Mona calls me a closet fag
because I find so much pleasure in shitting.
I know she's just jealous
and that the living owe the dead nothing
and the dead owe the living nothing.
Such imagined debt results
in a state of semi-life
that makes neither any better.
Up all night calming her
twisting her fine hair in my fingers;
I tried to squeeze the salve from the tube
and it made only flatulent empty squirts
like spent mustard;
only the scent emerged
and a bit of spit.
Now there is a silence in the new neighborhood.
All the shuffles of my movement are amplified
like a hyper-sensitively-miked cinematic scene
frightening
unsafe
something horrific pends
in the idyllic calm which always portends tragedy
and Mona's frail hand constricts
mine like a mitt
mine like so much tepid meat.
She leads me across the street
and we don't look both ways
to that diner with the cheap breakfast
and cigarettes
and the nice old Lithuanian waitress
who will speak softly in broken English
and I'll sit and read the paper and nod
and Mona will fly into the traffic
and sparkle a moment in the sun
like a butterfly gum wrapper
and the music will stop
let the ambient noise
wash me clean
as a licked kitten.
.
Author notes
Written May 10th, 2006
A contest entry
- love poems that don't make me vomit by vaguelyfamiliar.
650 points, ended April 27, 2008, 27 entries
Bronze trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
What did you think
Comments
1 - 23 of 23
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this sits like a companion poem to mine. doesn't it. talk about symbiosis wow. i'm sort of freaked right now.
that's amazing. what with the kitten there at the end and the title and all
i didn't copy, i swear.
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can put this is burst!
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yep. I will want to edit it up a bit.
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of course you will you anal fuck.
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The last stanza is difficult for me. Standing alone, I'm comfortable with it, but it is odd, because it seems as if it should be a continuation from the line of the prior stanza (as there is no stop punctuation at the end of that stanza) but it doesn't work grammatically or logically. I am stuck. I will give it another read, and maybe revise my opinion, but I find it difficult.
"and Mona will fly into the traffic
and sparkle a moment in the sun
like a butterfly gum wrapper"
Ugh. I wish I wrote that. Just beautiful.
I like that you can open a poem talking about "a closet fag" and "shitting" and make it work. Really really work.
I personally find that the second stanza does not add to this poem.
Fourth stanza is wondrously sexual and completely banal at the same time. You seem to do that a fair amount. I enjoy it muchly.
Second to last stanza, particularly the bit highlighted above, was really fantastic.
Thanks so much for entering this, even though it's a prewrite. I still think you're brilliant.
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The end was a little trick I was trying with the build-up of 'and's and then omiting the "and" where it was needed, to create a birth-like separation. It IS a continuation of the prior stanza. Try inserting an "and" just prior to the final stanza.
Also, I don't see the grammatical problem, even if the stanza were to stand on its own, "let" being imperative there, as in "let's go", or "let the games begin."
Oh, and thank you. -
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Standing alone, that sentence is grammatical. All I meant is that because you use punctuation and capitalization throughout, it is a bit jarring and seemingly ungrammatical.
I do see what you were trying to do and it is fantastic. After a few more readings, it is growing on me quite a bit.
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Prewrites shouldn't be eligible to receive Gold trophies.
Hi dollface.
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why do you think that?
POLACKS shouldn't be eligible to recieve gold trophies. Now that makes sense.
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Reading this poem and the comments has been a treat of images and good banter...
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Oh Mr Points Magnet
and Mona's frail hand constricts
mine like a mitt
mine like so much tepid meat
a fat
cancerous squid
(aflail in steroid lake)
she leads me across the street
and we don't look both ways
there is something wonderfully juxaposed about that - rancid and vivid - and good to see you living on the edge when it comes to road safety.
David
ps
let the ambient noise
wash me clean
as a licked kitten
A tasteful artist like yourself would use kitten whilst for some I have images of pussy going through my brain. In my case with or without this piece those images fly through every seven seconds...there's another one...and again...must go now...urgent business to attend to...wow that one was of a different pussy -
kickin.
hey ed.
I don't know if this is the one you pointed me to.
I really loved this poem, and some of my reasons are selfish and probably not even good for you. Like, I've always had a range of emotions towards your range of poetry - as you know, I have a deep distrust/loathing of obscenity even though I can work with it - and so I've never really been able to get into your more profane stuff. And even your none shock poetry always had a sort of viciousness to it that I respected for its skill, but was genuinely ambivalent to in relating to, as one poet to the next.
So this relatively gentle poem - it's not even just a gentle poem, because you've written those before (the one with your daughter and the ants on the porch I still remember clearly, and if that seems insulting, I can only remember three poems from my own girlfriend off the top of my head) - but this poem isn't so much a truly gentle poem. It's more in the spirit of your old vicious poems, but scaled back to a more human, less Trent-Reznor edge that allows me to live inside it.
If that makes any sense.
For example: one reference to shitting in the first stanza
works for me. I can swing on it as a comparison point, a metaphor. A reminder. You're grounding your poem in baseness, and then moving on. But the poem doesn't stay there for eight lines, driving it into us. Which is too much like what the world does to me anyway for me to really embrace, even if it's supposed to be a protest by truthful re-enactment.
Anyway, I love the placement of the second stanza next to it - even if the first stanza is crude, it's also sort of lightly tethered, and then the next stanza you drive home a haunting, grim mental self-confrontation - one sustained statement over the stanza. Really, somehow, the next seven stanzas are just an elaboration of that, or the reinforcement of it, or the neccesary background to it that demonstrates it, the house that the truth lives in.
I love the 3/four stanza pair as well. It's deeply moving, that two-line unadorned gesture of tenderness with a note of helplessness, and then the next stanza, an extended metaphor, with no direct transitional language - but both stanzas discuss the same thing.
And the ending again, dips back into loathing, but at tolerable levels that do not annihiliate and s**t on the wonderful surrealist ending with Mona merging with the outside street and the universe.
I fucking love this poem, Ed. I'm going to bookmark it. You've written a few before that gored me, but this one really puts the hammer down. If I only had your ability, interest, and level of armor plating in casual bullshit conversation, we'd be soul brothers or some frocking thing, because we're looking into the same poetic crevices.
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hello. I'm new here.
or new again. is that like "born again"? I dunno, I'm just feeling awkward cuz I've been away, both figuratively and in reality, and I want to get back, and I've been waffling all afternoon, lurking around the boards (which just made me feel that old sickness). Then I remembered I used to go on Ed tours, and thought that would be a safe way to start. By "safe", I mean I can count on a worthy read here, not only worthy but also one that doesn't make me feel like I'm a stranger in my own culture, if that makes any sense.
Anyhow, I was right. This was a great place to begin my re-entry. A "holy shit" moment, when you said "the living owe the dead nothing", because I've just come from sitting shiva (or, rather, hanging around those that were) for a week - father-in-law passed away - and man that was nothing if not paying dues to the dead. It was dreadful. Enough to make you pissed off at the guy for dying.
I see my name up there in association with "ands". I like them. Here they evoke a spinning sensation, a merry-go-round of images flashing past. Do you remember the parks had great kid-powered ones? You could get them going sooo fast, you'd hang on for dear life. The "ands" are like the thrusts of the kids standing on the ground, pushing. They pulse.
I see lots of little death wishes in this poem, but maybe that's just me.
Thank you for providing a trusted refuge.
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Equal opportunity for all but those without bodies, i.e. the dead, the muses, the unborn.
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and I'll sit and read the paper and nod
and Mona will fly into the traffic
and sparkle a moment in the sun
like a butterfly gum wrapper
and the music will stop
let the ambient noise
wash me clean
as a licked kitten.
I love the word 'and', almost as much as I love your pomes...I must admit that since you've come back, AP has definitely spit-shined up again...lol. After all, we must all have our own heros...
Spot-on again, Mr. P. -
I'm just a hayseed sitting on the fence watching the big guys play and wishin' I knew what the heck they were talking about.
In the meantime I'm reading this poem and sensing Mona has a history. This intrigues me. So does the exceptional quality of this work and so does the verbotten use of 'And'. Seems in poetry as in art, the only rule is what works.
This does.
david -
I'm not doing it til you have time. Screwball. What CEO gig got you burdened. -
yep. but i got no time yust now. If you want to start er up then go ahead, i will send jew poinds that you need. I am like a fucking point magnet.
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Are you sure that Mona doesn't call you a closet fag because she likes the British word for cigarette? I mean, shitting is a pretty equal opportunity activity, if you ask me...
Anyway, Lisa's already provided an excellent recitation of thoughts as to why this piece is both image-wise, and tonally, excellent. I have noticed that a lot of your Mona poems are either dream-like, or in this case even "sleepy" with references to a pleasant laziness. I suppose that's because there are multiple reasons to appreciate company nearby, and a bed is a particular reference point for that pleasure.
I have told you before that your metropolitan imagery is marvelous. I really always have a sense of what it is, even when only hinted at, as here, by references to ethnicity and isolated pieces of trash. This poem drifts between irony and satiation -- and all the while presents a beautiful picture. Nicely done, Ed. -
Good to see Mona again.
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You got points? -
Yep, I do have a novel in the works that i have trashed and retrashed so many times i have stopped counting. Perhaps when mia is a bit older, if i live that long.
I think the ands add pace toward the end and shrink the poem, funnel it towards a somewhat anticlimactic end.
I can't write this week. I don't know why. Maybe we should host a contest. -
There was a day when EdPeterson posted a pome and there were at least 20 comments.
Despite the "change" here. It does not diminish the enjoyment and wonder for me of reading your work. I don't know, sometimes you just hit something so damn artistically it just leaves me going ... yeah. Your voice is deadpan and so detached here. And yet so full of intimacy. I only hope that I can hit that same note every once in blue moon (hard to see I think in your own work).
There is something about when you break into those quick shots of stuff that still reminds me of the inner diaglogues of Joyce in Ulysses. You sometimes seem like a novel writer or short story writer (though ain't no money in short stories). You have a novel going don't you?
Anyway.
P.S. you have a great way of using "ands" musical. I'm not always fond of so many. Zara said she uses them for beats as well. Probably a natural thing. Most of those cool things are.
Write more.
Lisa
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