After Ron Padgett’s Amsterdam
The sky has been paved over
by no boats in the Hackensack.
In the gutters of River Road
watery asphalt crumbles
because it is New Jersey and
very unwell. Even the street
light thinks filth, with
the sadness of her body
her electric mind every minute
and Ken Zisa inside
the house watching his Yankees
inning after inning. Outside
the window, a man says something
and a girl laughs, “No, Milagros,
eso no es un gusano real.”
Everything fizzles.
It’s funny how
if you just let go
of things they
will come to
you. That is to say
sometimes. So what
good is such a
generalization?
Ah, it makes you
feel good to say
such things from
time to time,
as if you actually
and really and truly
knew something!
Source: Padgett, Ron. Collected Poems. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Coffee House Press, 2013, p. 415.
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“B is for the Brute / in white soft, scuffless sneakers / smoke”
stretching at Autosayyid
B is for
Brute
that oil-stained to Ghostbro
are
and
slit
here
the general tattoo waving
loaded to a
share and of my
hat
gnawing
me to
the
stared asphalt four of my hats
gnawing
overing
this
nothink
a
little
Post-Corporeal
Over touched asphalt
four face When the stood part
no doi But heaven’s only elide the checkered minivan obeying of time Someone
else will die
and
in
a table
“Killing
to
the rain the
rain the man’s oil-stained
to the girl is the old manifest
B is for the Brute the Brute
in white soft, scuffless sneakers
smoke
Thomas and
the minivan or
San Diego.
unlicked filth on bentbranch fingers
& a chemical thin residue
lean waits to be pleased
across his mottled brow
& thensudden cheekbone spikes
no gleam. despite his mottling hair
a swamp alive
& long ago wet precious &
fragile
as a cradle
unprintable man
loved at impossible distance and when
& when
wise brown eyes close
& back turns
into every crack
memories like steam rise.
maybe there’s too many advertisements in my mailbox
for “food slicer” — who’s buttering what now? Continue reading