12th of March to 2nd of April
Hen pheasant’s feather does for a fly,
green tail, the wings flat on the body
Dark fur from a hare’s ear for a body
a green shaded partridge feather
grizzled yellow cock’s hackle
green wax; harl from a peacock’s tail
bright lower body; about the size of pin
the head should be. can be fished from seven a.m.
till eleven; at which time the brown marsh fly comes on.
As long as the brown continues, no fish will take Granham
(Ezra Pound, from Canto LI.)
The child is feather to the man;
mice don’t brood. The swiftest race
to the pie. In the sky an encomium
rewards all who notice it.
This isn’t the way I meant to live
but I must or will have to move.
In broader streets the video preference
startles a dozing anomaly—“Come again?”
I just did. I want it to be all clean
and tasting of only distance and water.
There is a stairway in my pocket
and pheasants on the railway
and all I ever had was to be yours,
your instructor. Again I fell for it,
his pencil sharpener. Over time that
made him quite difficult and complicated.
Now is only sun, sunstrife and sea.
(John Ashbery)
What happened was that as Mildred’s expanded, the food we were asked to eat was just too much, too fast. At first it was a pleasure; the fried chicken, in particular. We sat at checkered tablecloths and were careful not to spill the gravy or make crumbs – the set dressers were vigilant, and among the meanest people at the studio. The coffee was good, too, very hot, but we were not permitted to blow on it because this action distended our cheeks, and consequently many burned their mouths, without grimacing of course.
But the plot called for more Mildred’s, more chicken, more scalding coffee, and also those mile-high cream pies, the kind no one makes anymore, as if they were prohibited. Why not make a pie so tall it cannot fit anywhere but a Hollywood set? But even the pies began to wear on us. The variety helped – pumpkin, apple, and the myriad creams: pineapple, banana, lemon chiffon – however many of us began to fall ill. Those who fell sick nonetheless showed up for work, because work was not plentiful, and in addition to our wages we were eating well; but the eating was difficult enough without feeling sick.
Then we had to travel, to the Mildred’s at Laguna Beach, to the many Mildred’s in the booming Valley – often in one day, at one meal even. The script would call for chickens down south and pie back north. The choice assignment was Beverly Hills, but soon they stopped serving food there altogether and used it only for the office scenes. While Mildred was working in Beverly Hills, we were eating everywhere else, keeping the money flowing, the business booming. The plot necessities were clear, but none of us could see how it could last.
And it didn’t last. Not enough mouths, not enough chicken, not enough pie to pay for all the costs associated with the now ubiquitous Mildred’s. An entire population was eating, but it wasn’t enough. It would take the end of the war, returning soldiers, big new families, to eat all the food this plot required. Before that could happen they killed off the principals, closed the set, put us out of work. Then we missed the chicken and coffee. I remember arguments about which Mildred’s had been the best, which pie, which gravy with the fried chicken. These were long, impassioned bouts of nostalgia for a set the likes of which we would never see again, food we could only recall in black and white, that looked so good we could never be sure we had ever really tasted it.
(Damon Krukowski, from The Memory Theater Burned, 2004.)
Once when I read the funnies
I took my little magnifying glass
and looked too close.
Forms became colors and colors
were just arrays of dots
and between the dots I saw the rough bleak
storyless legend of the pulp paper
empty as the winter moon
and dreaded it.
I had looked right through,
when I wanted a universe
that sustains
looker and looking and the seen
forever, detail after detail
never ending. And all I had found
was between. But between
had its own song:
Find it in the space between—
it is just as empty as it seems
but this blankness is your mother.
(Robert Kelly, from Under Words.)
Little soul little stray
little drifter
now where will you stay
all pale and all alone
after the way
you used to make fun of things
(Hadrian, trans. W. S. Merwin)
The day the fat woman
In the bright blue bathing suit
Walked into the water and died,
I thought about the human
Condition. Pieces of old fruit
Came in and were left by the tide.
What I thought about the human
Condition was this: old fruit
Comes in and is left, and dries
In the sun. Another fat woman
In a dull green bathing suit
Dives into the water and dies.
The pulmotors glisten. It is noon.
We dry and die in the sun
While the seascape arranges old fruit,
Coming in with the tide, glistening
At noon. A woman, moderately stout,
In a nondescript bathing suit,
Swims to a pier. A tall woman
Steps toward the sea. One thinks about the human
Condition. The tide goes in and goes out.
(Weldon Kees, from Poems 1947–1954.)
Let that happen in the country. These men. Latest album, it’s called.
We have songs and stories. She has seen you. Didn’t even want. Days.
I’m sure you’ve heard this. See it.
Nor says—
what does—
they do mean—
Okay, this career as a result:
that means, do you remember?
And I did. You take it. Is—
it’s not your average language.
To get just under diplomatic, the U.S. is,
it’s a children’s working, also.
Sparkling sixties and seventies, and
though the most lives—
Danish any minute!
Well, you know it works.
That makes sense that they may have had
you. Used to be
Senator McCain, you know, that really
much more underground to? Can see much more. Radical
Jan, eighteen years old. System, will it,
the band is, uh,
you’ve also,
course of a year’s—
Taking naps on this issue. Coming up: the sound of Warner Brothers is a very
(the label now).
Sometimes, an excuse for people not to do anything is to knock people. Who I am,
did you find something different and in music? Think he went from being radical to moving.
Have you changed? I think you know, sir.
In order to do it and craft room to maneuver
a, you know, anything,
as you get older,
you know your emotional spiritually. Console. More involved, a little wider, and
it’s not just screaming about “Hamas took the government,” is— no merger your parents, and it’s,
it’s easy, to that mandate.
The now.
Each will engage in a gallon up,
whose economy money is a while.
No, I don’t mean a minor. Scuffles in a box,
I guess, how are—? just calling on a timeline? are over? There,
and you’re,
um,
Greg Norman.
Yeah.
Halfway between the calming influence in the world; influence are at. And these,
Andrea, and yeah,
that allowed, right.
That’s what the children, the harsh,
but I think the “you”. It’s just wonderful. We come back again,
a lot of us, and we’ll be right back.
in a few minutes. With the anybody around, that time when I,
I acted Ian McKellen, of Gang out of Gas.
I want to thank God that – not – bank – you – on that.
(Source. Text is from the “Transcribe Audio” feature; I added capitalization and punctuation because we can’t expect Google to do everything for us.)
For David Foster Wallace
This guy got lost in the snow. Then found.
Then came a sense of having lost the snow
or lost water or some infinite thing.
He watched the ME channel, day in and
day out. He couldn’t help it: An old fish
swam by some little fish, asking,
how’s the water? The skeletons in one
show taught parables about greed, envy,
and lust, to show that vices lead to loss.
This little rat got obsessed with
weight lifting and sex, for example.
She preened on, licking her tail & feet.
But the rat had already been lost, clearly,
or had already lost. From the beginning,
she looked thirsty. Her dark eyes peered out
as if toward some infinite thing, some body
of water from which to drink,
across which might be a horizon.
The guy remembered his time in Alaska
when, close to death, he had longed for God
with a purity that felt close to God, how
afterward the longing ebbed, and even
snow went back to being a hassle, often
dirty. The skeleton said truth every time
the rat said beauty. In the wild, you have to
melt snow before you drink it. He had known
that much, to separate the air from water.
(Heather Green, from No Omen.)
Near the top of each page a new story would begin, go on
for a while, reach the end of the page, and never end. One
would become lost in story after story, set on edge, anxious
to find out what would finally happen. And always, nothing,
no matter where one found oneself in any story at the
end of the page it was over. You would never know how each
story might have ended. At the end of the page it was over.
We took these books with us to desert islands.
(Dara Wier, from Remnants of Hannah.)
(for Harold Bloom)
Now in the middle of my life
all things are white.
I walk under the trees,
the frayed leaves,
the wide net of noon,
and the day is white.
And my breath is white,
drifting over the patches
of grass and fields of ice
into the high circles of light.
As I walk, the darkness of
my steps is also white,
and my shadow blazes
under me. In all seasons
the silence where I find myself
and what I make of nothing are white,
the white of sorrow,
the white of death.
Even the night that calls
like a dark wish is white;
and in my sleep as I turn
in the weather of dreams
it is the white of my sheets
and the white shades of the moon
drawn over my floor
that save me for morning.
And out of my waking
the circle of light widens,
it fills with trees, houses,
stretches of ice.
It reaches out. It rings
the eye with white.
All things are one.
All things are joined
even beyond the edge of sight.
(Mark Strand, from The Late Hour.)