Poetry

 

 

Gerald Fleming

note to the teacher

put in yr own damned commas & periods too for all i care & every other mark you
old turds thought up im so sick of these papers back with all those red donuts red
tattoos those curly things facing this way & that & not ever a word on what i say
not ever a word on if you agree with me or even see my point i still say that milton
dude was a dried up old windbag i still say that guy johnson was right yeah he
was right when he said no ones ever asked to read that paradise book again never
a word on what I think only these calls to get control of my commas yeah to connect yeah to
connect yeah to provide clarity yeah to pause yeah to indicate the passing of time
but dont you see i dont have time to indicate the goddamn passing of time every
time i stop to even cross my legs i get pissed im eighteen for gods sakes i live in
libido land sixty nine semen street to be specific i have no interest in offsetting yr
clause go on call a comma a buoy in the sea call a period a train station for all i
care YOU have time to do yr stammer yr stir of memory & desire but me i know
im already flunking yr stupid class & never in my life never ever may i be accused
of speaking in a manner of speaking as now i finish this & walk away while im still
whole still me still holding what you call my hopelessly building momentum

 

Oka Wati's Pen

          He wrote one good poem with it, there in Madame Oka Wati's restaurant on the lotus pond, had to borrow it from the waiter, was amazed at the fluidity of the simple instrument—the cheap plastic pen. Beside this pen all others seemed to rasp, scratch the surface in wretched labor. Oka Wati's pen spewed words: as if all a writer had to do was to steer the gross ship of his thought toward the correct vector, and the pen would do the rest: not words in mere precision, but words etched in sharp grace: the phrase not simply well turned but carved, like the intricate masks made by Ida Bagus Oka, their dark grain—puli wood or hibiscus—mirroring lines in the human face.
          So he stole the pen: there in Bali, that island of pure thought, in that place where those of two minds may not even enter a temple, consciously he stole the pen, inserting it into his shirt pocket, resolving to buy another for the restaurant the next day. And the next day came, and he didn't do that, but began a sort of obsession with Oka Wati's: knew that to write he must move to Oka Wati's inn.
          He was becoming an old man, he thought, and his passions—though no less intense—were tinged with reticence now, but the pen—the pen!—would bring them to the surface, render him thirty again, and he'd sit on the tiled verandah, sandstone figures all around, and the words would surge from that pen—lakes of ink on the page, the multi-volumed dreams of his youth impassioned again by the fecundity of the wet air, by the rice paddies below the verandah, complicated by the rooflines in the smoky distance, sweetened by the incipience of coconut milk in the fruit of trees only meters away, articulated by the very songbirds who moved through those trees, passion fruit to papaya to jackfruit.
          So the family moved: gave short notice at the place down the road: three of them, he on a bicycle, his wife, his daughter, four young men from the hotel carrying ridiculously heavy bags, books, the old black typewriter—seven people trudging in Western conspicuousness down Monkey Forest Road, arriving finally in Room One—Room One! he thought—and when Madame Oka Wati asked how long they'd stay, he simply said For a long, long time, and she said fine, and nodded knowingly, a look he took for aesthetic affirmation, and he felt satisfied to the grain of his being.
          You must have guessed it: when he unpacked, no pen. Bags in disarray, clothes hurled about the room, his own, his daughter's, his wife's, the wild accusations, books fanned, packs turned inside out, no pen after the hour's search became the day's, and soon the weakening sun grazed the west verandah and the man knew he was only a man again, and the melancholy that descended on him was not bitter but imbued with a sweet humor, blurred by the murmurs below of Oka Wati's workers, whose voices he'd not noticed before.
          The pen's brought another one in, said Madame Oka Wati in the kitchen, and there was laughter & soft chattering by the staff as she tossed it to her waiter. Wayan: take another order.

 

Displacement: Kraków

               And you must think that any change is foolishness
               If what is taken on, compared with what is shed,
               Does not weigh at least half as much again.
                    —Dante, The Divine Comedy

          They move in the shared house as slow dancers, the woman aware every moment where her tenant is, of what he's doing: bending over rolls & cheese she set out in the kitchen, a book at his left, morning light diffused across its pages, coffee-cup-to-mouth-to-saucer ever so quietly, she knows each noise: how far the chair's been pushed from the table when he's finished, that today he put the dishes on the counter and not in the sink, that he's wearing shoes and did not again come barefoot—she hears it all behind her glass door two meters from the kitchen, and knows he's left the kitchen now, has gone into his room and closed the door so quietly that the frosted glass only quivers in its frame. She enters the kitchen before he's emptied a breath, and begins to clean.
          The tenant is not deep. His friends think he is, but he's not. It's enough for him to realize that in this, his fiftieth year, he wants only to eat breakfast in peace.
          The tenant knows that if the woman were to come to his own house, if he were to rent her a room, preposterous as that might be, much would be the same: different sounds, certainly, a different scent to the air, solid wooden doors instead of glass, fruit instead of cheese, cereal instead of salami, but the choreography alike: one knows each sound, one acts, the other reacts, space is filled by a body, then a vacuum's created, someone else spills in to fill the space.
          Nothing in our world is sealed, the tenant contends, then thinks of juice cartons in supermarkets, and changes his mind. Nothing in my world is sealed, and he wonders if that's a problem.
          He admires the woman's flowers in the copper planter on the sill: lupine & yellow pansies & what he guesses are dwarf marigolds. He sighs, feels she's aware even of his sigh, is oddly comforted by that.
          Soon he leaves, goes about the business for which he came. As he steps out the door & down the rubber-covered stairs and into the street, another man, an older man, heavy, who has been pacing outside, climbs those stairs, takes out a key, enters.
          There is a tremendous argument. Venomous words in two Slavic languages cascading into the street.
          This happens every day.

 

 

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