Justice Avocado

How I Came In

2009-08-31T23:55:00.003+09:00

I am writing this poem on my last night in Korea.

I started this project simply as a way to force myself to grow my portfolio, so that I could submit stuff for publication. But it's kind of turned into its own thing, and now I'm not so sure if I will try to get them published in a traditional print journal. I primarily write for my own satisfaction, and this blog has provided me that just as well as McSweeney's did, back when they published one of my poems. In addition to this sense of accomplishment, this blog has also provided an excellent outlet for me to deal with some of the impressions and observations about Korea that I've had over the past six and a half months. In a very real sense, this blog has made me an active agent on my surroundings, rather than a passive receiver. I like that.

It shouldn't be too hard to connect the dots between the above paragraph and the following poem. I've been thinking about agency, and presence, and arriving versus becoming, and how art (or at least creation, if that's actually a different thing) and an active imagination are necessary (necessary!) for being a part of a place.

But I'm giving too much away. Onward!

The goal was to write one poem a day at least until my last day in Korea. So, I'll probably take a little while off, before starting up again. I have a few ideas in the works that would change this site semi-drastically, but it might be a while before those get implemented. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the occasional poem or whatever. Thanks for reading.

How I Came In

I wasn't here until

I wasn't really

I was stringing threads

from rooftop to rooftop

from my eyes to mountains

pushing needles into rocks

making blue lanterns out of men

and lighting the streets with them.

Until I stacked squid on top of squid

smashing them onto a sharp stick

and dipped my feet in orange

and broke open the plastic safe

that I found in my closet;

not until that time

I set grapes out on the lawn

and had my yachting friends over

and then threw myself into the ocean

and died.

I like to think that this place is pinker,

since I've been here,

and now there are guitar-men who follow you

everywhere you walk,

only playing the thickest strings, the top three,

something quiet but upbeat,

while vegetables grow on the sides of the streets,

between buildings,

and it's always warm enough outside

for lemonade.

Book Review

2009-08-28T14:31:00.000+09:00

I brought this book with me to Korea, and I read it, and it was okay, or whatever, but it read like it was written for discussion in introductory literature courses...in high school. It's a novel about a group of Africans, and there's much bally-hoo over the interdependency of the various individuals in the society, and so on and so on, and it didn't feel quite novel-like to me. I got the sense that it was intended for academia from the get-go.

At any rate, perhaps I'm wrong, and if you've had a lovely experience with the book, well, then, bully for you. But, just in case my thesis is correct, I do not wish to disappoint. So.

Book Review

The Tiv society in West Africa,
as can be said of African cultures in general,
faced the realities of plentiful but stubborn soil
and a shortage of people to work it.
To ensure their own survival, peoples
developed a structure of mutual responsibilities
between children, parents, siblings, spouses,
clans, age-mates, members of homesteads,
and so on.
Elenore Bowen's Return to Laughter
submerges the reader into Tiv culture,
palpably demonstrating the complexities
of such a societal structure.
The adulterous
actions of Ticha, one of Chief Kako's younger,
"secondary" wives, and the response of the
community are the organic results of
conflicting social obligations
and the raw desire to preserve and produce
the land's most precious commodity--
people.

Old Lizard Hands

2009-08-27T14:27:00.000+09:00

Do not confuse the speaker of the poem with the author.

Old Lizard Hands

When I was eight
I was standing on a table
and it flipped over
and I fell right on top of it
and bruised my diaphragm,
and I really couldn't breathe.
I flopped around on the ground,
trying to suck in,
whipping my tail and bulging my eyes.
I imagined an ambulance
driving up right then,
and then what it would be like
to die on a gurney.
I didn't know it was called a gurney,
but that's what I thought of
as I lay there suffocating.
That's when I stopped believing in God.

Then this old lady pins me down
and starts yelling at these other kids
to get back, and then she just
looks me in the eyes and I swear
she looked like a fish. A big,
scared fish with jowls, and me
just laying there opening my mouth
and feeling a big watermelon
slimmering up my throat.
The old fish finally gets the idea
to blow in my open mouth
and she pursed her lips
and blew cold, refreshing water
right through my gills. I never
tasted water that felt as good as air.

I probably wouldn't have cared if she
had put her flabby lips right on mine,
so long as she kept breathing that water.
I lay there for a while with my eyes closed.
When I opened them she was still there,
so I got up and left. I didn't say thank you
or anything. But I was young, then.
But not as young as I was before then.

I think she might have been my grandmother.
I wonder if she knows her daughter is dead.

Bruyéres

2009-08-26T14:00:00.048+09:00

My degree is in English, supported mostly by poetry classes, but for the first year of university, I thought that I was going to double with music theory. My primary instrument was piano, and despite my heavy workload as an accompanist (which was not my choice, but rather a requirement of the major, and ultimately the reason I gave up on the whole business), my professors had me playing a whole lot of solo pieces, as well.

I've been sifting through some of my old sheet music, and I found Debussy's Études, which I hadn't thought I'd ever played. Thumbing through it, however, I found one annotated and highlighted throughout with green pencil, and I was shocked to recognize the handwriting as my own. Most likely, Dr. Morgan had slipped this into my frenetic Winter Trimester schedule, during most of which I was conscious in only a loose sense of the term, and had therefore learned and performed it without ever engaging my immediate faculties. It's not, after all, terribly difficult. At any rate, I looked it up on YouTube, and sure enough, I sort of remember playing it.

The piece is named Bruyéres, and is perhaps one of Debussy's most experimental (at least from his études). I suggest you listen to it before reading further.

Bruyéres

The linear theme and the horizontal one
alternate without being prepared,
a novel harmonic structure
with little connection
to the title of the piece: "Heather."

But let's not
hold the French
to too high
a standard.
It's not

a sweeping drama of divergent emotion
bromidic in a pretentiously intelligent way.
When the man wrote in all twenty-four keys
he skipped five of them, and why not?
It is simply an appreciation of musical

creation
and re-creation,
and I guess it needed a name.

Ensconcing

2009-08-25T12:42:00.054+09:00

So, this is a little bit more personal than the kinds of things I usually write, which is probably why I was so uncomfortable writing it. Like everyone else, there's a lot of black jello inside my brain that I'm always eating at, which in my case is mostly guilt (for a number of things), and I guess we all realize that, as a species, we're condemned to suck the stuff down for the rest of time, so we've come up with ways to cope with that fact. Personally, I tend towards distraction.

At any rate, now that I'm getting more and more serious about this writing thing (though you may not know it from the quality of the poems recently, meh), I don't want to keep myself so removed from what I write. Imagination, as wonderful as it is, isn't enough on its own to really prick your finger, not the way that real happiness and real pain do. Or so I think today.

So, perhaps the difference in the final product won't be as noticeable to outsiders, but I haven't agonized over a poem like I did over this one in quite some time. Which is a good feeling.

Ensconcing

I'm just a kid,

or so I see it,

and I should be enjoying all this

free porn,

and not just pictures like

magazines, but video,

with sound! something our dads would've killed

to get for a discreet ten bucks—

a lot for back then—

and here I am with more women

orgasming

than I could watch in my entire life, even if I tried,

and it kills me.

Not to say I don't indulge. Everyone does,

in their own way,

and I certainly have my fair share of pulls

at that bottle.

And if you'd like, I can tell you

about a million reasons

why my depravity isn't quite as bad as the next guy's,

which at least makes

feel better, but probably not you,

so, well, fuck.

Dear porn:

I love you. Without you,

I cannot feel as small and as stupid

as I deserve to feel.

What would I have the nerve to

think

about myself,

if you ever left me? How well would I deceive myself,

if you abandoned me?

I shudder to think.

Thank you.

The English Language, Second Edition

2009-08-24T13:17:00.000+09:00

My friend Luke Patterson and I took a train to Donghae, a beach town on the northeast coast of Korea, where we had planned to spend a day playing frisbee in the sun, eating dried squid and getting salt water in our eyes. Unfortunately, when we got there it was raining and muggy and there were great sea lizards scrambling onto the shore eating people, so we wound up walking around in Donghae's copious Russian district instead (the largest population of Russians in Korea, which really isn't much of a claim to fame, but it's better than being eaten by a great sea lizard).

Anyway, this poem has nothing to do with all of that. While we were on the train, we heard some Korean kid a few rows in front of us saying "a, b, c, d, e ... ." He never really got past 'g,' though, which we thought was curious, so we managed to find a way to spy on him (looking through the reflection in the window), and as it turns out, he was playing some kind of game with his mom. I'm not sure how it worked, but he would say a letter and she would put her hands out flat, or raise two fingers up next to her face, or some other unintelligible sign. Apparently somebody was winning before 'g,' and that's why it would stop.

I have no idea, because this poem is not about that, either. Luke and I got to talking about the alphabet, and how arbitrary it is. Why, we wondered, do the letters proceed in the way that they do? I don't know the Korean alphabet's order, but I can read Korean as well as anybody else. Obviously, it doesn't matter.

But if it did, what would it look like? I submit it would look something like my new-and-improved alphabet. A few notes on pronunciation: the vowels and liquid vowels are all pronounced the way they were in the previous, lesser alphabet. Most of the consonants are the same, except for 'w' (now simply pronounced, wuh). Also, I have added three new letters: 'ch,' 'th,' and 'sh,' all of which should be pronounced with the long e sound (chee, thee, shee).

This poem is best read out loud, and very rapidly.

The English Language, Second Edition

Instrumental

2009-08-23T06:40:00.031+09:00

Instrumental

The next project is flat, endless soil

with some thin concrete on top,

but only in some places. Black squares

that make up the thickness of this world,

plastered with paper-white, crinkly concrete.

Just a sugary glaze, hardened around

deep black cake. Or something.

I'm afraid if I step on it, it'll break.

Mister Nate Shaw, 1932

2009-08-21T04:49:00.050+09:00

In addition to the poetry that I always seem to be reading, I've also been making my way through Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Although I would consider myself a Rothbardian libertarian, I am appreciating this socialist history because of the life it gives to the poor and oppressed. It focuses on many, many specific stories of the obscure, common people, and how political and social changes affected not just their lifestyles, but their emotions and opinions, and what those emotions and opinions motivated them to actually do. Uprisings, strikes, violence—and not the boilerplate, famous stories I already knew, but more challenging, complicated stories, which are much less flattering to the establishment.

I got the idea for the following poem from the story of Nate Shaw, on page 398 of the paperback version.

Mister Nate Shaw, 1932

Mister Nate Shaw, I'm goin to take

all old Virgil Jones got this mornin, I said,

and he begged me, he begged, like

You'll dispossess him of bein able to feed his family,

or some such, and he told me he wouldn't

allow it. But I got a child, too, and a man above

who give me money for feedin him,

so I gone for Hosea Hudson and Jeremey Brecher,

my deputies sometimes, and I come back

and there was Mister Nate Shaw, standing there

waiting, for us. I went out to talk to him and

Jeremy and Hosea leaned up on the car while

we talked, and Nate started get worked up like,

his bald head gettin redder and

his beard moving with his jaw real fast,

and I guess I was pretty worked up too, so Jeremey

I don't see as to how he coulda thought it, but

Jeremey thought Nate was getting too uppity,

standin there defending that nigger man's property,

nothin in it for himself, and Jeremey

pulled out his rifle and shot Mister Nate Shaw,

right in the left arm. I don't think

Jeremey'd ever shot nobody before, is why,

so Mister Nate Shaw ripped out his gun

from his pants and shot at Jeremey, but missed,

and I felt it was my duty—well, I felt it was wrong,

but I knew it was my duty—to arrest him.

He served twelve years in an Alabama prison.

Jeremey, though, because of the man above, still

comes along sometimes with other fellas

for when I need 'em for doin something.

I wish I never needed to do nothin, though.

pastille by cantilever

2009-08-20T03:23:00.109+09:00

I'm reading Notes from the Air by John Ashbery, which is the author's selections of his best work since the mid-eighties. This morning, I learned two new words from it: pastille and cantilever. The following poem started as just a kind of exercise, something that would make me remember the definitions, but I think it's turned out much better than that.

pastille by cantilever

and then Time came along with a steel beam

and swung it around into the side of my face, blood splashing
everywhere

and Physics caught the teeth dropping out of my mouth,

holding them tight in his fist and laughing, looking down at

Love and Ego, who were pulling the hairs out of my legs,

but then I saw Everybody I Ever Knew dozens of yards away,

he was standing on a dock or something, I couldn't tell, there was
water nearby I think
anyway he was wearing glasses and a scarf and

his bright orange hair stuck out in fluffs all around a hat.

come over here and taste the strawberries I think he was saying

but my skull kept vibrating against the steel beam

so a few hours later I found myself sprawled on the wooden planks

where I had been standing but from this position I could feel a latch

to a trapdoor under my belly, and Time and the rest

had gotten bored or tired and had left, so I crawled through

and found Nothing on the other side,

who was looking as bad as I probably did. so I took her by the hand

and we started out in one direction, a straight line,

nothing holding us together but our common origin and our love.

Smoke Noyade

2009-08-19T15:03:00.025+09:00

Smoke Noyade

Brown worm on white concrete, or natterjack

deluged beyond recovery. Helpless waldgraves

stand with regal crown paper tubes, waxed,

crunchy. Dead fat slugs from French Guiana,

their mollusc relatives lobbying for a new gabelle.

All around this play comfortable men

with extra fat on their bellies.

Spectacle

2009-08-18T14:36:00.039+09:00

Spectacle

When you see bricks outlining a pool

do you want to trace the rough shape

with the pads of your fingers? Stand

far back and let the crescent gem be

hand-sized, like a shoe, and just rub

and scrape all inside of it? I sure do.

I hear water from fountains falling

back on itself and I try to see a stick

pulling through pebbles eternally,

or somebody balling aluminum foil

forever. I convince myself rather well.

In a spectacularly meaningless way, I

am the god of my sensory experiences.

Caw Pout

2009-08-17T15:43:00.024+09:00

I was actually intending to just write some short piece of crap as a cop-out, you know, to avoid owing my brother any more money (I already owe him seven installments of ten bucks! That's seventy dollars!). But, much to my surprise, I somehow typed out the best poem the world has ever seen.

I was literally crying by the end of it, I was so moved. I'm sure you will be too.

Caw Pout

It's a sad bird

who can't string a word

to another

for his brother

and doesn't bother

to even try.

A sad sight.

Dry Research with a Bromidic Conclusion

2009-08-16T15:12:00.049+09:00

Dry Research with a Bromidic Conclusion

Momentum,

properly understood,

needs no winding.

It is its own stasis.

Clocks, though,

do. They are

immobile alone.

Time, it could

then be said,

needs us

to carry it.

(an opportunistic

conflation, granted,

but perhaps worth

the impropriety.)

Our Wife

2009-08-15T11:09:00.022+09:00

Our Wife

I wish I could live long enough

to learn a lot of languages.

I've got one

down, and

I'm having a hell of a time

with this other one,

after which

I guess I'll probably stop.

In the meantime, it's just

one damn thing after

another. Verbs,

which aren't even verbs, really,

come at the end

of sentences, and so do

a lot of adjectives

(which aren't really, either).

But what really gets my

little pink brain is

the way Koreans say,

"our,"

whenever

they talk about family.

I guess it's because

they think

of themselves as

all connected, part of

a singular and connected

whole,

like they really do belong

to each other,

even strangers.

It's sweet, in a way,

and it's also scary,

but

it's nothing worse

or better than

whatever—

or whoever—

English has—

or will—

dream up.

Epiphany

2009-08-13T10:38:00.053+09:00

Epiphany

In the wilderness of a couch room,

carpet and walls the same desert tan,

the color of Metamucil, a cat lolling

like another piece of furniture, wooden

blinds shuttered and yellow

with incandescent shekinah,

a black rock sits on a heavy altar.

It is filled with many rainbows, or

fish, glistening around one another,

a singular and holy manifestation of God.

Outside, a young man sits on a chair,

looking over the buildings, smoking

a silent cigar. From far away he might

look like an insect. The lights of windows,

yellow and blue points, glow in

his lonely eyes.

Blueberries

2009-08-12T09:02:00.143+09:00

About a week ago, I sort of joked that I might make a habit of the plane-crash-described-in-terms-of-food trope that I'd only actually accomplished twice. But, finding myself without any ideas yet again, I asked my friend for a word (with which I would title a poem), and, wouldn't you know it, she said a food. Blueberries.

I have been disappointed with my lack of formalism lately, so here's my first villanelle (on this site. I wrote another one in college, but it sucked a lot, so you'll never see it. It was about doctors, I think. Or at least one doctor. So, whatever). It is a six-stanza poem, where the first and third lines repeat themselves, in turn, at the end of the subsequent four stanzas (they appear back-to-back at the end of the final stanza). The rhyme scheme for all of the stanzas is ABA (except for the final stanza, which is ABAA).

As far as writing one goes, it's fairly easy. Of course, if you pick difficult rhymes, that might increase the difficulty, but mainly the biggest challenge is keeping a progression of thought while still repeating the same lines all the time. I've achieved that fairly well here, but not spectacularly so.

I like that this one turns the you of my original PCDITOF poem, who was a victim of the plane crash, and turns him/her into the airplane. That being said, I don't really like this one as much as the previous two. But, enough about me.

Blueberries

Blueberries are popping under your feet,

but you are a Goddess, eyes towards the sky.

A jet engine squelch accompanies each.

Your white steel skin grates the foam of the sea,

Your blinking blue windows hold tragic faces behind.

Blueberries are popping under your feet.

Rushing wind sounds, like air blown through teeth,

break towards the horizon's grimacing line.

A jet engine squelch accompanies each.

The men in your belly are devouring fear.

You feel as innocent as metal and rubber, while

blueberries are popping madly under your feet.

Next, you nestle warm in the sugary deep.

Bubbles around your shoulders shift as you sigh.

A jet engine squelch accompanies each.

You are filled with juice, sinking heavy with sleep.

Thick liquid suffocates the mouths and eyes inside.

Blueberries are popping under your feet.

A jet engine squelch accompanies each.

Wild Cats at Night, in the City, Creeping...

2009-08-11T01:31:00.039+09:00

Wild Cats at Night, in the City, Creeping Through the Garbage, as I Walk from Behind

startling

Glass: Contrary Motion

2009-08-10T00:41:00.087+09:00

The other day I sat and listened to Donald Joyce play Philip Glass on the organ. Glass was a minimalist composer, so the experience took me back to my year of trying to major in music theory, playing things like Piano Phase by Steve Reich. The organ, however, makes the haunting ethereal gooey dullness twice as palpable, and twice as deadening. (You know, deadening in a good way.) The experience was so enjoyable and nostalgic I thought it might give me enough ammunition to produce a poem.

I chose the triolet form (here's another triolet on this site), because, although it predates minimalism by a few centuries, it still has that repetitive echo-y feeling, which seems appropriate. Maybe not as appropriate as a sestina would be, but easier to write.

Glass: Contrary Motion

Organ pipes demystified by

stereo ossification.

Gray film glazes on your eyes while

organ pipes demystify. By

sleep's arrival you'll know why

the metal chambers hark salvation.

Organ pipes demystified by

stereo ossification.

Gainjeonmokdan, or Dance Depicting Beautiful Women Picking Peonies

2009-08-09T23:55:00.014+09:00

Gainjeonmokdan, or Dance Depicting Beautiful Women Picking Peonies

oh, little plastic bag

rustle for me one more time

shimmmmer and cracccckle

joyous little musicmaker

and dancer of dances

jeongjae of the GS25 dynasty

Evil Genius

2009-08-07T23:54:00.001+09:00

Evil Genius

i devastated an airport

with a bottle of ginger ale.

businessmen, familymen,

and single stewardesses,

laying on the hard carpet,

left hand over their hearts,

flesh searing off

and me

wide-standing and laughing

a terrible, horrible, fearsome

laugh, mouth and eyes open,

and my bottle of ginger ale.

A Miracle Blight

2009-08-06T13:42:00.003+09:00

When I sat down to write, I told myself that I didn't have to finish the non-linear thing that I mentioned starting yesterday. But—and you should know that this is quite out of the ordinary—I had no trouble picking up where I left off at all, and the result was the following thing that I think has turned out fairly well. I'd be curious to hear which poem you think better addresses my original problem, though.

A Miracle Blight

I know a woman who can't walk

in a straight line. It's very frustrating

walking behind her, say in a group of three,

with you in the middle and her to the left,

bumping into you every six or seven steps

A miracle blight in the city

green as unripe corn

almost a perfect circle, laid

here by aliens, buildings torn

to fit its circumference.

I have a fourth-grade biology

understanding of my muscles.

I remember Mrs. Frizzle shrinking

to the size of a muscles cell,

and watching one stretch and dance.

It's amazing to feel wisps

of grain-grass knick your shins,

and that local touch triggers

itches on all of your skin.

It must be the communicable sweat.

Cars don't have much variance,

around here. I blame the government.

The grain-grass and the unripe corn

and all of the black loam and perlite

sitting underneath the crops of hair

in this apple-smelling circle of crunching

wholesome leather oat vitality

wave and wave, bric-a-brac of

grandmother nature's squinting sister.

Thank God for the fibrous tubers of Korea.

What I Think About While I Run

2009-08-05T13:24:00.057+09:00

The title of this one is more obvious than I prefer, I think, but it's late and I'm tired. Feel free to suggest something better. You see, what's really going on here, is not that, 'these are the words that literally reel through my mind as I run, like the news ticker on CNN,' but rather that I tend to think in un-languaged, impressionistic ways about the forms and masses of nature surrounding me and influencing me and powering me. In fact, perhaps this poem doesn't even begin to capture that at all ... I feel another word-associative, non-linear poem coming on...

[UPDATE: Maybe tomorrow. Enjoy this one for now!]

[UPDATE 2: Please note that I tagged this an 'apostrophe,' so far the only one of its kind on this site. For the poetically uninitiate, that only means that the poem directly addresses an inanimate object as if it were, well, animate.]

What I Think About While I Run

Fill the lungs, grass.

Plunge your roots desperately,

like a child kicking her legs

while learning to swim. Wildly.

Rise in mulch and compost,

earthy products, drink the sun

like lemonade in the summer,

between mowings. Suck and fill

with green, green, greenness.

Exhale sweetness: sugarcane

alcohol orange-rind sweetness,

and I will, I will, use it for good.

Psychosomatictryptophenicyclene

2009-08-04T13:10:00.042+09:00

Psychosomatictryptophenicyclene

Glass can be the thickest thing,

smooth and watery between your fingers.

Smooth and watery and thick.

Tonight, I pressed a round piece of the stuff

to my mouth,

feeling the thickness with my lips, too.

There was some beer—light, thin—

pumping into my digestive tubes from the glass.

The glass of beer looked like a pill.

Brown, ovular, and, very thick.

A horse pill.

Andrew and Luke looked at me from the far

side of the table. The counter. Andrew was laughing

like a horse, teeth braying forward, as they do

in untreated mouths, and Luke was almost

(almost!) smiling.

I, however, smelled polliwogs in the air

and felt melty marshmallows in my shoes,

so I got up and got out of there. I left the glass,

thick and heavy and watery, pressing on the table.

On the counter.

As I ran through the door, I turned my head around.

Luke was still amused, lolling his head, but not

(not yet!) smiling. Andrew had finished his

horse-laughter, and was looking like he wasn't

sure how many people he had gone out with.

The glass of beer, though, in its pill brown

milky thick way, was—I swear!—

staring at me.

I let the door close and ran home.

[title unknown]

2009-08-03T14:11:00.119+09:00

As per usual, I wrote the following poem first, and worried about the title afterward. I'm always a bit annoyed at that stage of the proceedings, because I get the sense that too much emphasis is placed on titles, these days. Perhaps that is an effect of our ability to possess vast amounts of media, and therefore we need an efficient cataloging system, and names are convenient shorthand for entire works. There was a time when a play or piece of music could be easily recalled simply by stating the name of its author and perhaps an instance of its performance, but the emergence of the middle class turned entertainment into an industry (just like shoes or ball point pens), and content exploded. Then came the digital revolution, and now you're lucky if your best friend listens to the same bands that you do.

But I distract myself. What I was trying to get at was, the iconoclast in me always wants to break away from that convention (of naming poems in a twitter-friendly size), but I have yet to devise a satisfactory method for doing so. This poem, however, the one you're about to read, went through several different titles before I arrived at the one currently in use. When I chose it, I thought to myself, "I can't think of a good name for this poem, so I'll ask my readers to suggest some for me. I'll just leave a blank space, and we'll go from there."

But then, I actually typed this intermediary title, and upon seeing it, I decided that there could be no better title. After all, the poem summarily addresses the reliance human beings have always had on our ability to communicate, and I guess you could say it marvels at this strange aspect of our existence. And, with so much mystery to go around, who can say for certain what any poem ought to be called?

[title unknown]

I know the words. I can shape

complex caverns with my tongue

and palette, bouncing acute bursts

of vibrating air through its modular

chamber. I have the order memorized.

In the brisk air of an East Asian summer night,

five thick men sit in front of a convenience store,

gathered around a plastic table. They talk loudly.

I can recite thousands of iterations,

recognize millions more. I can distinguish

the false binaries of volume and tone

as easily as eating breakfast, digesting

complex strands of code for use by the body.

Twelve meters above, a young immigrant

watches dolefully from his balcony. His

washing machine dutifully whirls beside him.

The accompanying hieroglyphs

do not impress, retrograde inversions

though they may be. Language

has no surprises left. I am an

extension of my environment.

There is air between the boy and the men,

substantive, like water between fishes. It

holds them all, perfectly, in their place.

Lettuce

2009-08-02T00:56:00.138+09:00

A few months ago, I was completely out of ideas for a poem. I asked my girlfriend to say a word—any word—with the intent of using that word as the poem's title, hoping perhaps this would jump start my imagination. She said, 'jello.' I was initially dismayed at this unexpectedly odd choice, but the resulting poem actually turned out rather well, in my own opinion.

So, a few weeks ago, I asked her to do me the same favor. This time, she said, 'lettuce,' which was so daunting that I did not immediately set myself to the task. Tonight, however, is the night! And, now that I have written it (I wrote it before this introductory material, as you might have guessed if you'd thought about it, but maybe you didn't think about it, so I told you. How should I know??), I think that I will claim victory yet again.

I am so pleased, in fact, that I am considering making this only the second in a long series of food-titled poems about airplane crashes into oceans. Dozens of doctoral dissertations will be written on the symbolism. (Perhaps one of them will be my own!)

Lettuce

as the plane the airplane fell down grabbed by cotton

hands of clouds crumpled like a can of Coca Cola trademark

as it dented and bent light sent in boomerangs through spheres

because the thin tin walls dented in like brittle lettuce all over

it looked like a ball of foil crumpled after covering a casserole

the ocean the surface of the ocean was the same creased and shiny

sparkle making the same sound too and the plane the airplane

fell down past the clouds as fast as rain blinking at the ocean

the hard hard ocean blinking back rushing together until at last

clap the plane slapped the cement water blasting through flattened

wet and heavy filling fast heavy black the brittle lettuce wilting

and everyone inside everyone all the people inside drowning

bubbles rose like squid from the silent silence the screams from
the can of Coca Cola trademark and the tin foil surface of the sea
bubbled like hot casserole for a few minutes and was the same