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For my parents
For my brother
In memory of Rose
Printing, having found in the book a refuge in which to lead an autonomous existence, is pitilessly dragged out onto the street… If centuries ago it began gradually to lie down, passing from the upright inscription to the manuscript resting on sloping desks before finally taking to bed in the printed book, it now begins just as slowly to rise again from the ground. The newspaper is read more in the vertical than in the horizontal plane, while film and advertisement force the printed word entirely into the dictatorial perpendicular.
Walter Benjamin, “One-way Street”
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.
Hart Crane, “At Melville’s Tomb”
Contents
V Twenty-One Gun Salute for Ronald Reagan
Copyright, Credits and Feedback Link
I
BEGETTING STADIA
I
for Marjorie Welish
Demands indefinitely specified,
demands incompatible with collective living
beget stadia
with indefinite seating
delicately tiered.
Resembling its shape
and therefore suggesting its function:
a wave.
Or repeating its shape
and therefore undoing its function:
a wave,
which I will here attempt to situate
in the broader cognitive process
of turning the page.
Just because these tears were on your face
doesn’t mean they’re yours.
The tree in your mind
is mine.
The redistribution of tears
reflects our collective commitment
to storm and stress,
to attitudes befitting participants in sports
and sports writing.
The conventions governing weeping in novels
do not apply to weeping done on-camera
or in teams.
Eldest sons dispossessed of ancestral tears
mock the tears of the nouveaux riches.
You call that weeping?
We call it sports entertainment
because the loser gets paid more,
because losing is hazardous,
because hazards are for losers
in the collective economy
of variable stars.
Rational actors wearing wrestling masks
would choose to lose collectively,
to collectivize losing
in the service industry.
I perform a valuable service
(I lose)
and I work from home.
Am I not then entitled to drink six beers
and watch some losing gracefully performed?
The sorcerer’s apprentice is an animated mouse
losing control over water-toting brooms.
Now, what does that say about cleaning?
Sorcery cuts grease and glass like lightning!
Now, who will clean up this water?
What will we use to remove this water
from our jerseys? I suggest sorcery.
My Little League team is made up of animated mice
losing control of their jerseys
and delaying the game with lightning
in the manner of Fabius and Disney.
General Disney gets clothes clean (with sorcery).
General Disney’s Chicken (with sorcery sauce).
The novel hurled to the ground breaks into