"i wrote this (a piece of a longer thing i've been working on for years?) after reading Juan Felipe Herrera's Giraffe on Fire. i agree with Adam's assessments that this book is A Lot, that i enjoyed reading it, and that i have no idea how to talk about it." -- Cassandra de Alba if everything came true
Cassandra de Alba if the moon stayed in the attic all day like a rock in a shoe nobody was wearing. if at night the moon dusted only that dark with its glow. if the rabbit in the moon was not white but had fur the color of a late-summer field. if all the kids saw a different face in the moon but it called to them in the same familiar voice, a parent on the porch after the streetlights snap on block by green-edged block. if some of the kids had not heard that voice for years. if some of them followed it home.
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Juan Felipe Herrera's collection Giraffe On Fire is dense and awesome. It's political and inescapable. It's tight image and unattributed dialogue. I'm going to have to read this book three or four times to properly tell you why it's about. What you should read it to. But read it. The book is divided into five parts. Each with their own style of formatting. The first part starts off with stage directions setting you up for a play. Which had me thinking of when I used to work in the theater. The summer that everything fell apart and the winter where I tried to put it back together but only succeeded in dispersing what had fallen. I have enough poems about the dead boyfriend, not as many about the aftermath without him. Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood Adam Stone I. The stairs don't skin They deskin Your skin on some stair But inertia The bottom is coming Laugh at the innuendo Ouch The lobby is barren Drops of your blood Keep running The green room The mirror Your face is no worse than before the stairs Another staircase Up this time Up No more falling The music is vamp You enter They do not ask about the blood The blood makes sense The audience You sing You die on stage It's scripted They pack you in the empty Coke machine Roll back out Descend the stairs Safely Slowly Off comes the jacket The chain catches on Ow Your knees a planetarium Another actor comes downstairs Lost in the planetarium Fetch the solarcaine The rest of the show you're someone else Scheduled for wheelchair Blanket over your fishnetted lap and legs One more up the stairs One more down Paced You hit your marks You hit your notes Your planetarium is stunning in hot pink fishnets The lobby The crowd The cute guy from the audience You chose him You mocked him You touched his ears His mother -oh god- his mother? His mother takes a picture of you Him glasses Him black pants Him pressed shirt Him teeth so can opener You hot pink fishnets No wheelchair Teeth still remember the shape of braces Expensive teeth Retainer lost They are starting to drift to unique Him college -whew- You college Same college One month You maybe Him see ya You undressing room Mirror too much lipstick Hair looks like gravity suspended Maybe him see ya II. You are not an immediate pedestal. Though he steps on you. Didn't tell anyone how you touched him when you met. How you misread your course schedule and walked into him playing hacky-sack. The 90s hit you on your chest and you let it roll down and rest on your shoe. There are so many feet between you. Your heart a jam band. You'll stop listening to it in a few years. III. You meet someone else He smells like a jam band but looks like Maybe. You do not touch him anywhere. You invite him to your birthday. your 21st birthday It's karaoke night at your usual bar where no one is allowed to tell the bartender you're just turning twenty-one Lightning Literal lightning The kitchen is The Library of Alexandria There is a hard rain falling from every sprinkler in the ceiling Karaoke is finally ruined by something other than bros Your acting professor offers his favorite bar You follow because his directions make no sense A bar across from the lot where you bought your current car The only building there has blacked out wind--- oh IV. Piano The instrument The noise level Your classmates Dancing The only dancing The only under forty You dancing You've got great rhythm Pity you don't know what to do with it Your professor Your glancing at Maybe Your dancing Who would you bring to Plato's retreat Reference to a scene I'm working on Beyond Therapy Christopher Durang He saw you glancing at Maybe Five drinks Maybe more than glancing Shrug Walk to bar Sixth drink Fifty year old somebody stranger Shot Tequila Done Don't see Maybe Drink seven Dance to classmates They are kool-aid in tap water This whole bar is us colored But you can't see anyone you recognize Dance Somebody twirls you Maybe the front door Maybe exit Line dancing now Achy Breaky Heart Right Vine Brush Forward Heel Touch Forward Heel Touch Back Toe Touch Back Toe Touch Left Vine Quarter Turn Left V.
You and Hacky Sack start a poetry journal. You and Maybe work at a renaissance faire. Your house has two beds. One for you. One for the men you're afraid to sleep with. On your twenty-second birthday you've still told neither of them a thing about your heart. They don't know your first real boyfriend died a month before you met them. They don't know that on the nights they don't sleep over you go online and fail to love anyone. You have failed so many people who came back. You invite them both over for drinks and discover they went to high school together. Maybe thinks Hacky Sack is great. Hacky Sack tells you Maybe bullied him in high school. At least you think if they're both gay or bi or whatever anyone is they are unlikely to fuck each other and not you. You selfish. You stupid. Them straight. ish. But straight to you. Maybe knows before you come out to him. Tries to fix you up with irritating gay friend. Apologizes for assuming all gay people would like all other gay people even though you haven't explicitly used the word gay just said that you loved him. He knew. You spend a month with Hacky Sack at a new college. He hasn't left you. He has moved. He sort of took you with him. Four hour trips twice a month. Peacocks in the schoolyard. Bad poetry. Terrible poetry. A girl in his class whose meter is so off you know Hacky Sack must love her. He loves her. She hates you. He loves you. But not like that. She hates you. Like that. She knows. He doesn't. She calls you faggot. Nobody calls you that. You don't even know how to react. They fight. You sleep in your car. He knocks on your window. You sleep in his room. She sleeps in her room. Nobody touches anyone. They break up. She pregnant. They back together. They fuck. They fuck. They fuck. She confesses never pregnant. They fight. They break up. She pregnant. You call her liar. You misogynist. You never liked her. You sabotage. But no she not pregnant this time either. You drive home. He calls you. He drives to your home. You get high. You watch The Wizard Of Oz while listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon. You cliche. Him cliche. You put your arm around him. He leans in to your arms. You happy. Him drive back to school. Him e-mail. Doesn't call you faggot. Implies it. Never speaks to you again. Maybe calls. Drives to your home. Puts arms around you. Not into you. Friend. Offers to start bullying Hacky Sack for real. You laugh. At him. At self. At laughter. Kim Addonizio's What Is This Thing Called Love always shows up at interesting times. This week was no exception. I've been handwriting some projects while I travel around the city and say goodbye to departing friends and started writing a conversation between me and an ex-roommate, using only quotes from this book Then I had another idea. Then another. In many ways, this interaction is nothing like her very structured book. But I come back to this book over and over. Every time, taking something different away with me. I struggled not to focus this on "Cat Poem" because no one wants to read about my pet. I know there are people who think waking up is the best part of their day. Such potential. Such nothing is wrong yet. You don't remember who's dead. Who's left you. Where that bottle of Maker's Mark came from. Why it's empty. Your head is fine. Your bed is just you. Such potential. Such daylight.
On the other end of the ugh. Not enough curtains. Neighbors teaching themselves to play the sousaphone. A stranger in the shower. Your roommate owes you four months rent. Your roommate ate the last slice of your birthday cake. Your roommate. You don't know when you poured that bottle of tequila directly into your head but you know it was your hands that poured it. My mornings are neutral. Mostly. Since the most affectionate cat died, I wake up mostly alone. Mostly. Today a book. Kim Addonizio's What Is This Thing Called Love. Not the first time. Last time I put it out on the shelf my roommate picked it up. We were both electively maybe single. Recently maybe singled. He said the benches in Washington Square Park, briefly occupied with lovers, have been reclaimed by men who stretch out coughing under The Chronicle. I say Tonight I am amazed by all the people making love while I sit alone in my pajamas in a foreign country with my dinner of cookies and vodka. The foreign country is Everywhere. My bedroom. The daybed in the living room when the neighbors are fighting on the porch below my window. Wherever is the person who once occupied the barren next to me. The vodka is whiskey but otherwise Yes Kim Addonizio exactly. Our room was too small, the sheets scratchy and hot --- Our room was a kind of hell, we thought, and killed a half-liter of Drambuie we'd bought. It's been almost twenty years since I first identified my arms as a hotel room. Though maybe motel would be more appropriate. Cheaper rates. The upkeep of the room adequate. Not professional. No hospital corners. But at least a fitted sheet on the appropriate sized mattress. A place to wake up. No matter how you feel about waking. Kim Addonizio isn't just love poems. Also grief. Also dead. Also cat dying. Also No. Her every poem in this book is dog-eared. Come back. Don't kiss a fan at a poetry reading. Oh. Oh. Oh that is ten years I'm never getting back. That kiss. That job. That walk-in closet. That stack of unpaid loans and bills. When he takes off his clothes I think of a stick of butter being unwrapped, The younger man. She views as nothing has harmed him yet, though he is going to be harmed. I've never seen a body without a dead father guttering the eyes. A pinch of keloid from when they first suspected their body was not theirs. Even just an ingrown hair signifying their desire to stop their body from aging. Or their belief that if they do not stop their body from aging nobody will lust them. Is there even a possibility of love if no one is lusting. He lies on his side like a glass knocked over. He lies on his side like a glass knocked over. Only a little sweetness left, poor boy. Only a little sweetness left, poor boy. Only his little lies, a glass-like sweetness. Poor he, a left boy knocked over on side. Oh fake form become real. Possibly the paradelle. Possibly his body. How she grew inside him demanding out. How I ever could possible to understand who he had been or would be. How even who he was right then was not the person I saw. How all of us falsely identify. How we all put our I in their I because everyone must I like I I. Right? Even if they I differently. I can imagine their I through my I because we all start as I? My I. I am trying to overcome my I. I am reading so many I. I keep thinking I understand Kim's I. That maybe we've almost had similar I but I can't even tell the I of the person I no longer wake up on the same coast as. I think of all them and the filaments in my brain start buzzing crazily and flare out. Every kiss is here somewhere,, all over me like a fine, shiny grit, like I'm a pale fish that's been dipped in a thick swirl of raw egg and dragged through flour, slid down into a deep skillet, into burning. She is talking just. Maybe just. I don't know. She is talking mostly of kisses. I am talking about everything. Maybe poetry forms. Maybe exes. Maybe mornings. Maybe all of them. When she doesn't mention forms, I don't always see the form in her poems. She Kim. She visible. Form mist. Form important. Sometimes the important part isn't immediately apparent. Sometimes you love a person or a thing without actually seeing how it formed. How it structure. How it I. I don't sleep with books anymore. Always back to the shelf. Or in the backpack if they're joining me for a tomorrow. I only share my bed with. Actually sometimes cats. Sometimes laptop. But mostly I only share my bed with pillows. No authors or books whispering sweet something cribbed from other writers and lovers in my ear. I still don't have as much time with my eyes closed as would make the daylight brighter. I still always morning at the inconvenient times. She's the one sleeping all day, in a room at the back of your brain. She wakes up at the sound of a cork twisted free of a bottle, a stabbed olive plopped into gin. Lauren Yates's interaction with Kim Addonizio's What Is This Thing Called Love. What Is This Thing Called Love
Lauren Yates I. In twelfth grade, I took Creative Writing as my elective. My teacher ran red lights in his boxy, little Jeep, drawing cars to a screeching halt. His breath smelled like stale coffee. A single booger always hung from his nose. My mother said he looked “trapped in the eighties,” which had ended almost twenty years prior. His favorite color was eggplant, but he would have crossed out “eggplant” in red pen and written “aubergine.” In class, this teacher showed us Billy Collins’ “Paradelle for Susan.” He explained that Billy Collins invented the paradelle as a parody of the villanelle. With the paradelle, Collins remained so loyal to the form, that several lines in the poem did not make grammatical sense. This was jab at young poets that follow every rule of writing formal poetry at the expense of the poem’s quality. Inspired by Billy Collins, I wrote my own response to the paradelle that I called a “miradelle.” If Billy Collins could write a parody of a villanelle (a paradelle), then I could write a mirror of a paradelle (a miradelle). I proudly submitted my assignment and awaited my teacher’s comments. When I got my assignment back, my teacher had marked up the grammatical errors. He missed the entire point, even though he was the teacher. That was the moment I began to see through him. How he had kissed my cheek when I asked him to be my advisor. How he had rubbed my shoulders in a meeting with my peers and his colleagues. I was seventeen. What was his excuse? II. My freshman year of college, we were assigned to write a sonnenizio. My professor read “Sonnenizio on a Line from Drayton” from Kim Addonizio’s collection What Is This Thing Called Love. After class, I tried to find the source of Drayton’s first line: “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.” I accidentally typed “William Drayton,” instead of Richard, and got pages of hits on Flava Flav. Instead of a sonnet, I took the first line of my sonnenizio from Meshell Ndegeocello’s album The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams. I repeated the word “man” like a prayer. Kim Addonizio said the sonnenizio tackles the impossibility of everlasting love. When I handed in the poem, I miswrote the date as 1/4/08, as if I were still seventeen. III. At seventeen, Kim Addie learned that her grandparents had shortened their last name from “Addonizio” to “Addie” after immigrating from Italy. She then changed her name back to its full form. I have always admired people with nicknames as first names. After fifty-five years, my grandfather thought my grandmother’s nickname was her full name. Sometimes Kim is simply a Kim, and not a Kimberly. What is this thing called love? Less about power, more about fit. April Penn 's response to Anne Carson's "Autobiography Of Red" is here. We'll be back to write interactions with Red Doc in 2031. An Eruption Of Red
Applause For Anne Carson April Penn Autobiography of Red grows legs and arms and jumps off my bookshelf. I don’t know if I am inside or outside of the volcano, confesses the book after it gathers itself off the floor. I try to reason with the book. No, that’s not what happened. I smeared some period blood on page three where Anne Carson has quoted Gertrude Stein. Geeze you’re even better than if we hired Richard Brautigan to write his version of Where the Wild Things Are. And I want to know. I am the kind of reader who insists on every flash of light and where it falls. So let the lava rise up to speak of interior things! Hear me! The lava has risen! I see everyone reflecting in the eye of the fried guinea pig. Even in fragments, there is unity. Everyone is red. Any idiot can put on a pterodactyl suit and jump into the volcano, but no one can make you more jealous of their metaphorical depth than Anne Carson. Here's my third shot at the second interaction with Anne Carson's Autobiography Of Red. I wanted to steer it well wide of the last one, even though I really liked it. So this is more like some of the early poems in the collection. II. The Journalist Resigns
Adam Stone None of our photographs show us the way we wish to be resolved ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The man who lives in Adam's old neighborhood wants Adam inside him His first text We just don't have men like you here So sexy What will you do with me All this a response to motel bathroom selfie Recognition of song lyric in his profile Adam agrees to meet him at the motel It is early still He texts There is no room four here The guy at the desk says rooms start with one hundred Hotel instead of motel He is bad with directions and names Calls Adam andrew when explaining he forgot condoms and neither of them looks like the photographs they both just took an hour ago I am wearing every inch of road in this stupid town and need a shower He closes the bathroom door for two minutes Adam arranges the bed the suitcase his hat Checks his phone for advice from his future self Parker he wants to be called says I have this friend You'd like him He wants to watch you fuck me There is not enough room Adam thinks what with our bodies and the voyeur version of me who will be writing down the inevitable mistake of our bodies I'm not in to that Adam says while parker shrugs off his towel There is not enough shower for both of them The bed is a different mistake Knees bumping elbows Apologetic headbutts Parker sits on adam's chest and (in the corner of the room adam is taking notes How they refuse to face each other How they know they are assembling a model with half the pieces missing and no glue) nothing looks like it should from this angle Adam pushes (in autobiography of red by anne carson Greydon the dragon boy has a journal he records his intimate thoughts in Adam has a journal too but he worried he was treating everyone like a story where he was shining protagonist Knowing himself fork with missing tines Sneakers scuffed by arrogant time He shouldn't write this Parker didn't consent to be known as from adam's old neighborhood A litany of misgivings Having his knees focused on instead of the ass so amply positioned Parker asked for none of this misalignment) The are both finished and dressed before the possibility of conversation Adam doesn't mention the angry text from a woman he barely knows How he kept thinking you always pull people into your drama was coming from a woman intending to pull him into her drama Her drama being currently the desire to be right in a conversation five years forgotten Parker doesn't admit he ran into three friends on his way over and couldn't come up with a convincing reason for walking through the tourist end of town How he suspected they knew this would not be his first time in a motel room with the wrong man Each of them just wanting this want to be overwith Jeff Taylor finished his interaction with Daphne Gottlieb's Fifteen Ways To Stay Alive waaaaay before deadline. Interaction With Daphne Gottlieb's 15 Ways To Stay Alive Jeff Taylor Instead of asking the Amazon driver if he wants to smoke a bowl I immediately tear open the package and flip through Daphne Gottlieb's 15 Ways To Stay Alive and open it to her poem titled "there are no poems after Auschwitz" I open a google window and look up both quote and sayer. With a panel of faces staring at me like I've wasted their time it dawns on me. Ardorno is Mr Hand and he is taking Jeff's pizza to give to the people who believe him when he says there are no more poems to be had at this time. This is his time and there are no more poems on Mr Hand's time. If I'm here and you're here isn't it really Our Time Mr. Hand. Our time to be the sayer of quotes. Our time to show up unannounced to not be able to wash the blood from our pigs until they're hatched. But maybe I'm as much they as I am our. Maybe my Wikipedia only has one meaning. How much of himself does Mr. Hand see in Spicoli? How much Spicoli is seen in Mr. Hand. I've ordered my usual ginger-ale in time to hear myself saying he poems are making me feel bad enough that I'm picturing them happen as cartoons instead of real life. I'm looking at the pitcher of water on the bar next to the plastic cups. I hear myself laughing about using my privilege as a shield. I'm using my privilege as a shield
but it's a cartoon instead of real life. there are no poets after white privilege. just a bunch of boring words written in nail bitten skin scratched PTSD. The only poets left have fallen for junkies or are hiding in their past lives. They went back home to drag a wound across thirty agonizing pages until begrudgingly putting the wound out of its misery. That wound knew love. It knew there will always be poets because poets know 2 things: 1. How to love a wound. 2. How to not die. For her interaction, April Penn has done a review of Daphne Gottlieb's book Fifteen Ways To Stay Live, and she even included a video link to one of Daphne's performances. A Review Of 15 Ways To Stay Alive
April Penn To what extent can slam poetry and performance poetry include not only identity but dissolution of the speaking self? Daphne Gottlieb’s cut-ups of Bukowski, news stories, white supremacist bullshit, Craigslist ads, St. Augustine, and even a Wikipedia entry about spontaneous combustion, push boundaries of what it means to be a writer. There is the usual model of thinking that people have an inner sense of self and that they try to represent that experience. Some people are successfully sarcastic and often say things they don’t mean to mean things they do mean. This work is so much more than sarcasm, however. This is utter frustration with being stuck in a world that deems you symbolically weak. In “No poetry after Auschwitz” Gottlieb notices: “The protesters in white have forgotten the difference between protest and performance the difference between comrades and audience” It isn’t so much the protester’s fault as their being cut off from meaning what they once intended to mean. This is characteristic of anyone who tries to be anticapitalist, a commitment that Gottlieb remains true to throughout her poems, often referencing the “Capitalist machine.” In the poem “dog,” she writes, “This is not my drama I did not create the drama” The poet here is speaking of inheritance, at least an inheritance of violence, devastation and destruction. The poet is trying not to surrender to passivity or to use the tools of oppression to gain symbolic strength—a struggle that seems immensely contradictory. Gottlieb is one of the best poets I have ever read. I could give up writing and stand back to watch her tick, but then she doesn’t consider this work hers. There is a dissolution in her act of creation that is pounding like a headache from a hangover that some Astrodon got millions of years ago from eating too many fermented berries. I mean few poets can match her incredible balance of primal and philosophical. This interview with her is definitely worth watching to see how she shatters ordinary consciousness to rebuild over stereotypes of marginalized categories. My interaction with Daphne Gottleib's 15 Ways To Stay Alive was the most excruciating, and took me the longest amount of time, so far, to write. And it's severely edited down. Daphne is very talented at taking other people's words and creating conversations across texts. She does this masterfully in "what it means to be young in new orleans" where she mashes up news stories about the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster with Charles Bukowski's poem "Young in New Orleans". As well as in "the unauthorized biography of black beauty" where she takes twenty different sources and creates a DJ Earworm level masterpiece. For some reason, I decided to mash up "Thirty-Six Questions That Lead To Love", a list of questions that a 1997 study claimed would, well....lead to love, with random quotes from Donald Trump. I didn't take into account how easily fatigued I would be reading Donald Trump quotes. Thus, I wrote this in eight different nights. Switching out answers, losing faith in humanity, wishing either Trump would grow mute and illiterate or that I would eventually give up and start entering more logical, cohesive quotes, like those from the Teletubbies. Anyhow, here is all I can stand to post right now from this endeavor. Donald Trump Answers 36 Questions That Lead To Love
Adam Stone 1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest? And you know, another great guy is Mark Cuban. And I think, you know, he’s been talking about maybe doing this himself. And I think he’d do a great job. We don’t have the exact same feelings about where we’re going, but that’s OK. But Mark was great. You know, he called me, like, literally a few days ago, and he said, “you know if you want to use the arena” — which by the way is a beautiful arena, this a great arena — and Dirk is a fantastic player, he’s just a wonderful player — and the Mavericks have been fantastic and it’s just a great team — but he said, “you know if you want to use the arena.” And I said, “Mark, when?” He said “how ’bout Monday night?” It’s like, that was like in four days. And you had a big holiday in between. And he said, “they really like you in Dallas, they really like you in Texas, maybe you can get a lot of people.” Because we were coming here, and we thought maybe we’d get a thousand people, but we never get a thousand anymore, it’s always, like, the same thing. You know, we went to Alabama. We started off with a 500 person ballroom. And after about 2 minutes — look at all these guys — paparazzi, look at this…we’ve got everybody here. We started off, by the way, with a 500 person ballroom, and after about 2 minutes the hotel called up begging for mercy. “We can’t do it!” They were inundated, so we went to convention center, and that was 10,000 and that was wiped out in about an hour. So we went to a stadium, we had 31 thousand people, which is by far the largest, they say, like, ever, for an early primary, and that’s probably true. 2. Would you like to be famous? In what way? I don't like walking down the street and having people waving. I just don't really. It's not for me. To be perfectly honest, it's not for me, and I don't enjoy it. 3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why? I like being off the cuff. You know I've been in 11 debates, I never debated before. My whole life is a debate. But I've never debated before. And I really enjoyed the debates. I guess I did well in the debates based on all of those polls that they did after the debates. 4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you? I think it’s gotta be up to the individual. I think it depends on the individual. It also depends on what’s available. There may be a better alternative, then there may not. If there’s not a better alternative, then you stay. But it could be there’s a better alternative where you’re taken care of better. But some people don’t like staying in an atmosphere that was so hostile. You understand that? 5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else? You used to call me on your cell phone. 6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want? Look at those hands. I guarantee you there's no problem.I guarantee. 7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? Very fishy. 8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common. I'm a very efficient guy. Now I could also do it verbally, which is fine ... I want it short. There's no reason to do hundreds of pages because I know exactly what it is... because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability. 9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful? No comment. 10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? Some people say it was staged. You know that? 11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible. Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, okay, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right — who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us. 12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be? I have the world's greatest memory. It's one thing everyone agrees on. 13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know? I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That's where the fun is. 14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it? Look, we can bring the American Dream back. That I will tell you. We're bringing it back. Okay? And I understand what you're saying. And I get that from so many people. 'Is The American Dream dead?' They are asking me the question, 'Is the American Dream dead?' And the American Dream is in trouble. That I can tell you. Okay ? It's in trouble. But we're going to get it back. 15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life? When I think I’m right, nothing bothers me 16.. What do you value most in a friendship? I mean, I think I have a lot of friends, but they're not friends like perhaps other people have friends, where they're together all the time and they go out to dinner all the time. 17. What is your most treasured memory? Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world, I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, "Can you believe what I am getting?" 18. What is your most terrible memory? Did I say I have a great memory or one of the best in the world? I don't remember saying that. As good as my memory is, I don't remember that, but I have a good memory. I don't remember that. I remember you telling me, but I don't know that I said it. 19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why? When we go into church — and when I drink my little wine, which is about the only wine I drink, and have my little cracker — I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness. I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed, OK? 20. What does friendship mean to you? If we cannot make a deal, which I believe we will be able to, and which I would prefer being able to, but if we cannot make a deal, I would like you to say, I would prefer being able to, some people, the one thing they took out of your last story, you know, some people, the fools and the haters, they said, “Oh, Trump doesn’t want to protect you.” I would prefer that we be able to continue. 21. What roles do love and affection play in your life? I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her. 22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items. Nobody cares about the talent [in beauty pageants]. There’s only one talent you care about, and that’s the look talent. You don’t give a shit if a girl can play a violin like the greatest violinist in the world. You want to know what does she look like. 23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s? I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me —and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border 24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother? I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words. 25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling …” We must be smart We must have a wall We’ve taken the lighthouse, which is a very, very important building in Florida — I mean in Scotland — and we’ve taken that building and made it something really special. It has incredible suites… golfers will stop and they’ll have something to eat. 26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share …” I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there — it’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier. 27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know. The point is, you can never be too greedy 28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met. I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke. 29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life. No comment. 30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself? I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down. 31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already. Beauty and elegance, whether in a woman, a building, or a work of art, is not just superficial or something pretty to see. 32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about? I don't like mosquitoes. I never did. 33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet? My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure; it's not your fault. 34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why? There are basically three types of women and reactions. One is the good woman who very much loves her future husband, solely for himself, but refuses to sign the agreement on principle. I fully understand this, but the man should take a pass anyway and find someone else. The other is the calculating woman who refuses to sign the prenuptial agreement because she is expecting to take advantage of the poor, unsuspecting sucker she’s got in her grasp. There is also the woman who will openly and quickly sign a prenuptial agreement in order to make a quick hit and take the money given to her. 35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why? My marriage, it seemed, was the only area of my life in which I was willing to accept something less than perfection. 36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen. Statistically, my children have a very bad shot. Children of successful people are generally very, very troubled, not successful. They don’t have the right shtick. You never know until they’re tested. But I do well with my children. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her. Kelly Cooper responds to phrases and images from James Gendron's Sexual Boats (Sex Boats). A Response To Sexual Boats (Sex Boats) by James Gendron
Kelly Cooper I am not knowledgeable or in-tune or out-of-tune enough to understand. I came to poetry through metaphor simile, word play, and white men stayed for the women and the revelation of blank verse and the rawness of the other voice the not-heard voice not heard in my suburban town suspended between the polo club and poverty’s friends: the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the food stamps. I grasp and turn and read, reread Rereading I tease out fragments You can forgive the one who makes your life amazing Pulling out words that glitter Pulling the wire Laughing at the unknowable The smell of the jagged mint leaf and the smell of one trillion farts pervade the atmosphere I shake my head I skipped a line or three lost my place. On my side of the bed, I made a sweat angel Truth or what passes for memory flickers In fat I see myself distilled more honestly than in my face. My childhood was all ragged knees and pockets full All I ever had in my pockets is still there: hundreds of pounds of it. My eyes burn with anger exhaustion tears You can improve a star simply by turning it. The other side is fresher. It hasn’t been looked at as much. My thoughts can’t track the random elements lacking throughline I get lost. Ideas and I are at cross-purposes, like the wings of Christ. Shake my head again dislodging what-all resetting my eyes I don’t know what an entity is, so I don’t trust entities. Entities are assholes. And look again. Can the judge fulfill her duty and arrest the wicked sun, serial murderer? Or is she more of a pragmatist? Have I chosen only what I recognize? The Louvre is too big. Everyone knows & denies it. Like a hurricane: so big, it competes with the soul. Only what speaks to me. I’m just a haunted question mark. Only what I’m able to hear. |
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