (2016) ]

 

To Be Hungry Is To Be Great

--William Carlos Williams

The small, yellow grass-onion,

spring’s first green, precursor

to Manhattan’s pavements, when

plucked as it comes, in bunches,

washed, split and fried in

a pan, though inclined to be

a little slimy, if well cooked

and served hot on rye bread

is to beer a perfect appetizer——

and the best part

of it is they grow everywhere.

 

April

--William Carlos Williams

If you had come away with me

into another state

we had been quiet together.

But there the sun coming up

out of the nothing beyond the lake was

too low in the sky,

there was too great a pushing

against him,

too much of sumac buds, pink

in the head

with the clear gum upon them,

too many opening hearts of lilac leaves,

too many, too many swollen

limp poplar tassels on the

bare branches!

It was too strong in the air.

I had no rest against that

springtime!

The pounding of the hoofs on the

raw sods

stayed with me half through the night.

I awoke smiling but tired.

 

Dawn

--William Carlos Williams

Ecstatic bird songs pound

the hollow vastness of the sky

with metallic clinkings—

beating color up into it

at a far edge,—beating it, beating it

with rising, triumphant ardor,—

stirring it into warmth,

quickening in it a spreading change,—

bursting wildly against it as

dividing the horizon, a heavy sun

lifts himself—is lifted—

bit by bit above the edge

of things,—runs free at last

out into the open—!lumbering

glorified in full release upward—

                             songs cease.

 

[ Interior with Book ; Richard Diebenkorn (1959) ]

 

The Latest Freed Man

--Wallace Stevens

Tired of the old descriptions of the world,

The latest freed man rose at six and sat

On the edge of his bed. He said,

                                            “I suppose there is

A doctrine to this landscape. Yet, having just

Escaped from the truth, the morning is color and mist,

Which is enough: the moment’s rain and sea,

The moment’s sun (the strong man vaguely seen),

Overtaking the doctrine of this landscape. Of him

And of his works, I am sure. He bathes in the mist

Like a man without a doctrine. The light he gives—

It is how he gives his light. It is how he shines,

Rising upon the doctors in their beds

And on their beds… .”

                                 And so the freed man said.

It was how the sun came shining into his room:

To be without a description of to be,

For a moment on rising, at the edge of the bed, to be,

To have the ant of the self changed to an ox

With its organic boomings, to be changed

From a doctor into an ox, before standing up,

To know that the change and that the ox-like struggle

Come from the strength that is the strength of the sun,

Whether it comes directly or from the sun.

It was how he was free. It was how his freedom came.

It was being without description, being an ox.

It was the importance of the trees outdoors,

The freshness of the oak-leaves, not so much

That they were oak-leaves, as the way they looked.

It was everything being more real, himself

At the centre of reality, seeing it.

It was everything bulging and blazing and big in itself,

The blue of the rug, the portrait of Vidal,

Qui fait fi des joliesses banales, the chairs.

 

The Good Man Has No Shape

--Wallace Stevens

Through centuries he lived in poverty.

God only was his only elegance.

Then generation by generation he grew

Stronger and freer, a little better off.

He lived each life because, if it was bad,

He said a good life would be possible.

At last the good life came, good sleep, bright fruit,

And Lazarus betrayed him to the rest,

Who killed him, sticking feathers in his flesh

To mock him. They placed with him in his grave

Sour wine to warn him, an empty book to read;

And over it they set a jagged sign,

Epitaphium to his death, which read,

The Good Man Has No Shape, as if they knew.

 

Human Arrangement

--Wallace Stevens

Place-bound and time-bound in evening rain

And bound by a sound which does not change,

Except that it begins and ends,

Begins again and ends again—

Rain without change within or from

Without. In this place and in this time

And in this sound, which do not change,

In which the rain is all one thing,

In the sky, an imagined, wooden chair

Is the clear-point of an edifice,

Forced up from nothing, evening’s chair,

Blue-strutted curule, true–unreal,

The centre of transformations that

Transform for transformation’s self,

In a glitter that is a life, a gold

That is a being, a will, a fate.