Last Bender

 
 
Tools of the Trade
 
Chisels, spades and threads
ploughs and boots
peat forks caked with mud
are nightingales
that linger beyond their father’s
flat Midwestern tread
the anomaly I pace
of objects blown with rust
and their persistence
before I cut the limes
and count the change
fill the sinks, pump in soap
and drop in lozenges of SaniKleer
like cyanide in nitric acid
for the final rinse
light a [...]

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
          “They got dental!” Church said, applying margarine pats to a corn muffin, subjecting both to a furious scrutiny. His round cheeks retained their rosy gloss, even in the consumptive fluorescent light. Even without a beard, he was one angry Santa.
          Needles said, “Yeah so what. They got dental. Do they got prescription lenses?” [...]

Boredom in Art
 
Josh Corey’s remarks about his own boredom with the novel remind me of David Foster Wallace’s boredom, discussed at length in the recent New Yorker piece about his suicide. David Foster Wallace tried, unsuccessfully, to overcome his boredom. He even went so far as to try a homoeopathic remedy, by writing most of [...]

Camera Ready
 
I see you comrade
burning in the clear air
your clean eye tipped up
by the flames rushing skyward
by the updrafts by the impetus
of all this combusted gasoline
click
 
The man named Conrad
waits to blow out the wick
wants to follow every sick
detergent hero who blasts by
his camera ready eye
the crash of limos
confetti
 
Menaced by the lens
bent by the glass
by the [...]

Myth in Poetry
 
When poets reject myth they are rejecting poetry itself, since poetry and myth are intimately intertwined. A poetry without myth is a poetry of the intellect. The intellect can only construct a poem, not create it.

When Tom Verlain writes the line, ‘My eyes are like telescopes’ he is both writing poetry and writing [...]

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
          “Lemme see goddamn it,” I said.
          “All right,” We ducked into the laundry and sat on a steel folding table. I stared into the dark washer windows. They were like the eyes of giant, industrial goldfish. The sheet of paper he gave me had a crude drawing of what looked like a scissors. [...]

“Fast, Cheap and Out of Control”
 
This weekend my mother handed me an article she had clipped as I ran out the door of her apartment. I know I’m not the only writer with a mother out there who clips articles and I approached this one with the same weariness I approach anything I intend to [...]

Item I give to Sire Denis
Hesselin, Elect of Paris
The fourteen hogsheads of Aulnis wine
I risked my neck to steal from Turgis
If he drinks enough of it to place
In jeopardy his good sense and reason
Then put water in the barrels
Wine wrecks many a happy home.
Francoise Villon
The testament 1014-1021
Gallway Kinnell, trans.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
          “Laraby?”  
          “Jack. It’s night. Where the hell are you? Why didn’t you call or come in? It’s a fucking mess here. There’s no control. Reporters, cops, lawyers, relatives, insurance dicks, my god! I’m tellin’ you, I’m outta my fucking mind with it! If I go to one more meeting I’m gonna blow.”   [...]

Ariel
 
They wave the metal sea fronds on the roof.
Sway and buckle
punch through wood
and spring her from the root.
Singing megahertz confuses.
 
All distorted nerves
her field fires
my maddened universe.
 
Each termite note
chews through the grain
and spits my zeros up like answers
while cicadas crank her summers out.
 
I am a wing that beats and beats the air
and flames her [...]