Jack Gilbert on my mind

I have been rereading The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert and reminding myself of what it means to write unselfconsciously. There is so much to say about Jack Gilbert, an award-winning yet underrated American poet who studied and taught at San Francisco State University, as well as in numerous universities abroad, and yet as always it's better to let a writer's words do the work.
Here's one of my favorite Gilbert poems:

TEAR IT DOWN

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into this earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

~



Off to unlearn the constellations.

On Subtlety

Del Ray Cross, San Francisco poet and editor of the online poetry journal Shampoo, came to speak in my class. We were assigned to read his collection Lub Luffly, an amalgamation of site-specific poems, largely inspired by New York School poets such as Frank O'Hara and Bill Berkson. My own interest in poetry has ebbed in flowed over the years; the poems that strike me often do so with a weight that nearly knocks me down. Otherwise, they leave little to no impression. I admire poems that surprise, that carry unexpected weight, that make you gulp. This poem falls into that latter category:


hanashi

by Del Ray Cross

While we talk
I'm not gonna
talk about
me or you.

A new sky
is formed
upon the
words we

don't use.
Two pillows
raised to it,
and a laugh

that starts in
one throat
and ends
in another.

The simplicity of his prose, paired with the short lines and even the poem's slender length, packs a hidden punch. The clear evasion of feeling is exactly what gives it its oompf. I can sympathize; these days I feel the need to swamp my brain with material, to saturate my life with small, manageable tasks that all at once must be creative and practical. But the moments I remember are rarely accomplishments, or even minor victories; instead they are the quiet ones, the innate ones, the shared glances or imperceptible nods. I hope to recapture a similar subtlety in my own writing.

Speaking of subtlety: A moment of shameless self promotion.

My first KALW radio story was played last week. The piece, "Creating Altars for the Day of the Dead," is my interview with Mexican paper artist Herminia Albarran Romero, who taught a series of workshops at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts here in San Francisco.

More to come -- including a piece about local music label and record store Thrillhouse Records.

Maybe, sometime soon these projects and internships and personal explorations will result in a neat little poem, one that starts in the throat and ends on the page.

Family

Adulthood*

Sunday, eleven a.m.

Aunt Cissy flirts

with the fridge.

She fingers a chilled

Corona, offers it

to the doily in front of me.

“Your father tells me,”

--she smiles, reapplies lipstick—

“you can have these now.”

* published in Spectrum, spring 2006

Sri Lanka

Still Life

Somewhere far away a wave

has flicked over cities offhand,

like her father playing cards.

Survivors peer out of the tv

with hollow cheeks.

In drier climates,

her classmates drive tanks,

salute a caricature,

because everybody knows that

all liberty is ransom.

Huevos

Huevos*

There are times when you want

to squeeze the world in an egg cup.

Wouldn’t that be perfect?

You move aside the salt and pepper

and prepare to drain the Atlantic.

It’s not so big.

The sky is grand but the clouds

rein in the sun, shell over yolk.

You can roll the world in your hands,

all color coordinated continents

and chocolate dipped mountains.

You want it to be smooth,

but it crumbles.

You want it to be round,

but it slides across the table:

spilt milk.

The world jiggles, pops, sizzles,

burns, grooves, tingles, aches, longs,

oozes—

messy, perhaps,

but more beautiful this way.

Eggs are better scrambled anyway.




* published in the League of American Poet’s A Treasury of American Poetry II (2005)

Viaje

Eleven Travels

I

On the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria

I spotted a pair of eyeglasses

dangling off the platform.

I ran to the deck searching for the rest of the person.

II

I thought it unpatriotic to spell camping with a K

but Washington made up for it with colonies

of rapidly reproducing bunnies.

III

We reached a desert plateau worn down

by years of gods and their wars.

We rolled down sand dunes into the lap of Israel.

IV

On Long Island I met three generations of Jews

who didn’t look like me,

sound like me, smell like me.

I preferred the crawdads in the pond

below the willow—

they were in kindergarten too.

V

Heath Shepard skinny-dipped in front of me

(my eyes were closed)
in the moonlight of Lake Almanor.

He liked me because I outran him.

I liked him because he didn’t mind

not holding my hand.

VI

Sometimes we ran in Lorca’s park.

Words fell with the leaves.

Trees are greener in another language.

VII

Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in Pepin, Wisconsin.

I begged my parents to take me to her Big Woods.

“Let’s make popcorn balls instead,” said my mom.

The molasses would have tasted sweeter

in a log cabin.

VIII

Once on the Sacramento River Dad cut the engine.

We drifted to the buzz of riparian radio.

Up between the dreadlock vines of river trees

a colony of egrets swayed—a white cloud.

When I waterski they follow me,

a train of wings.

IX

I’d never seen a dale until Edinburgh.

In the woods, we found a small wooden door

carved into the trunk of a tree.

“For fairies,” Mary said.

A little girl stacked sticks nearby

to keep them warm in winter.

X

We biked through a banana plantation

and an angry shepherd threw rocks.

We sang in Hebrew when we found

the Mediterranean.

Every Passover I miss that exile.

XI

My first day back in Santa Barbara

I found a pair of glasses in my neighbor’s shrub.

I’ve searched but I can’t find the rest of the person.

Under What

In your aunt’s house with her Himalayans

you wander in your new black boxer briefs

I’m in my Ghostbusters undershirt and jockeys,

feeling bohemian because we’re housesitting

in December in our underwear.

Your hand-size bottles of sparkling wine and

champagne adorn the hot tub.

I’m drunk on the sky.

You shower before getting in.

I can hear you singing.

Tomorrow when we’re in your car

you’ll sing Metallica and it’ll be

Terribly romantic.

Put another quarter in the jukebox,

I’ll say, and press on your polo shirt.

We have the room to ourselves,

a big green bed in someone else’s house,

and the blinds are drawn until one o’clock

the following day.

All your best friends still know you,

and all your best friends’ mothers

secretly wish you were theirs.

You bought me gold.

It’s odd that beauty has weight,

and you like it hung around my neck.

In the hot water you gaze at me celestially,

maybe because your glasses are on the concrete

maybe because I’ve never had sparkling wine

and it tastes so sweet with starlight.

Your hair is against the blackness

and your skin is against the wind.

What happens when feelings are tangible?

I could bake this beauty in the air,

let it cool on the western shore,

watch the aroma waft across the Pacific.

The cat is sleeping on my underwear.

You lassoed the moon.

We’re drinking it together.

Endings are always so much harder to write.

The air is lazy. The stars tuck us in.

We blink; bathe in champagne.

Perfect Day

Our bicycles are ready,

baskets full of peaches,

avocado-cheese sandwiches,

and thermoses of Canned Heat.

We blast Jamiroquai from a radio

generated by my wheels.

We make it to the hills by lunch.

Your glasses—they glint in the sunlight,

and your arms—how well they know

the knots in my back.

We peer out over canyons,

Baby Boomer biker gangs,

migrant farmers selling strawberries.

We pedal to the beach,

where plovers invite us

to stitch in the shoreline with our footprints.

The Gipsy Kings are interrupted by

a radio news flash:

George W. Bush has been lost in Katrina,

an ecological love affair powerful as Monica.

We can hear soldiers retreating

several oceans away—foxtrotting, now,

constructing libraries out of disarmed weapons.

In your glasses I can see it happen backwards:

a Kurt Vonnegut novel,

someone’s lost dream.

Together we eat peaches.

monkey

White Man Dancing

The crazy monkey in your skin

jumps up for attention.

Your biceps bulge,

fever spreads through your freckles,

constellations browning

your shoulders.

You say you don’t dance,

but when you see me here,

Converse staining the pub floor,

you reach for a banana.

On Flirting

  1. you know my name

  1. you sat next to me in class (two times)

  1. you initiated a conversation with me (of your own free will)

  1. you will soon forget

  1. probably already have

  1. shouldn’t have brought up Viagra

Body Map

Thighs

According to Seventeen magazine:

You should present your thighs like filet mignon

in a miniskirt standing under the lamppost

just after midnight.

Barbeque sauce would help

if it had less carbs.

Eyes

Who says your soul rents space in your forehead?

Why doesn’t it linger behind your knees

or drive up the interstate of your vertebrae?

Nostrils

Sierra Visher told you in fourth grade

that you had a pancake nose and

it flattened when you laughed.

So you stopped laughing in elementary school.

Sometimes if you flare them in front of the mirror

you can look up your nasal passages

right into your brain.

Your brother will later tell you

that those are just boogers.

Hips

Your hips are Darwinian and luscious.

Get dark red lipstick and a pencil skirt.

Keep all your notes in a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper.

When you get unwanted attention,

just swing your hips surreptitiously to the side,

and bounce your opponents to the moon.

Ribcage

Oxygen pulls you in and out,

A deflating balloon.

What else do you keep inside?

Phone numbers, candy canes,

Second hand smoke?

Waiting

Waiting

When she thinks,

she opens up her mind with a grapefruit spoon,

slices it into happy triangles of citrus flesh,

then drinks what’s left in the bowl.

When she lives,

she tills the concrete with a John Deere tractor,

unearths fossils from the asphalt world,

scoops up the ash remains, and burns them for fuel.

When she loves,

she picks apart the seam of her hairline,

unzips limbs from fabric patterns of skin and hair,

stands in a field during a sandstorm

to watch as her insides slowly unravel,

waits for her dust to settle on the reddened earth,

waits for a person with a mind like a grapefruit

and a soul like a tractor

to sculpt her into a sandcastle.

For Amy

Ledge

Amy and I joked about eyebrows

in eighth grade because once you noticed one pair,

you saw them all: finely plucked,

fuzz spilling on foreheads,

monobrows like Frida,

usually on boys with glasses.

Suddenly our peers were reduced

to the bridges between their eyes.

Ballerina Amy was the first to date.

Zach would sweep her long red hair

out from under backpack straps, carry her flute,

and furrow his behemoth eyebrows.

I don’t know if Zach was in the room

when Mrs. Weetman read us the news

that final day of ninth grade:

“girl rescued from herself.”

Amy once wrote a poem

paraphrasing a Third Eye Blind song

Why don’t you step back from that ledge my friend

Hers was the first elegy I wrote,

Thursday before Christmas six years later.

The church was full.

I sat in the first pew with my best friends

from junior high and our geography teacher.

The pastor nodded toward us,

our backs as wooden as the seats.

At the podium the light poured

through stained glass.

Standing in the half glow,

I talked to Amy about eyebrows.

In Honor of Isla Vista

A Spiritual Poem in Five Minutes

When I think of spirit I think of Pirate

drinking on Pardal accepting a plate of Shabbat

dinner salmon on Friday night when he tells jokes

You kind of have to step back away from his face

so the spirits don’t get in the way.

One night his friend Abraham approaches us

offers to explain our Hebrew names.

“Ah, Shoshana,” he says to Shauna.

“Light.” “David—Strength.”

He peers at me through monocle eyes, says:

“Julia—from the English: Jewel.”

Pirate laughs so hearty from his perch,

clutching salmon to his chest,

coughing up spirits.

Blossom

Blossom

I didn’t recognize his voice at first.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

I heard Jerusalem in his throat,

felt the cobbles beneath our

feet the one day we held hands.

My birthday is one week exactly

from the anniversary of his dad’s death.

Every time he speaks I have synesthesia—

see the Feather River in late May,

smell sunburn and sweet sweat of late afternoon,

hear Dave Matthews, oar slap on water,

feel finger on s pine. The day we kissed

he planted a seed in my chest. I’ve tried but

I’ve never managed to block the sun.

First-Rate First Grade

First-Rate First Grade

Welcome to the Seaside Café

Try the macaroni

Necklaces spiced special today

Your maitre-d Tony

Will candlelight your card table

Tulips arranged as stars

Harmonize fairy tale fable

Of skyscrapers and cars

Today’s appetizers goldfish

Oscar Meyer wiener

Bologna catsup and relish

Watch out for Mabel-she’s meaner

Than an ungreased George Foreman grill

Sizzling fat through fractions

Monopoly dough on the till

Do we have your satisfaction?

Ignore Susie the sobbing chef

Step over the spilled juice

Hank serenades though he’s tone-deaf

Teacher towers like Zeus

Sit back, relax, put up your feet

Eat up before it’s cold

For service that cannot be beat

Just ask a six year old.