Ron Silliman
From Parrot Eyes Lust
For Elliott Helfer Being 30° of Universe
Lone bushtit
high in the oak
All these flowers
whose names
I never remember
Roger’s rhodies
blooming two storeys high
When the mower shuts off
a small plane approaching
becomes audible
then I realize
I can hear
other mowers
one, two
neighborhoods over
Some little bird
dive bombs
that starling in the grass
Nothing breaks apart
like old rubber bands
Hard spring rain
The new windows
let a breeze enter in
Putting the scrab
in Scrabble
Over time
one’s reading of the obits
alters
One man receives
the Medal of Honor
four decades after dying
Point at which
the brick path
turns into a lake
Point at which
America’s decline
becomes inevitable
The Bay of Pigs
i.e., the ability to dictate outcomes
no longer held
Imagines Marines
as one large drunk
A man is talking
too loudly on his cellphone
possibly to be heard over
the calm even voice
that permeates the store’s air
even above the soft
too perky music
Crows loudly
& in significant number
but unseen
somewhere
at the bottom of the hill
Psychomotor agitation
aka pacing while you read
listening in the same moment
to something inaudible
(What?)
over those earphones
Saturday pilot
somewhere above
this canopy
Clematis
loud & purple
up the last remaining trestle
Rhodies past their bloom
Day’s first motor
buzzsaw
in the neighbor’s garage
Dogs bark
while the Samoyed
gets its walk
A young man in a stack of hats
is himself a lesson
& if he wise its own best student
I remind her
that I have a beard
that she never in fact
has known me without one
Indoors, the fans are running constantly
Lately I’ve returned to the margin
as if I understood what it was
I waken but feel exhausted
from the labor of dreams
Mick Jagger singing with Arcade Fire
young enough to be his grandkids
The house composed of found objects
A stack of old Polaroids, a concept
that in two decades will become entirely obscure
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
as a subtext in my work
I distrust any bookcase
with objects other than books
The small table is littered
with remote controls
One basket for magazines
another for papers
this is not about recycling
but the direction of dreams
carried forward well after working
The elephant in the living room
is carved from wood
no larger than my hand
& strides in the shade
of multiple driftwood birds
a loon, a dowitchers
a bent-wood Cree decoy
no images anywhere
of my mother’s mother
nor her dad
tho it’s his eyes I see
each morning in the mirror
A pair of sandals
left in front of the sink
has no clear predicate
but why expect clarity?
His mother’s mother’s father
invented the steel spikes
that once made climbing telephone poles possible
They were everywhere & everyone knew them
tho now only older citizens might remember
His father’s mother’s uncle
once worked in a dairy
& there invented Neapolitan ice cream
but that side of the family
is filled with tales of alcohol
She walked naked
through the streets of the town
back to the tavern
where she promised to beat the crap
out of the man who had wronged her
The new neighbors leave the TV on
in that back bedroom
24 hours a day
small blue square
visible through the night woods
As a foreman his great fear
was that strikers
would set his new Pontiac ablaze
when he reported for work
At dawn the birds are incessant
We don’t think of them as urban
The arrival of chipmunks
signaled the departure of mice
& therefore was an improvement
When his mother remarried
his new stepfather threw him out
because of his homosexuality
If he ever saw his mother again
his stepfather never knew it
Now Tom Clark
lives at the far end
of the very same block
What then?
At his physical on 9/11/2001, Ron Silliman registered at 5’7”, two inches shorter than he had been for over 35 years. He presumed this simply meant that everyone was crazy that day—as they certainly were—but those two inches never returned. He has other recent poetry forthcoming in R&R and The Minute Review. Actually the work in the latter is 50 years old, but that's recent enough.
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