Dug For Victory: Poems from RIP-TV Read online

7

  Susan B. Anthony

  B. 2.15.1820 South Adams, Massachusetts / D. 3.13.1906 Rochester, New York

  Heart Disease and Pneumonia

  In follow-up

  last night I dreamt of Adrienne Barbeau

  representing the Ephesian Artemis.

  She scolded me:

  “You don’t love yourself as a woman!

  You don’t love yourself as a hole in history!”

  I fell to my knees

  I clasped her knees through the thin fabric of her patterned mumu.

  Against my chest I could feel the lowest of her eight breasts bump and roll—

  How old she’s turned!—I thought, crying:

  “I love YOU Adrienne!”

  2003-12-15

  8

  Princess Countess Barbara Hutton Mdivani Reventlow Grant Troubetzkoy von Graham Rubirosa Doan

  B. 11.12.1912 New York City / D. 5.11.1979 Beverly Hills

  Done

  All men are gay.

  2006-10-03

  9

  James Joyce

  B. 2.2.1882 Dublin / D. 1.13.1941 Zurich

  Post-Surgical Complications

  With me it’s never been that I like women more than men

  but that I like them differently.

  I am the Mommy of my fate.

  Though I steer a more or less consistent middle course for Neither, Really

  pillowed ports are often on my mind.

  Spyglass in hand: A tit!

  But no landing! I’m too busy saying things like this:

  I have read Ulysses four times through. On a fifth attempt—my second overall—I skipped the parts I didn’t expect to be tested on but since then I have read it three more times.

  2002-01-16

  10

  Hieronymus Bosch (b. Jeroen van Aken)

  B. c. 1453 s’-Hertogenbosch, Holland / D. 8.9.1516 's-Hertogenbosch

  Plague

  My potty-training phase.

  Something must have happened.

  Me, God and the potty-training phase.

  Archaic landscape with two figures and a pit.

  God, the potty-training phase and I:

  subject of catechism.

  I must have been damaged in the potty-training phase.

  What other explanation for the way I strain to string

  twelve

  words

  together in a line. . .and those not daily.

  God damaged me.

  Why else my hoarding refusal to favor the world with my fullness?

  (the once-friendly porcelain, window and wall in collusion, falling away)

  Cut me open: I’m nothing but Nuh-uh Not Yet.

  (with a father’s shout:

  a shout, a spank, a stomp or an impatient storming

  or several

  or a hundred

  he must have let go)

  I always choose the tiniest fonts.

  God did damage to me in the potty-training phase.

  Ask me: Have I never forgiven? Off comes the lid.

  Down in the pit the demons start rushing the ladder:

  participles adjectives verb forms of every description

  seethe up the ladder whose top rungs sway

  in the space between “damage” and “did”

  and here they come:

  Immeasurable, a mouth in its belly

  Dire, which leaves a trail of broken clocks

  Irrevocable, four feet, no hands

  Senseless, with a hoop for a head

  The Usual, riding a scythe like a hobbyhorse.

  2003-01-26

  11

  Delorez Florence Griffith Joyner

  B. 12.21.59 Los Angeles / D. 9.21.98 Mission Viejo, California

  Epileptic Seizure / Suffocation

  What can happen without panic?

  Without distress

  without a pistol-to-the-palate quality of now-or-else duress

  without the nerves dissolving in their own electric sweat-haze

  what would ever happen?

  Beach reading.

  2004-07-12

  12

  Truman Capote (b. Truman Streckfus Persons)

  B. 9.30.24 New Orleans / D. 8.27.84 Los Angeles

  Waltzing with Legba

  Bidding farewell to my movie star friends I say

  It’s too stressful.

  Farewell for a while

  only for a while.

  I cannot go on like this

  getting my heartbeat up over your foibles

  and faces

  to get into your graces and stay there

  a Stairmaster

  always uphill.

  Your handkerchief flutters

  my handkerchief flutters.

  To gasp for breath at the bidding’s end

  all wreck and rib

  unrelieved, still alone

  inconceivably more unsuccessful:

  Au revoir

  SOS

  SOS

  my dear not goodbye.

  2002-05-13

  13

  James Baldwin

  B. 8.2.24 Harlem / D. 12.1.87 St. Paul-de-Vence, France

  Stomach Cancer

  James Baldwin beckons to me across the room to come light his cigarette.

  I don’t know why, I’m not the only unimportant person in the room, nor the least important in the spaces intervening

  but without hesitation, I am off across the room, to light his cigarette.

  Funny how this would never have happened ten years ago, even five

  it occurs to me.

  James Baldwin is talking to a dark-skinned U.N. diplomat whom he appears to have mesmerized with the cold, bee-dancing baton of his cigarette.

  Me, a white girl, bringing a match to such a one, when beckoned!

  Draped behind James Baldwin there is something like a semi-circular curtain, such as would be used to “set off” a marble faun on sale at auction, made up entirely of faces;

  multicolored, stretched to listen, strained to smile, in all the living swathe there’s not a single pair of eyes to see that someone needs to light James Baldwin’s cigarette.

  I arrive as if at the ritual dais, as if pensive and shy in a short clinging tunic, as if wearing one of those thin gold bands around my head

  and offer flame.

  In the snaky depths of his smoke-squint I can see he's read my every thought.

  2004-08-02

  14

  Simone de Beauvoir

  B. 9.9.08 Paris / D. 4.14.86 Paris

  Respiratory Ailment

  This complex process, still mysterious in many of its details, involves the whole female organism, since there are hormonal reactions between the ovaries and other endocrine organs, such as the pituitary, the thyroid, and the adrenals, which affect the central nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, and in consequence all the viscera.

  The acacia blossoms are dropping. All over sweltering Brooklyn has fallen this carpet of moth-winged capsules the color of old artificial pearls.

  Almost all women—more than eighty-five per cent—show more or less distressing symptoms during the menstrual period.

  Sticky when crushed underfoot, the acacia blossoms get carried on shoes into vestibules, hallways, beyond—I tracked a bunch in on the wheels of my laundry cart, too, and now they’re all over the floor of my room.

  Blood pressure rises before the beginning of the flow and falls afterward;

  Along with my clothes, both clean and dirty.

  the pulse rate and often the temperature are increased, so that fever is frequent;

  Laundry.

  pains in the abdomen are felt;

  Always more laundry to do.

  often a tendency to constipation followed by diarrhea is observed; frequently there are also swelling of the liver, retention of urea, and albuminuria;

  I wish I could be like other
people someday and use all the dryers.

  many subjects have sore throat and difficulties with hearing and sight; perspiration is increased and accompanied at the beginning of the menses by an odor sui generis,

  Uh huh.

  which may be very strong and may persist throughout the period.

  Uh huh, uh huh.

  The rate of basal metabolism is raised.

  Whoo! it was hot in here today, especially when I put the broiler on to make myself hot dogs for lunch.

  The red blood count drops. The blood carries substances usually put on reserve in the tissues, especially calcium salts; the presence of these substances reacts on the ovaries, on the thyroid—which enlarges—

  I forgot what I was going to say.

  and on the pituitary (regulator of the changes in the uterine lining described above) which becomes more active. This glandular instability brings on a pronounced nervous instability.

  Something about women in the workplace—but the point has escaped me.

  The central nervous system is affected, with frequent headache, and the sympathetic system is overactive; unconscious control through the central system is reduced, freeing convulsive reflexes and complexes and leading to a marked capriciousness of disposition.

  Under the streetlights the acacia trees look so beautiful, flaunting their bottle-blond bouquets of blossoms in the breezes cast by air-conditioned brownstones and the passing, blossom-plastered cars.

  The woman is more emotional, more nervous, more irritable than usual, and may manifest serious psychic disturbance.

  I want to walk up and down the sidewalk, barefoot, sticky-footed with acacia blossom wine (very dry); I want to pin congratulations to the trees tonight.

  It is during her periods that she feels her body most painfully as an obscure, alien thing;

  Pound pound little notes into their legs.

  it is, indeed, the prey of a stubborn and foreign life that each month constructs and then tears down a cradle within it;

  “You’re beautiful,” they’ll say, my notes.

  each month all things are made ready for a child and then aborted in the crimson flow.

  Or perhaps, “You go!”

  Woman, like man, is her body; but her body is something other than herself.

  With every hammer tap another fistful of petals to patter on my graying head.

  Quotation from The Second Sex, 1949 (trans. H.M. Parshley, 1952).

  2001-07-26

  15

  Divine (B. Harris Glenn Milstead)

  B. 10.19.45 Baltimore / D. 3.7.88 Los Angeles

  Freak Heart Attack

  They were a bit much

  but I missed them immediately.

  2001-09-12

  16

  Washington Irving

  B. 4.3.1783 New York City / D. 11.28.1859 Tarrytown

  In bed at his home Sunnyside

  Never again to awaken to the echo of a thunderclap and think,

  “The Old Dutchmen are bowling.”

  Forever from here on in, only,

  “Attacked in the Night!”

  Back to the Stone Age.

  My ears hurt from straining in my sleep.

  2001-09-24

  17

  T. E. Lawrence

  B. 8.16.1888 Tremadoc, Wales / D. 5.19.1935 Bovington Camp, Dorset

  Motorcycle Accident

  My heart is hard

  and taut

  like the skin of a snare drum

  pattered on

  aggressive

  reflective of footfalls

  dig me now

  and wires caress it.

  2002-03-24

  18

  Edith Massey

  B. 5.28.18 Baltimore / D. 10.24.84 Los Angeles

  Cancer

  My heart is stony

  chipped

  hairline fractured perhaps

  so drop me

  the arcades of Pisa flash past

  laughter peals

  and open-mouthed courtiers

  stand yolk spattered.

  2002-03-26

  19

  Max Schreck

  B. 6.11.1879 Berlin / D. 11.26.1936 Munich

  Heart Attack

  Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

  A sneer set into a slab above pinstripes

  Goebbels Goering Himmler; I reach into my throat for choking consonants to fling at him

  My phlegm like filth

  Nosferatu

  No, Renfield: livid, gurgling with toady ambition and thanatos

  Kitten-eater, botulinum, mandrake’s shriek; I collect rags to tie onto broom handle torches

  My peasant outrage the resin

  Look, a world! Where?

  There, just outside the bars of our cage, bars of razor-wire!

  Rumsfeld

  I wing-beat at his bulk; by his pinstripes I’m sliced into wheeling flocks

  Me myself many; ten million eye-feathers stained and gummy with ichor

  Rummy

  Dove tears, a plague medium

  2003-04-10

  20

  Eva Braun-Hitler

  B. 2.6.12 Munich / D. 4.30.45 Berlin

  Suicide / Poison

  Watching chaff dance in the lemon-light beams as morning pierces the wicker

  smoldering, dreamy-eyed

  under a bushel

  seek and you’ll find me.

  I recline, in postures curled

  where every molecule of air bears a sinking freight of ancient orchards

  shivering naked

  pale flesh erupted with wicker allergies

  panting and untrimmed.

  Hurry

  I’m waiting.

  2003-12-14

  21

  Iris Murdoch

  B. 7.15.19 Dublin / D. 2.8.99 Oxford

  Alzheimer’s Disease

  Affrighted by the mirror—me, with my fly-away hair the color of ashes and skin for which “sallow” is too kind a word. Scary’s the word!

  Alas

  Drop me on children in Afghanistan might as well, screaming out of the blue or pitch-black at them—me in a pointy hat, make the Soviets look like Santa’s reindeer.

  Alas and Allah

  Revivifying the unplugged bogey-monsters on their U-Store Cold War slabs—me, misshapen in a lab coat, one eye baleful and the other on a stalk, quizzical, quizzical:

  Uncle? Uncle Sam?

  Athens! Rock sizzle dripping olive oil rosemary fat—me, on a spit, turning, turning, still not a cloud in the sky. My breath will stain the tunics of Philosophy.

  Baa!

  Eustachian tubes impacted with Al Gore’s fallen hair, I'm deaf, stumbling, a monster of vicious circular processes, my appetites “Vacuum,” my longings ashes—me

  Whoosh.

  2003-12-10

  22

  Homer

  B. 4.1.750 B.C. Asia Minor / D. Unknown

  Riddles

  Down at the seashore the other day in a strong wind, I stood still and shut my eyes. Then in my mind’s eye I saw a stream of something pouring out from at my feet and flowing in a rush to meet the waves; from my core it came, this stream of liquid yellow light

  “How odd,” I thought. “I hope that isn’t anything I need.”

  and multitudes of pale grains that looked like tapioca seeds or chicken fat.

  “Is it the war?”

  2004-04-01

  23

  Mary Shelley (b. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin)

  B. 8.30.1797 Somers Town, England / D. 2.1.1851 London

  Brain Tumor

  I keep thinking about Prometheus and how he doesn’t get enough credit

  not even a cult to the guy

  not even an internet cult without an .org

  when what a change was made

  the next day in the world after fire no one could remember a thing about the day before

  such unpleasantness
no longer mattered

  given a fresh present of warmth, light, and savors, everybody moved on

  not even an action movie

  not even a Victor Mature movie with scale model temples

  what ingratitude looks like:

  open an atlas—look for Prometheus among the continents and countries—or try any phone book

  but such are the vicarious effects of torture

  given a strong enough illustration, everybody backs down.

  2006-10-23

  24

  David O. Selznick

  B. 5.10.02 Pittsburgh / D. 6.22.65 Hollywood

  Heart Attack

  Above the fray

  as in the tiny topmost platform basket of a crane

  I’ll stay

  upon the teeming lot

  the Battle of Atlanta’s dead and wounded, say

  I’ll train my lens

  while teetering above the fray

  the sun, the wind, the coffee shakes! All work

  no play

  screwing up my eyes

  confession time: since yesterday

  I’ve been out of film

  but still I drift above the fray

  a lost recorder of impressions and events

  is there a ladder on the way?

  I’ve got callus on my fingers from my other fingers where I pray.

  2003-11-18

  25

  Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski

  B. 4.7.1884 Krakow / D. 5.14.1942 New Haven

  Climate

  War drums.

  My mind muddies me with observation.

  Its boots kick silt storms into the midst of my glassy one-ness with nature.

  My mind poisons my nature against me

  while its demands for amenities surpass my resources; I am humiliated.

  My mind has alien values.

  These nights when it’s busy elsewhere I huddle in conference with my bloody gods:

  Can we dislodge it?

  2004-06-07

  26

  Jacqueline du Pré

  B. 1.26.45 Oxford, England / D. 10.19.87 London

  Multiple Sclerosis

  Bent over bent over

  amid drifts of discards

  an unearthly power

  picks at me picks at me

  bad bad bad

  hunched shade o'er-laboring

  cramp-kneed from clasping

  my life, a bowl of beans.

  2003-11-29

  27

  Galen (b. Claudius Galenus)

  B. 131 Pergamum, Greece / D. 200 Rome

  Antiquity

  In a beaker full of water on a shelf

  in a lidded beaker or a stoppered jar upon a shelf or table in a lab

  a leech, immersed, is floating

  while its bloodless wastes

  trail about it like glycerin petticoats

  lifted by each drifting fall.

  The captive leech

  with all it has of limb

  that is, itself

  nudges

  (very casually)

  the glass.

  2004-03-20

  28

  Madame Chiang Kai-shek (b. Soong Mei-Ling)

  B. 3.5.1898 Shanghai / D. 9.23.2003 Manhattan

  Advanced Age

  Old, yes; “she outlived all her contemporary rivals.” Corrupt and venal? Yes; Harry Truman said so. And, of course, she “lived out her final years in New York, with a pack of black-suited bodyguards who cleared the lobby of her Gracie Square apartment building every time she entered or left.” The question is:

  Did she smoke? 

  For who could not have guessed that while matriculated at that bosom-nest of vipers, Wellesley, “she majored in English literature, and was remembered by her classmates as a chubby, vivacious and determined student.” But:

  What did she eat for breakfast?

  Did she have a favorite Beatle?

  Did she ever visit Brooklyn in her life?

  Oh, in those days, who didn’t shock Eleanor Roosevelt by silently drawing a sharp fingernail across the neck when asked how best to deal with striking coal miners? But what’s the best take-out Chinese on the Upper East Side? That’s what I’d like to know.

  And given the choice, did she order white rice or brown?

  “She had no children.” But sexual fantasies, she had those. What were they? Let’s pretend we inherited.

  And when she cracked open a fortune cookie to find a mini-tome of six or seven white paper fortunes stacked and folded up inside, was she annoyed? Then would she read them all anyway, maybe even save her favorite one or two? Or, because it seemed to her that there could be no truth here, would she put them all aside, unread, for the servants?

  (Quotations from The New York Times)

  2003-10-26

  29

  Ronald Wilson Reagan

  B. 2.6.1911 Tampico, Illinois / D. 6.5.2004 Los Angeles

  Alzheimer’s disease

  You shook your indifferent wattles

  or was that the wind shaking them

  the wind or a breath, held then expelled

  by your handmaidens, handlers, or grooms.

  Your mane was pomaded, silk-heavy; it fell

  in thick locks, when required to,

  over your brow, like a blessing—

  or was it disguising your brow:

  High in the mind’s eye, in memory high

  in fact not so.

  Your brow was narrow.

  You tossed your pomaded wattles and narrowed your eyes

  and in fact there was a pile of corpses in the street

  and maybe more than one; your eyelids

  like phone books, like rolls of roofing lead:

  That heavy. You narrowed your bright eyes

  but they kept rolling.

  2004-06-08

  30

  Francis Joseph Spellman

  B. 5.4.1889 Whitman, Mass. / D. 12.2.1967 New York City

  Unknown

  My agrarian God

  you smell

  of grains fermented

  gummy woods twice-burnt

  and beeswax chilled and hoarded.

  I was hanging on your stoop

  I was calling you and getting your machine

  I was wondering if you thought your “No Menus” sign would really work

  and if you knew your tape was full

  then why

  when all at once you pulled up in a cab

  the back seat was full of your robe-swirl and fly-away effulgence; meaning

  to get the door for you

  I stood.

  The taxi pulled away.

  I still carry your picture:

  an oblique view into the bottom of a teacup

  where overnight has drawn a sugared bulls-eye and a ring.

  2004-04-03