RUSH

1.

I have no one to talk with about my behavior.
Light falls on the wrought iron chair on the chair on the weight of the chair.
As a matter of unpraiseworthy conduct, too much or not enough talking may be accompanied by periods of light insensitivity.
To measure out-of-body insensitivities, a girl should use quantitative instruments, such as calendars, rulers, clocks, string.
Many obsessive internal subjects will closely align with externally extreme behaviors, empire, stereo birds, in an aftermath of haste acceptance.
Let me direct you by a sidereal motion, as with hand or head.
She stands, bare breasts to the window, as if to encounter her invasive tendencies.
Simultaneously, public and private spaces form and blend.
Though in simply not telling, you might receive a solid rush, so you’ll do it again, as with burglar recidivism.
I omit the porch omit the man on the porch.
She lives in a place where talking on a cell phone while driving is the ritual equivalent of spiritual depth.
As when viewing the body of the washed mother, you should pay attention to your visual processing.
I move that her house is a box with a vertical column.
I move that the house is three boxes, the house is a technical term.
The sign says room and spirits.
To talk to an available city hall representative, press zero.
What is the first word the first word is rescue rescue is the first word.

2.

I get jolted awake by traffic sounds, squealing brakes of a truck moving too quickly down the hill.
If a rush to start is not the same as a rush to complete, maybe you can court sleep by not saying anything.
Though I can no longer make excuses for you, which includes no longer making excuses for myself making prior excuses.
It limits my character, like tripping over a wire, light speeding through.
The aged mother laughs ho ho ho.
I expect the light, expect the light to be about the light.
When a married woman says to an unmarried woman, my sons, it reflects a hierarchy.
A girl takes note of superior words: carotid triangle, frontal sulcus, nasal spine.
The pith can be used for producing a wick, which produces a halo effect.
Or would you be simply acting normally, as in a flash mob, crowd adjustment by crowd adjustment.
Other contrite functions do not illuminate disgraced temporality in a golden nation, haste makes waste, fever dew, slob ice, bastard acacia.
Shocking objects on the porch wouldn’t know that person.
The painter moves into a crawl space under the house, wager against an actual passing.
Hurry in the form of plaited dissonance runs away with her, photo of a naked man on a leash, local hijinks – name something hollow that tarnishes.
On the sidewalk members of the flash mob, following email instructions, ring bells and blow whistles for forty seconds, emulating leadership fantasies.
Yet another speedy index is a change in electrical conduction response, gold rush pending gold rush, Junelight pending Junelight.
A grown-up might tell her to sleep on it.

KINDERSZENEN

1.
House, full house, house full of house, what’s what in the house, to really satisfy the house, survey, site map, building code, plat one, plat two, lot thirty-one, lot thirty-four; on the house, this is the house, mirror, beam, light bulb, north; house, house for the sake of house, given the orders of the house, party of one, party of two, party of three, party of four; house lights, house lights up, house lights down, house keeper, house speaker, white house, light house, dimmed, ornery, mildewed, scorned; up in arms at the house, up in arms for the bathhouse, whorehouse, outhouse, court; house, hold the house, hold the humming in the house, hold the migraine, hold the mayo, hold the mustard, hold the fort; will wipe the smile off the house: scum: scrub the scum, scrub the windows, scrub the floor. Here’s how to: grow a ghost for the house, grow some seed for the ghost, viz, after a death in the house, feed the spirit of the dead one, arriving in a bird. Other how to’s (storied): You are too big. You are too small. Guess what, only a guest, who said so, I said so, hereto, heretofore; how to cop a plea for the house, how to fix a balance for the house, for the hovel, houseboat, penthouse, hearth; within the planetary: house of correction: house of detention: house of worship: house of gawd. Applied to the missing, induced by the generation of the lift, bed linens to go, lamb’s wool to go, hampered, clothes-dryered, storage-bagged, mothed. Wing drag, on or as if on, heavy breathings of the house, (im)material pleasures of the house, a quorum of such and such a body, hair glass to go, calla lily to go, how to trace the ghost in the dust, the dust in the ghost, hey you, yes, you: looka, looka, looka, a finger here, a finger there. Marijuana to go, distributive justice to go, window washer, patriarch, epiphyte, ditched; among them, nearby or far, hot water decade, cold water decade, a plague on both your, hold the manacled, hold the mangled, hold the burning, hold the burned. How to once upon a time for the house, how to a bird looking through the window of the house, house, house, house for the sake of house, how to what’s eating at the house, buy now, pay later, how to when extracted from a house, convey procedures to the ones newly looking to the bird.


2.
See Jane.
See Jane at five.
See Jane watch a western.
See Jane run outside.
See Jane become a cowboy.
See Jane pick up a short metal pipe.
See Jane try to whack a younger badguy.
(Aside to reader: brother OK, brother all right.)
Ow !!#&*@!! How did that feel Jane?
See Jane blowing bubbles.
See Jane in the morning.
See, Jane, at night.


3.
In 1954 Ricky Nelson was 14 years old.

In 1955 Emmett Till and Bob Dylan were 14 years old.

In 1956 Paul McCartney, Elizabeth Eckford, Muammar al-Qaddafi, Stephen Hawking, Muhammad Ali, Brian Wilson, Martin Scorsese, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Stanley B. Prusiner, Barbra Streisand, and Calvin Klein were 14 years old.

In 1957 SSGT James B. Bell Jr., LCPL Ellias Boullion, PFC John M. Grasso Jr., Capt. William Jesse Hodges Sr., PFC Kenton Don Knapp, PFC Harvey Junior Profitt, SP4 Richard Mead Waterbury, HM1 Leslie Louis Carter, Capt. Ralph Jim Chipman, 2Lt. Peter Paul Domiano, SP4 Bernard Holliday and SP4 Paul Michael Long were 14 years old. In this year, future world chess champion Bobby Fischer was also14 years old.


4.
Logomachy:

“My father he died but I can’t tell you how.”

“In a city like Montgomery it was as if the court had not ruled on Brown.”

Baby, Baby.

Gunsmoke: Wagon Train: Korea: Kinsey: “Work and Its Discontents”: “That’ll Be the day”:“Cast an eyeball” : I Married a Communist: “See the USA in your Chevrolet”: John Chancellor: Tennessee Williams: Bill Russell: Charles Van Doren: Sputnik: credit cards: Guatemala: United Fruit Company: On the Road: On the Waterfront: “Don’t Be Cruel”: “Arguing the Case for Being Panicky”: Earl Warren: Muddy Waters: Hurricane Carol: “Rag Mop”: “DDT (drop dead twice)” : Fats Domino: Betty Friedan: Rebel without a Cause: Dien Bien Phu : brinksmanship: U-2 affair: Tom Dooley: partition to North and South Viet Nam.


5.
Red rover, red rover, send Catherine right over.


6.
Self portrait as action painting


7.
Self portrait as gauze


8.
Self portrait as annotated case for being panicky:

Here is some bone breccia. Here are some lilies on South Watuppa pond. Here is an air raid shelter. Here is a rowboat. Here are some bombs. One two three a-larry. Four five six a-larry. Float: Fürchtenmachen. Mustard plaster. Eye patch. Neuro humor. Ideal parent, water, clouds. Maturity level: How to be your own child in your childhood. How to recognize a friendly fire in your childhood. How to drop water on sunlight, how to dig up worms on all fours. Musical report card: When she practiced the piano the dog went roo, the canary sang, the parrot awked. Immaturity level: How to break every bone in a body. Has too many serious bones in her body. Has too many unselective bones in her body. Them bones them bones them dry bones. Ossification factors: Butted heads. Crossed swords. Locked horns. Scales of indifference: Highly vascular soft tissue. Saliva. Bucket mouth. Haversian canals. Age appropriate behaviors: You are a bonehead. Bone yard. Bone meal. Bossy, bossy, bossed. All the others in free. Did give her poor dog a bone. Gender appropriate behaviors: Imagined herself as Roy Rogers, Tom Cardiff, Jim Hawkins, Tom Swift, Boots, Jack, the beanstalk, the girl with a dog in a rug, the girl who flew birds (osprey, lammergeier, giant petrel) that could break bones. Burden (Der Dichter spricht): How do plants persuade one another? Please and thank you. Sowing, sowing, sown. Bless me father. She was a nervous child, a nervous child. Bracelet of bright hair about the bone.


9.
Self portrait as a line of lingering


10.
Self portrait as loam

Notes: This poem was inspired by Robert Schumann’s “Scenes of Childhood” (Op. 15) for piano. “My father he died” is from The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. “In a city like Montgomery” is from Daniel Halberstam’s The Fifties. The names of servicemen were taken from the Vietnam War Memorial website on July 1, 2005. “Bracelet of bright hair” is from John Donne’s “The Relic.”



Click here for the print issue