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I met Justin Chin's poetry the first time I went into an adult bookstore by myself. I figured loitering around the poetry section for a bit would make my barely legal ass look less conspicuous before I started flipping through the Bel-Ami DVDs. I bought neither his book, Bite Hard nor An American In Prague because the guy behind the counter looked too much like one of my old bosses. A few years later, I was more confident in buying both poetry and pornography and went back to the store. I didn't find anything there that I was actually looking for, but I did see Justin Chin's new collection, Mostly Harmless and bought it from the same boss-looking beardo that worked in that store until it closed down. I debated doing an exercise based on his Surrealist Bookmark, but after the third reread of "Mistranslations", I knew what I had to do. Mistranslations In The Grindr To English Phrasebook
Adam Stone How's it going? I am so horny right now. Can we meet at your place and fuck? Fine. Fuck off. Good. Fuck off old man. Good. How are you? I am so bored right now. Hi. Summer is a ferry. I am on the dock with a ticket now voided by season. I think I could swim to the ferry. It's not that far. But when I was young I dreamed of an ocean that riptided me from my home. I'm terrified of autumn. How it looms a new education. Strangers scheduled into tribes by ancient academics. I think I can swim my way into eternal summer or at least swim far enough to catch that ferry south. Join me? Sup? I'm married. And my picture is from 1993. Woof. Bounty lumberjack seeks LL Bean model for outdoor encounter while wife is at work. Twenty-seven year old twink here. I keep salting my garden hoping nothing will grow. I don't hunger for what I'm given. I would rather look like a promise than keep one. You look like you're afraid of yourself. I keep my body barren because I know how badly you want to be responsible for a kid that you can guiltlessly abandon. Don't I look guiltless? I'm thirty-nine. Everyone tells me I look so young for my age. LOL Our conversations will be games of Hide-And-Seek where I will find everything funny, and hide my confusion in your mouth. Want to meet at the gym? I am masculine. So masculine. Look at my abs. If you covered the floor with dough and fucked me flat on it, I could make pizza. I mean I'm so hot, it would cook under me. And, also, if you spin me around while you fuck me, my hard nipples will slice it into a geometric masterpiece, which is, coincidentally, how everyone refers to my ass. Can you host? 1.) I live with strangers and you are a stranger and I keep most of my friends and all of my family strangers to me and each other. I didn't give a quote in my yearbook. I don't go drinking with my coworkers. I go drinking a lot. I am alone in a crowd. You could be a crowd. You could crowd me. What's your address? Where do you work? Tell me something about yourself that will make me forget myself. -or- 2.) I squeal like a dolphin repeatedly dipping its tail in a tub of progressively hotter water. My roommates have asked me not to fuck while they're home. Are you masc? Bro, though. For real. I don't want anyone to see me. I don't want anyone to see me as not normal. Are you beer foam goatee? Do you football? When you use the word fantasy you're talking about a sports league and not sex, right? A sex league would be cool, though. I would only draft defensive players. I'm not going to make innuendo, bro. I'm better than that. Are you better than that? Dick pic? I need something to post on Tumblr and think about while I have disappointing sex with a woman who is figuring out how the kindest way to phrase I'm leaving you. What are you into? You look like tap water in a plastic cup. I have more hangups than a telemarketer. Confess something blueberry waffle so I don't feel as peanut butter and bear trap sandwich when I tell you what it takes to get me hard.
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In college, I took a class called Poets In Massachusetts, where we studied sometimes localish poets but sometimes stretched just what it meant to be "in Massachusetts". For one of the final projects, we were asked to take a poem by an author we'd read, and ask several non-poetry readers what they thought of it. We, then, posted the answers and collage-type images onto giant whiteboards and displayed them on the walls of the classroom during the final weeks. I chose Mark Doty's "Long Point Light" from Atlantis. If I still had that stupid whiteboard, I might have cheated and posted some of the quotes here and called it a day. The project certainly created "an interaction". Instead, I've gone back to one of my favorite Doty poems, "Gross Fugue", and put my own spin on what a fugue would look like as a poem. I might come back to this poem and give it a more satisfactory ending, but I was really feeling Doty's last line There is no resolution in the fugue. The Fugue Electric, Unfinished
Adam Stone I go for three weeks without power because i will not be home for most of them and when i am home it will be daybright and the breeze keeps everything cool enough There are boats perched Obese vultures precarious in exhausted trees still dizzy from hurricane So not having power seems trivial Our house stands Our trees bereft of anything but birds and unmoored trash I have a battery powered lamp for camping but no desire to camp outside of my home Finally this little lamp has purpose Daylight is for the kayaks The rubber rafts claim the 9-5 We do not need electricity at night we have fire and all the appropriate snacks to eat like spoiled scouts The ladder to the zip line still standing though half the tree it was moored to collapsed into the climbing wall all i do is talk these days . those days . all days . but i won't bring anyone into my powerlessness . too dark . of course . too phosphorous my faults . the apartment shambled by a lack of light . piles of laundry . sleep in the daytime . talk to no one but cats . no one needs to see Cliff is the only one of us not allowed a lighter A book of matches Allowed to carry wood to the clearing but not place it in the flames When i am awake during the day i leave the house lit by the sun but barren I go off to the cofeehouses to charge my technology for the coming darkness How fortunate this hurricane in august The camp asunder The boathouse secured before the storm The canoes The kayaks The grub tubs The sunfish all safe But the windows lanced by branches and a door flown off the archery shed Cliff set fire to the fields behind our camp last summer I forgot to take my name off the account of a previous address How long until the boats collapse what's left of the trees? I never bothered to call the electric company It burned for an hour before anyone noticed Now I'm paying for it but with insomnia instead of money there was also the summer we cottaged next to our cousins until our new house was finished . a full summer of pond but no shower . minnows don't survive long as pets . flushing because at least running water if not light . but a real house just next door . also empire strikes back sleeping bag . generic flashlight . unscary ghost stories . the only jokes that stayed with me were unfunny and racist . surely someone told a joke without prejudice . lunches in the gazebo . a terrified parakeet . watching dragonflies fuck . ghost stories in the empty cottages . canada geese alarm clocks . big hiss . no electricity but access to a motorboat . jet skis . too young to waterski . cookouts on the other side of the lake . people who used the word cottage to describe houses bigger than any i've ever lived in . Cliff never told me Raking the branches off the beach how the fire smelled Every mattress seems alive with crumbs why he did it Plastic over windows when it's too dark to examine even though we shared a tent Paid overtime for Insomnia because of clean-up crew He didn't want witnesses even The satisfaction of too much darkness after the fact a job must done When I began ordering new books for this project, Jim Daniels's Punching Out was one of the first to arrive. I decided to flip it open and read a poem or two. In about an hour, I had finished it and ordered two more of his books. I love a good work poem, and Punching Out is an entire book of good work poems. In honor of that, I decided to write one of my own work poems, but I've already mined so much of my work in retail, and I've recently written a poem or two about my days delivering newspapers, and working with kids. But I'd completely neglected the first job I took when I moved back to Cape Cod after a single semester of college. So, here's that poem. Sweeping Out
Adam Stone My mother knows all the wrong people to help me find work Before her real estate agent promotes me to manager of touristcentric alcohol distribution she sends me to her coworker's husband's penthouse office above a bagel shop She knows i hate telemarketers Praise the age of caller id and answering machines I just don't enjoy talking to depressed avatars of products nobody believes in So she refers to it as a call center My job is justified thusly Tourists visit a resort sign up for a free weekend giving out their names and phone numbers to a prick The prick gives the numbers to us We call everyone who enters Everybody wins A free weekend of listening to people trying to sell you timeshare four hours a day Jennifer is my trainer Forty-broken but with permanent smile Excited that i am eighteen and speak like an authorative uncle I get five confirmed appointments before our dinner break That's extraordinary she tells me and maybe everybody I don't know We eat dinner in the main office Finally the real boss My mother's coworker's spouse royal wes himself over to his desk to give us an inspirational speech I don't remember his five points of success or his tips on how to be promoted quickly or even what would be considered a promotion I only remember how he swept his arms across his desk knocking over every piece of paper before turning to jennifer and telling her to pick it up I remember how she smiled as she picked up his deliberate mess I remember the other middle aged men and women gasping How their bodies splashed back to the walls or the knees behind them I remember laughing Not at jennifer but at this sad paunch of my mother's coworkers eventually-to-be-exed spouse I said goodbye to jennifer and someone whose name i will never remember and swept my arms across my own cubicle Knocking all of my papers in the trash And I took the trashbag with me as i drove away forever Yusef Komunyakaa's I Apologize For The Eyes In My Head is one of my favorite collections. I selected it for this project and told one of the other writers I would let them borrow it. Unfortunately, I had previously let another writer borrow it and I don't remember whom. As it's $35 or more for it online, and well out of bookstores, I've subbed in the selection of "I Apologize For The Eyes In My Head" from his collection Neon Vernacular, which is also excellent. After reading through the whole thing ad coming up with a few ideas, I decided to go back to the first one that struck me. The opening poem examines being introduced as a man. As I've recently written a couple of poems focused on my gender, I decided to take the idea somewhere slightly different. Speak Easy
Adam Stone Introduce me first as a mouth a taker of air and a geyser of noise My hands enter next though they are really just ambassadors of mouth working also for brain which should be in charge I should be known first as brain but listen to how mouth leads before brain counts the ballots I am known less for my speech bubbles and more for my bubbles of speech an oversudsed washing machine in a trite sitcom laughtracked and unfunny No other part of my body can be seen outside the shadow of my mouth I have a cast iron masseter I have a closed end tongue I could write an entire manuscript's worth of responses to Patricia Lockwood's Motherland, Fatherland, Homelandsexuals. Every poem inspired an idea. I decided to write one based on the first line of the final poem in the book: "I was a born as a woman, I talk you to death" and see where it took me. I plan on coming back to this book later. Gutting The Closet Of the Gay Nineties
Adam Stone I was born the promise of impending man poised to open jars and women with equal vigor I was raised with the impending winking compliment of my gender the tall enough to roller coaster by six to mow the crabgrass of adolescence from my face by twelve to tell a grown woman she was wrong by eleven I was wide as reason by thirteen fast tracked to the buffet of yacht club dances in the age of polo shirt villainy You should see how I danced around curfews and teacher-certified potential I was graceless as a man committed as a woman Grew into my cock with the awkward immediacy of a royal orphan I lived as flannel untucked and filthy the way I saw other boys with scratchboard voices flopping their unwashed bangs on TV How fortunate I bloomed too late for Aquanet overgrowth pink mountain lion print leggings How flannel to think fortunate to letharge between the raindrops of Boy George and Marilyn Manson rather than boldface falsetto my mocksculinity I was the appropriate hats for sports and camoflauge backhand at the tennis net coaching varsity women's volleyball in the winters when the swim team was too speedo I summer lifeguarded in the leg-crossing of attraction I ran sportscamp and drama I looked like I should beat myself up and I did constantly Andrew Campana's interaction with Patricia Lockwood's excellent collection, Motherland, Fatherland, Homelandsexuals. Patricia Lockwood Interaction
Andrew Campana “He marries her mites and the wires in her wings, he marries her yellow glass eyes and black centers, he marries her near-total head turn, he marries the curve of each of her claws, he marries the information plaque, he marries the extinction of this kind of owl…” —from “He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit at the Indiana Welcome Center,” by Patricia Lockwood I married the three jars of sauerkraut in the closet, I married the bacteria fermenting them, I married their lids rusting shut, I married the CO2 straining against metal, I married the vacuum-packed lentils, I married the Amazon box they came in, I married the apartment wall torn down to join two hollows together and the rubber flooring tensile across the gap membraned under chairs and table, I married the exhaust fan veiled so night can’t crawl in, I married its silence, I married the paper doors stuck still, I married their unpageness, I married the straw matting and the fear of it moulding, I married their grass scent in damp air, I married their ribs and grooves and the mites that don’t live in them, the felt cookie cat pin, the Totoro puzzle put back in the box, the fitted sheet, the lack of need for a fitted sheet, the tremors, the it’s okay, the flashlight by the balcony, the sink catcher and what’s been caught in it, the key to the Massachusetts storage locker, I married the storage locker, I married the boxes, I married the violin pausing on top of them Leigh Stein has written one of my favorite books of poetry, Dispatch From The Future. I've read a bunch of poems from the first few sections of the books at open mics, and done some interactions with the book as a whole but never really talked about the final section which is where the book's title come from. The final section is a series of time traveling poems, several of which are called "Dispatch From The Future". I decided to write my own message from the future, and thought the image of trapped pronouns in the throat was amusing, and then...well, this happened. Contrition From The Future
Adam Stone Adam can feel adam's neck expanding Adam's throat will soon be wider than adam's head It's all trapped pronouns and archaic adectives society has finally started skimming from dense soup of language Adam's sibling calls adam vilpend A word no adam knew even before every adam's tongue wilted and every adam learned how to click every adam's cheeks and grind every adam's teeth in grotesque charades of being understood What did adam do to adam's sibling? It's not all terrible Adams have a progeny that adams didn't call easter though adams' progeny was born on a tuesday night Easter styles easter's hair obelisk (a term that offends neither last surviving indigenous american nor shiver of sharks that patrol the coastline of nevada) and dances better than peacock spiders Adam doesn't know if adam will remember what happened with plasma flavored birds who nested in chest of warbling ancestor Has it happened to adam yet? Now is birdless and spiderless and adam forgets to grind incisors for joy sometimes but sometimes adam remembers adam's joy leaving adam at altar of adamant Adam regrets shedding of ecstasy Adam's casual dismissal of indulgence and adam wants to tumult down abyss of chronology and tell adam joy never leaves adam It is always adam who leaves joy Stay with joy adam even when joy is not paying attention Stay with joy even when joy insults adam's body Stay with joy as joy neglects adam's lust and does sudoku naked and flaccid Joy will live with adam as long as adam will tolerate joy Adam Now adam's neurons are so beehive humming with hollow of joy Now adam wants former adam to not hum to not wither tongue Former adam leave no proper noun for sake of false honor Please kill now adam for joy Let now's future never so no adam ever shall have to read contritions from now Kelly Cooper's second interaction is with Leigh Stein's Dispatch From The Future examines identity and trauma. Interaction with Leigh Stein's Dispatch From The Future
Kelly Cooper I am a cave a closet, the space underneath a coffee table I am a mirror and a window a panic attack hidden between logorhythmia and logorrhea a theory of dementia involving helmets a knife threatening the ending of the story for the crime of completion I am allorhythmia and pain cushioned by displacement or a layer of blood it’s unclear, opaque even there are too many birds and invasive medical procedures but not enough time. In his book, Debridement, Corrina Bainn focuses a great deal on what's missing. Not just thematically but also in his forms. There are a series of self-erasure sonnets and villanelles where the author has written in form and then taken parts of it out, leaving what looks like free verse poetry. April Penn uses the technique here. Sonnet Self-Erasure
(after Corrina Bain) April Penn I felt the dead girl over my face a veil destroying me softly. So not profound to die spoke my worst soul to rock another world inside of me how poetry must quarrel with the rehearsal of fall. Like April, I was inspired by Corrina Bainn's technique of writing in form, and then removing parts of the form to create a new, more sparse poem. I have a couple of poems I'm trying to write about the terrible place where I leech wifi while I do laundry. Here is the first. Problematic Pizza Villanelle, Self-Erasure
Adam Stone I never know why I come to this place Tasting and feeling overly salty The owner needs to be punched in the face for spewing forth vile opinions on race that every customer wishes he'd halt I never know why I come to this place Every dollar I spend feels like a waste sacrificed to yet another faulty tale where the owner gets punched in the face Even imagined violence is poor taste like the flavor of the food that assaults me just for entering this fucken place Every time I leave, my memory's erased of the rage that fills the air, the default of the stream of shit that pours from his face into my ears with semblance of grace no opportunity for a volley I never know why I come into this place The owner needs to be punched in the face |
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