Poems in Otoliths
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Molly strips at The Office
in Center City Philly: high-
school drop-out, pot-fiend,
child in second grade, puffed
up from downing lager during
down-time. She told me her
story because Desmond beats
the hell out of her, she needs
a better gig. Health insurance
does not exist for her or the kid,
she lives in fear of Italian Market
ruffians bearing down on little Bradley.
I brought her back to my pad,
fucked her, told her I would gladly
be a father to Bradley if I had
the time, or the money, but I don't.
Colliding Crops
April cruelty of rain-chilly wind, six months
until harvest- Stacy stands on the verge of
a realm not tearless, but over tears, so that
tears themselves form a kind of second skin
around her, & the child to be born is cried
out- here, I notice, is a place where I could've
been no one, still have no substance, & what
pours out of me, as I absorb the Indiana
farm-land, is just refuse of what I've never had-
this is what she writes out of. The erstwhile female
is replaced by a raw-nerved, patterned, womanly
archetype, solid as a silo, to be picked at by the
little-minded for occupying space in a man's arid
world. Corn-rows tilt to be livid both ways.
A series of portals
We now have online the possibility of "double portals" for Opera Bufa and When You Bit...: the original Otoliths book pdfs, and full-length recordings of the entire respective books. Here, for Opera Bufa: book pdf, book-length mp3; and for When You Bit...., book pdf and book-length mp3.
New Jersey Blood
The first bedlam-laden Free School show:
I caught Jeremy doing his madcap routine,
ribbing audience to leave. I didn't understand
then who Jeremy was, where he came from
(South Jersey), & why he worked unconsciously
to stay (& remain) small. The Highwire shows
were too high for his strident, unsorted softness.
Abandoned inhibitions rose up to high ceilings;
New Jersey squirmed, itchy for its children;
Jeremy slunk back, wine in hand, began snapping
pictures again. As he kneeled to get a special
angle on Mike Land, who stood reading at the
podium, I remembered Avalon as a teenager,
New Jersey at midnight, waves into emptiness.
