Bad-ass Florence Bender
[first view: sassy flo (really, I’m related to a Florence Bender)]
Flo, you beautiful fucker,
hooknose like a crook, shepherd
leopards with trainsets and crisps.
underwear, paisley printed, still speaks to
me through centuries of scrapbooking.
Killer kink in
your knitting, say it with a hard K please,
because Great-Grandma Bender died of
a cervical canker
give the woman her fucking
cue – give her kites to climb to convalescence.
[second view: train-bender, mind-render]
like twin mounted engines, your camel humpshoulders
assault my eyes like color insults
black and white. your face waters, like a million
pennies spinning crushed through air,
secreting from the rails, syrup from a maple.
your bits and pieces, in separate boxes they
lay. keep the watermelon in the cistern. keep
the unreal in the oven. keep the indulgence in
the panties.
even after the fact, like like brother charlie, I
find hidden longing in your kitchen, baked into
crusts, slowly being crushed between the twin
cakes: poetry, patriarchy.
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5 comments:
This website is scaring the pants offa me.
It's been so long since Fulton's class, that I've forgotten how to live (i.e. workshop poetry) so I'll start in an elementary manner and work myself into it - kay?
Flo, you beautiful fucker, -- what a way to start a poem. [let the masturbatory praise commence!]
[Actually, I'm kidding] the next line is chill "hooknose like a crook" but "shepherd/leopards" isn't as fun. I'm getting that you're trying to balance syntactic whimsy with some conceptualization of the past (as off the wall as it may be) but I think you can do better than the shep. leop. rhyme.
I think at "Trainwreck:" it starts to loosen up a bit. The poem is decidedly more manic starting there and I daresay, irreverent!?! Salman Rushdie told me that there's no such thing as a respectful joke, therefore, I feel how you kick ass with "killer kink in / your knitting". Kink & old ladies? Groovy.
All the k-k-k-k-kay sounds are klever, dig? Sadly, I don't necessarily get the "kike and dyke" joke/reference, which I feel is essential to not making it offensive. It doesn't offend me, but if the joke isn't completely salient, then it's just two crude terms that you just lost points for in the public realm.
As for the second part of demarcated joy, my short answer is, it loses a bit of steam. Maybe it's because I'm expecting flagrant papastry, but the language in "second view" doesn't seem especially fresh to me. If this is an experiment in seperating yourself from your usual methods, then the strings of the illusions are showing here. Couple of points on this: i) rend will always be a hard verb to use in poetry, I get the pun, but it's not worth the effort (IMHO). ii) "pennies spinning crushed through air" - I feel like that line is a 'meh...ok' line. iii) "keep the watermelon in the cistern." I'm so there, non-sequiturs rocks my socks, remind me to tell you about what Rushdie said Horace said about melons!
The final stanza really goes for something. I don't 100% "get it" but the erotic meeting the domestic then getting cock-slapped by "PATRIARCHY" (RUN AND HIDE!!!!) is boss. We really must extend our conversation about patriarchy/homosexuality into the written world, it's such a good talking point.
Overall, I know you loathe to think about, reflect on, or even have orgasms while considering revisions, but here, it's warranted. There's something geniune in the emotional tonality of the piece that I think you can mine for something that has the 'terroir' of jonny p. but has some of authentic maturity.
[and briefly back to the masturbatory] Beautiful. Sex. You're a prince.
-B.
haha. i don't loathe revisions. no wonder ward six is terrified of us.
now they think that i'm a.) fucked up and b.) a bad writer. hah.
thanks for the comments. I was reaching for the fact that parts of my family hated her because she was a converted jew and a lesbian (this is like 1900, think about that). but at the same point, not necessarily relevant.
I get what you're saying about the watermelons. I dig the non-sequitur - but that used to be where you kept watermelons. i guess. This is what i'm told.
As per the pennies, I'm sticking with it. flo's husband, and all the men on that side of the family were in the train business, and in ye olden days a penny could ruin a track. so i'm reaching for something, i know. but i love the image of crushed pennies flying from the corner of someone's eyes. and then having them all hang there, matrix bullet-time like.
thanks for the comments!
Okay, I have to admit, I'm a comment reader whore. I read the comments first and then the poem. Probably some critics worst nightmare..but you know, whatever.
Rmellis' comment worried me because 1) other people are reading this blog, and lord knows I'm not posting my best stuff, but it's stuff nonetheless, so I'll keep on posting and 2) I thought Jon had really went in for the big one this time (breaking and entering in gardens anyone?)
It wasn't bad, and I'm proud of our little blog. Also, Bendi should immediately enter the business as an avant-garde critic. I'd start with the NY Times, Bendi.
As for the poem itself, I can only say in my sleepy stupor: Jon, please PLEASE revise your damn self. There is evident skill here, but there is also evident chaos. And not the cool kind of chaos either (i.e.-still speaks/ to me through centuries of scrapbooking; secreting from rails; the unreal in the oven) I get what you got, but I'm just not crazy about it. And I want to be.. with your poems, Jon, I always want that ultimate whambham thankyou ma am.
As for Rmellis..Thank you. I'm inherently and genuinely glad for your blog. It shows an order to the mania our blog cavorts with. Plus, we're young and we rock that at the very least.
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