What about horses eaten by wind?
--Wallace Stevens, "Parochial Theme"
And so begins a tradition. This year, I made the art; last year, I was the art. (The second picture is my favorite--why am I making such a chubby sulkface? It is a mystery. However, there is also a case to be made for the first picture, in which I contrive to look both pissy and frightened. Mourn the passing of my camera, friends.) Anyway, I thought I would attempt a looser interpretation this time around. Look at the monstrous wind, look at the horse! Behold his anatomically improbable legs!
14 comments:
I thought you were way cuter than this horse. Now, if you were to put lipstick and earrings on this horse, I might have to think again.
WHIPPED AT THE CRYPT
1.
Confera, Tricia, the so-called Islandic drollery
Annie Proulx cites in CLOSE RANGE’s
First story concerning Tin-head
And the half-skinned mare, or steer,
Petroglyph vaginas and the foundation
Of a Future Farmer of America’s
Idea that behind every labia lay
2.
A granite cliff he was manfully
Obliged to hammer, the eager,
Leathery, chain-smoking stepmother
Who tosses back tumblerfuls of Everclear,
Whom Mero the moron flees
In Oedipal terror of sex, he says,
With his old man’s leftovers,
3.
Comes home for a funeral,
And is buried forever in a blizzard,
Half-skinned mare, or steer,
She calls it, neutered because neglected,
Its watery red eye leering at Mister
Cowardly Limp Pecker through the snow’s
Impersonal whirr, revenged, unappeased.
4.
Earlier Tin-head had eaten her tongue
For dinner. Tricia, I saw your photo
Wearing a horsehead. You live
In suburbia, dodging the doom
Of being a soccer chauffeur. I myself
Am a devoted granddaughter gawker.
Between hills like white elephants
5.
And a vaginal meow, I don’t know
The difference. Maybe women muddle
Courage and cruelty, but men confuse
Happiness and smut every day.
The half-skinned mare, or steer
Has a red eye on everyone.
Don’t leave destiny undone.
I encourage you to tune in next year, Whimsy, when I will feature myself applying a horse-shaped lipstick with jewel-eyes to my flared ingathering nostrils.
As for WHIPPED AT THE CRYPT, am I accused of being bourgeois? That is a first. It was not quite suburbia--it was a depressing apartment complex that aspired to suburbia--but you're right, I did feel a strong sad longing for the city there.
HERSELF AS ART
1.
This is where the serpent lives, the bodiless,
Neither granola, nor whole wheat,
More like King Arthur’s Refined Flour.
Not fair, freckled, aroused and irritable,
Nor a foul, growling, olive-skinned
Believer in magical spoons, garlic
For health and the Virgin Mary,
Hairy as an Assyrian and insufferable,
2.
A walking, talking root cellar. Dweller
In neither a rural nor urban bohemia.
No jungle of feminine intricacy
To invade and explore, howling
“Ah-ooh-ah! Me Tarzan, you Tricia.”
Just the earnest, fiercely shy, therefore
Clownish America and its Wonderbread
Circus, making its claims of the velvet,
3.
Vaporous monopoly theoretically
Savored by the cannibals of a deranged
Diaspora, consolations of steerage,
Its harvest of fear. What we have here
In the concentric composure
Of an immense onion, pale enamel
And nearly translucent, hair
Un-required therefore fine, limp
4.
Therefore obedient, dull, sensible
Underwear, chilling the air
With the smell of ozone, soap
And cheddar, and the echo,
“Thwung!” of a winter bell, dwindling
In frenzies of joylessness, anger and chaos,
Whereupon she closes her eyes, nailed
To the cross of apology and another.
Oh dear. Not being overburdened with critical intelligence, I cannot make head or tail of this one. Please plant a little saxifrage of enlightenment in the stony cleft of my incomprehension.
UNE REPONSE EN PARTICULIERE
I spent the day in the woods
Between Rumford and Andover
Hoping to divine whatever
The carpenters were doing at "my camp"
To know how much further this would pillage
My plundered, perforated I.R.A.,
Nest-egg of a noisy, nervous rooster.
O pure young soul untroubled
By crass, demi-mundane particulars like these,
I'll re-write "Herself as Art"
Tomorrow to see if I can make
Both herself and art intelligible.
Meanwhile, the fair and the foul
Were avatars imaginaire of Tricia
Expunged by that sassy photo of her last year
Defying the wind in her chapeau chevalier,
And two swell glasses of zinfandel at dinner (seared
Scallops) rendered my ball-bearings loose as geese.
THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF HERSELF
1.
The internet is the sky. It’s where a blog person
Lives, bodiless, neither granola, nor whole wheat,
More like King Arthur’s Refined Flour. Take
Tricia, neither fair, freckled, aroused and irritable,
Nor a foul, growling, olive-skinned
Believer in magical spoons, garlic
For health and the Virgin Mary,
Hairy as an Assyrian and insufferable,
2.
A walking, talking root cellar. Tricia
Dwells in no rural or urban bohemia,
Offers no jungle vines of feminine intricacy
To soar and explore, howling
“Ah-ooh-ah! Me Tarzan, you Tricia!”
Just the earnest, proudly shy, therefore
Clownish American veldt and Wonderbread
Circus, making its claims on the velvet,
3.
Vaporous monopoly that the cannibal
Survivors of a deranged diaspora
Theoretically savor, the coarse, erotic
Consolations of steerage and new world fear.
Here, au contraire, we’ve the concentric
Composure of an onion, enamel, immense
And translucent, hair un-required
By geography, therefore fine, limp
4.
And obedient, dull, but sensible
Underwear, chilling the lace-less air
With the odor of ozone, a soap
And cheddar smell, and the echo,
“Thwung!” of a winter bell, dwindling
In frenzies of affectless chaos, anger and joy.
Tricia closes her eyes, opens her stony cleft,
Nailed to the cross of apology and another.
Marvelous accommodator! You are saxifrage itself. Moreover, your "Une Response En Particuliere" is very fine. More tender poems about scallops and finances, please!
A year already? A year of gorgeously weird art, and weirdly gorgeous words? If you need a different benefactor, try me! Guaranteed benefits.
INDIAN RIVER
(for “The Emperor of Ice-Cream Cakes'” 2nd birthday)
1.
Nymph is a word, contra-nymph not,
But a contranym means itself
And its opposite, such as cleave
Or ravel. Even NO goes both ways–-though that’s
A sticky wicket nowadays. The nunnery
Beach is where Hamlet sent what’s her name,
Ophelia, a pure place due to the moon’s
2.
Wash of waves, where purity comes to its end
Contranymically, shoots or got shot down,
Viz., a visiting Hartford fireman–-jazz age slang
For a gunner on a toot, a booze or poon pursuit,
Though in my case, sand fleas started biting
My ass with such devoted ferocity
I couldn’t concentrate to navigate,
3.
Loft the bomb into Bombay, which was
A sultry but strawberry blonde’s forest
Of acquiescence, had to yank
Up my bluejeans and scramble
From our inadequate towel
Back to her car, where naturally,
Hands on her steering wheel,
4.
This delivering angel of hopes and dreams
Had second thoughts, boskage perdu.
Schlitz for beer, a slew of boiled crabs,
Corn on the cob with salt
And butter, fraternal idiots
Witnessing me discreetly but steadily
Intensifying the ante, “I wish
5.
You’d nibble on me like that,” a jest,
But unbelievably, the maiden whispered,
“Yes,” but then those sand fleas assaulted
My balls, and as T. E. Lawrence
Complained in THE SEVEN
PILLARS OF WISDOM, violated
The very seat of my dignity.
SCALLOPS & MALE FINANCE
You appear, my dear, to have scallop
And fiscal issues. I indulge the former
Wreathed in adequate, but meager
Irish moss, bulging yet snug and lisping
Shameless moisture, a sort of proto
Blancmange, in the hospitable
Under-drawers of Hostess Tricia,
And suffering the same’s marmoreal
If not arctic and magisterial
Grandeurs, there where the white bear,
Mechka Bjelo, adrift with an Eskimo’s
Grandmother, heard an ice floe crack
And silently grieved. The fiscal issue,
Alas, is even less voluptuous,
More a kaleidoscope’s mirror
Of multi-magnified shards
Of colored glass, or as Percy
Bysshe Shelley observed, “We fall
Upon the fiscal issues of life, we bleed.”
And it's only weeping bears that dance.
I would love nothing more, Jee, I would love nothing more. I will embark on a series of odes to your patronly manhood immediately.
Contranyms! Sand fleas! Lisping shameless moisture! You have outdone yourself this time, anonymous.
love the drawing.
the cornelius eady is also a thrill, like bulls opening the door of a haunted mansion, like knockers on the door of a haunted mansion, like dilated eyeplums thrown at the door of a haunted mansion, or maybe just a sideview of botox traveling through blueblood.
Thank you, Rainy!
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