THREE POEMS by David Wolach
Zbigniew Herbert’s Minotaur at the Indoor Pool, 2.0
Dear Seeming,
Like like, bone comparisons
Look me up and down in this
Wet holding pattern
In Krakow
In Detroit
In Warsaw
In Oak Park
He didn’t understand a thing
Do you dangle your feet
Only man with large nipples
Because you cannot swim
Because of NASDAQ undertow
Because earth may overtilt and
The unexpected
Is an ecological
Disaster, full wetness
Without witness your
Nightmare,
Alliteration the
Butterfly
You wish to unlearn in a place.
And other things.
Like, your lovehandles
Like, do they inspire your
Almost certain
Alertness to infomercials
Or like, your big vehicle in the lot
Is it tonight subprime for us.
Sub merged the financial times and
The new york times
A USA today,
Mother was a sleeper in a bed through a small
Square window
And the tubes made her chest go
Up and down, spectral rhythm
Said a man
Who looked
Nothing like you.
Like, are you listening to these vessels
Expand, contract
Do you speak vessel, do you
Speak
Fiberoptic snapping
In a lighted pool,
Your footspots are
Drying riverbeds
For newborn bacteria
You create things,
Walking away like that.
Deduce me, I deduce you.
Our future luncheons are inextricably tied
Our plastic floats in the same little oceans
Our likes woke Descartes briefly
From his motor bed
He heard your keycard. Coming or
Going was the question and
Induction dreams
Of two black swans
Fucking
To make more
Black swans.
Meantime, Linear Tablet A
Was deciphered.
Into which countless dreams were carved
Your name nor mine was there.
But I can taste latex days after,
My other place just up the highway
And Theseus.
Were he to swim up this river,
Like, I am sure
Were you still with me
We would laugh like idiots.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For Drill
(song for two flossing mouths)
Take up to 4
Halliburton a day
As kneaded for
I’m talking about
Our ooze-own
Layer
(Lower-class–
Action–
Able lightigation?)
I’m talking about
Rocket re–
Covery, housing
Re-entry,
Aluminum side–
Effects
I’m talking about
Turn to
Chapter 11
(Reed
Slow haven’t filed since
Last year)
They’ve got my number
(It’s 360.786.0594)
Dry yr eyes o bumpy
Day on Wall Street,
I’m Sicker than
Yr merger
Hunger
I’m talking about the bill
I’m talking about footing the bill
I’m talking about your foot, my bill
Sunnier days per head (sing along)
3 down
I to go
Male’s in the mail
Paid for By
This body politik this double
Helix language,
Lineage
(Lottery?)
As imprinted gene—i.e.
Unbottled
Unbridled!
Dis-membered
Re-marked!
(1 down
none to go? )
I’m talking about
Causal spouses and
Oil’s rigged
Rigs with hats on, on caps off
Cape’s on?
“The ocean’s a funny color”
And a rental home later…
(And a lateness later)…
And a happy ending later…
And a later un-ending lateness, un-happily…
(Fizzled! Jazzed! Jacked! Jizzed!)
I see me
On TV
In the form of
For the price of
At the Time of
This
National just use yr
Debt–
Card carrying
Member of
Independent!
Colorless!
Odorless!
Worth
Less than
“Blue’s so
Out this
Year,” knot
To be Labor
The Point
Less disband
Rupture
(Stern’s rapture!)
Yes We, Canned!
Substrate of
“1,500 feet down?”
Non-union dives-It’s-OK
To SAVE the Earth—
Day
(A red arrow) Points to futures at
Zero-degree ad–
Visibility
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Streaming
I admit, there is
Something
Beautiful about
The Gulf Oil
Cam
Time’s arrow
Has always been
A streaming video
Lying in wait—
Mon: masturbated
To reified image of
Being
Choked off,
Quiet orgasm
250 gallons
Later, spent
Thurs: watched
For 400 gallons
As conceptual poetry
Project, wrote
Some until bored,
Asphyxiation comes
In waves or
Bleeds in,
I slide over
Sat: went to reading
Out here where Slick
Can’t get me, good
House music & 2
Well-trained lyricists
Admitted same over
The course of approx.
1,500 gallons
Somebody said you
Smoke to imitate
Stalemate: btw breath /
Undertow, oil / water,
Life / remedy. But
The way it billows
Like a housefire, or
As if Detroit
Had been
Outsourced
To the sea
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STATEMENT
Beyond (or in addition to) the poem itself, how might we, as loosely but less loosely than last week, use, i.e., further activate, our affective labors in regard to this catastrophe? In the form of resistance that isn’t duplicative of, say, the essential activist work many of us are already engaged in? Poets for Living Waters is one instance, among very few, it seems to me, that brings “poetry” and “politics” together such that the terms are infected by one another, torqued, in and thru a collective/collaborative effort. How might we act on the wounds this catastrophe has imprinted on us such that the terms of woundedness themselves are re-articulated, outsourced as affective labors acting in concert with other labors? Move (maybe continue to move?) from Poets for Living Waters to People for Living Waters, hooking up (as the editors have begun to do) systematically with people/organizations from other disciplines, backgrounds, identifications. The poems here, even in terms of the volume of work, help to re-articulate (or even articulate) these terms, imbue ecological crisis with truly ecological implications (it isn’t just the fish and fisheries that are going to suffer–not that this isn’t enough to act). But from this substantial poetic collaboration to what?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Wolach is founding editor of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, a former union organizer, and participant in Nonsite Collective. His book, Occultations, has just been released by Black Radish Books. Other recent books are Prefab Eulogies Volume 1: Nothings Houses (BlazeVox [books], 2010), Hospitalogy (Scantily Clad Press, forth.), and book alter(ed) (Ungovernable Press, 2009). Critical work on the poetics of spatial practice is forthcoming from Jacket and Sibila: Poesia y Cultura (Brazil) and poetry can or will be found in Aufgabe, Ekleksographia, 5_Trope, Little Red Leaves, Dusie, and No Tell Motel. Wolach is professor of text arts, poetics, and aesthetics at The Evergreen State College, and visiting professor in Bard College’s Workshop In Language & Thinking. Visit him at http://davidwolach.blogspot.com/
