“Cat Settings” is another text in the series of The Adventures of Scamble and Cramble, two cats who live with a poet and spend most of their time puzzling over the writer’s habits. Click on the cover to begin reading.
Category: Reading
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Argument in the Time of Apples
Torqued antipathy apparels dimple
dented funny car, idling gear limbed,
oiled, greased, and garbed
wardrobe red, beaming barbs,
wavy hair flames bursting
from the fat winged fenders
of his 1950 hot rod roadster,
and the countdown lights
go green, and the ground springs,
and the asphalt melts to sap;meanwhile, in lane next whole daddy,
apples in juicy life dangle,
from form below pending,
suspended, the quick nap of a bee,
moistly sloping sap up elegant boughs,
up, wake up, give us blush
pale pink blossoms,
not the false fruit of an inapt poem.
Leaf springs, cracks the bark
of the dormant pome tree
pruned for Verve & Vigor.Explication:
What is called a season is the mapping of sap
around a wound,
and a poem is a funny car.
After the burled cuts, twisted,
elbow pruned shifting of gears
and squealing of red wheelbarrows,
the melting tongue wanders away,
talking to the bees from a standing start,
showing the pink slip core of reason
dash and flash in a sap sluice. -
Word Put Upon Word
“Stone put upon stone and chamber beside chamber” D’Arcy Thompson “Mud put upon mud, lifted to make room,” Robert Creeley word hod put upon house word shell soma stone put upon stone put log upon log cube upon cube pier upon pier unit upon unit post up & unus put upon unus road upon road page upon page wood in face upon face paint put upon paint wall put upon wall one part upon part upon slab on slab load put upon load hod word onus upon onus line put upon line word upon stone bowl put mud in hand put upon hand a pan upon a tone drum stone upon note upon note a lifted scuttle note upon row in a sign sing stone mud call name put upon cut word in rune put upon stone bone lifted end upon end a tune in CODA: wind upon wind wave upon wave cloud upon cloud grass upon grass leaf upon leaf sail upon sail hill upon hill cove around cove cliff upon cliff square upon square camp upon camp town upon town city upon city state upon state…wind upon wind wave upon wave cloud upon cloud cove around cove
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Notes on n+1’s “MFA VS NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction”
“I’m going to New York City to become a famous writer!”
“New York can be really tough on a cat.”The blogger is the busker of the writing world, sidewalk setup with pre-production to distribution in a snap, with or without an MFA or ever having set foot in Brooklyn, where it’s easy to mistake an NYC for a hipster, the new hepcat, but the character with a sign on a street corner, selling short stories, has got to be an MFA. Of course I bought one. It’s titled, “Sixteen short stories, and what do you get? Another day older and money in debt.” That’s it, the whole story, a study in minimalism.
n+1’s “MFA VS NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction” sounds more highfalutin that it is. The eclectic collection of analytic and reflective pieces is very engaging: personal, down-to-earth, and sincere; witty, informative, and cantankerous. The stories of the aspiring writers though are often wrapped in disappointment, and don’t amount to good news for the latest whiz kids on their way to the big time.
The big time here is the coveted publishing contract and the freedom to write it suggests. But if the big time is part of the great American novel, the form is protean: movie stardom, big league baseball star, corporate head-honcho, founder of the next mega-church, on the cover of Rolling Stone. How does a relentless pursuit of excellence turn rancorous and begin to have a negative effect on the game, or the business, or the art? Subcultures are constantly being subsumed by the dominant, overarching culture, the umbrella over the barrel. The writers and scholars that appear in “MFA VS NYC” have big time stories to tell, and readers interested in the making of literature will find intriguing stuff on the ways the writing of fiction is taught or learned and the resulting fiction influenced and modified by the many players in the process: teachers, programs, agents, publishers, editors, publicists, booksellers, critics, readers.
People write for all kinds of reasons and purposes, usually to someone, and if the writing is sent off – the memo, the email, the love letter, the white paper, the blog post, the letter to the editor, the book proposal, the sign in a window, the graffiti on a train car, the busker’s song sang on the sidewalk – the writing is published. Just as often, no doubt, and just as well, probably, the writing is trashed or deleted, but whether the writing is read or heard or not, by whom or how, or how long it lives, is all another matter. Some writers write to themselves, diarists. Their work is published when it’s found. Writers often hold up a mirror to the culture, and if the mirror is cracked, the culture turns away. Writers, like the rest of us, all seem to have a particular picture of themselves, hardly ever the same picture others have of them. It’s the picture of ourselves we don’t recognize that might make for the best writing and reading. The pictures of writers and writing, of literature, that unfold in “MFA VS NYC” merge the ones the writers have with the ones their readers might have, bringing the whole affair into better focus.
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A Shuck of Stone
When the lemon yellow of a doubtful flower tells lies
And the hush pink plum blossoms first fail to surmise
A touch and a kiss turn to stone.When the steep turn toward the dark cherry dyes
And find winkle’s wake still seeping under the sash
A drink and a dress turn to stone.To turn to stone is not to die and worm away
A stone never slept nor arose
A stone is a stone is a stone is a stone.When knickknacks walk and talk and wingding
The livelong night no wonder
A flower turns to stone.Hearths are made of stone, and wheels, and paths,
And walls, and dwellings, and churches, and busts.
A stone thrown skiffles across water and plops.When a shuck of stone falls from the sky
Not a soft place on the land to nest
A tempest has turned to stone.When in spring one feels petrified
Curl and pit and weigh and hurl
Slink and creep and push and pull.When the angels of spring go stone
Old stones erupt in new waves
And lyrical flowers woe no bloom.
Stone Angel 
Buddha Sitting on Stone 
Shell Face Stone 
Heart Shaped Stone 
Stones 
Thunder Egg 
Cracked Stone with Torso Line Drawing 
Moss Growing on Lava Rock 
Overturned Red Wheelbarrow Beside the Grey Stones 
Anchor Bolt in Stone Wall 
Stepping Stone with Hand Prints, Marbles, and Shells 
Stones and Shells Large and Small 
Tiny Green Turtle on Blue Stone 
Stones in Glass Jar with Tape Measure 
Haystack Rock -
Lenten Surf Season
Work morning and Luke up early helping his dad load plumbing tools,
wrenches and chisels, elbows and nipples, the ladle and the lead pot
full of soft lead that looks like frozen surf.
Luke now taller than his dad.“Give Dan a call,” Luke said. “He’s drivin’ now.
We’re headin’ inland to work,”
and he ran his rough hand meanly over Jack’s salt matted hair.
“I’m afraid my surfin’ days are near over, kid,” Luke said.Dan lived with his grandma back in the alley
behind Roman’s, off Devil’s Path.
He was working on an old Chevy beater.
He was a cross between a surfer and a hodad.“You turnin’ into a hodad,” Jack said,
but it was a question, and Dan laughed.
“All you think about is surfing, kid,” Dan said.
“I have to give Grandma a ride to mass.Give me a quarter for some gas, go to mass with us,
then we’ll drive down and check out some waves.
You hear Gary got shot? Not coming home, though.
Sent him up to Japan for some R and R.”“I love the mass,” Danny’s grandma said.
She sat in the middle of the bench seat,
smelling like toilet water and wax.
“I love the quiet, the peace.I love the back of the church dark,
the hard polished oaken pews,
the altar lit like a halo, the smell
of the candles, the incense,the smell of Father Dayly’s hands
when he puts the host between my lips
and sets it down softly onto my tongue.”
“I know you do, Grandma.”“No, you don’t. You boys can’t know
nothin’ about it, how I love the sudden bells.
I love the mass so much,” Danny’s grandma said,
“I’m giving it up for Lent.”They turned to look at the old woman,
Jack rolled his window down,
and Danny’s grandma saw the salt water in Jack’s eyes.
“But,” she said, spitting it out, and paused.“Yes, Grandma?” Danny said.
“You go to mass without me during Lent.
You give up surfing for Lent.”
Jack could hear the waves laughing at him.Rising from the beach and curling over the dunes,
a breeze hisses like a glass blower’s torch.
The spring swell peals across the bay,
the waves a glass cavalry menagerie.
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An Imperfect Imposition
An Imperfect Imposition Gloss He goat a haircute, “Beware enterprises molted a shive, that require and emptoed the moot. new clothes.” He out cast the let Ruined good tune, down at sup-a-dup raised to put and unvaled a crune, bread on table. frumpted and follying, Commuters fly and clutched the rolled, in wingtips aspire acrested the abridged am-this cross closed bridges. Daddy-Oh! Pater-pitter-patter Ah, familiar potairy, roong froom the Gin-is-is in joy of brewcrew hisses Ink Pour Age. song of a pint. He rit the hoad alt coomed, [Readers sweeat urned his id, may reply and snoozled wths sapoozed. below.] Hairfigged fitted, compred wronged, All quiet he wroted, a temptwitted, on the worsted but ownlie slylents twas loosening, font. ands the suns downsed and moons Only a real fool arowsis a crewised shell fellowing ignores the full pips sillied byburds. loon. Sorry to impose like this is the poet Where should it go: speaking, but have you a place for thes Recycling, Compost, amythidst your these is? or Garbage? Supposing posing, oh, posing: Climbing “I am positioned,” the imposing the corpus poet posited, “I am composed.” ladder. Nonesuchofwhich off course Maybe end was teachno techno blareney, with the “byburds”? steel eye as I am I am postplus. Too late now? Owl duedew uandeye goal Reading kicker quickwick of it? position player Illklicked ear, wellclick thr. diversion. -
Badges
Hanging from their necks,
belts, or ties, with photo,
they come from somewhere,
and have some place to go.She sees them bouncing up and down
the streets, swagging vigor to and fro.
Sometimes they meet and talk,
badge to badge, boar to sow.She doesn’t get what they say.
Normally, they just proceed,
prancing days, romping nights,
round and round they gambolthrough tunnels of sun
sounding golden horns,
steeds indeed, lit up
in glorious gowns a glut.She had one once, but let go,
repeating the hollow phrase,
preferring not to be badgered,
“And that has made all the difference.”
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A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Every hour seems happy hour
in this diner on some corner,
the coffee pot fresh and warm,
each table a worn flower.She passes her reflection
in the silence of the old
jukebox, vacant these many
years, and fingers a grey hairwistfully behind one ear.
He sees her waiting all hours,
having come to occupy
the booth outside her kitchen.He orders breakfast, coffee and eggs,
for lunch, her meatloaf and mashed,
later in the afternoon, a milkshake
and fries, on the radioa Bach organ squeezed, strained
through a deep, golden tuba.
But he did not notice who left her
the short note in her tip jar. -
Amid a Bevy of Red Roses in the Bed of a Twaddle Truck
If you don’t get this there’s no need to go radish or knock something over. Red roses remedy the lackadaisical. Would you like a piece of fallen green apple tart, all the way from Wenatchee?
The red roses he gave me I squeezed into gravy he poured on his raspberry pie. By the time we were done on the ceiling there were none of the spiders that had earlier danced in my eyes. In the morning the water was as loose as my garter tossed into the bed of his twaddle truck.
Every day is cusp catastrophe day in the House of Disposition.
He uttered, “Red roses,” with just a bit of a stutter. Maybe he hugged me, but into a pot I was put.
A pan of his ink I placed on the porch with some empty jugs of milk. And never have I smiled as maroon a red rose as he stuck in my mashed potatoes that morning.
It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyways, the roses he sent me were fakes. But I never noticed. I mirrored his psychosis, not to mention my powdered lemon bars.
He sat down to dinner and yarned out a new spinner, wondering did I water his old red roses. He was always away, away on a business trip, away on some sort of boondoggle in his twaddle truck. He was a tinker. He wore red plaid flannel shirts and blue denim jeans all patched in the knees and seams of the seat. But he was handy to have around.
There were years we played games full of crocodile tears, red roses pickled for lapels. At first he was shy, but by the end of the banquet I had removed most of his thorns. Now behind my blue ear sticks a yellow umbrella that shadows my pale ruby nose.
Well, I think we’re ready now. Better put in the extra leaf, and light the buttery candles. These days he wishes plum ditties and fishes, but he’s getting old-timey depression cake frosted with snow.
Soon will come Lent. We’ll clean out the basement, and hold yet another estate sale. Last year we spent the profits on beer and pizza. Then we watched a movie in a tent.
The dishes all washed and put away. Let’s wipe down and pray red roses still hue come our capture and rapture.
The prose poem above is a later version of the more traditionally formatted poem with a different title below:
Red Rover, Red Rover, Let Red Roses Come Over
The red roses he gave me
I squeezed into gravy
He poured on his raspberry pie.By the time we were done
On the ceiling were none
Of the spiders that danced in my eyes.In the morning the water
Was as loose as a garter
Tossed in the bed of a twaddle truck.If you never get this
There’s no need to remiss
Red roses and green apple tart.He uttered red roses
Maybe he hugged me
And into a pot I was put.A pan of his ink
I placed on the porch
With some empty jugs of milk.But never have I smiled
As maroon a red rose
As he stuck in my mashed potatoes.It goes without saying
But I’ll say it anyways
The roses he sent me were fakes.But I never noticed
I mirrored his psychosis
Not to mention my powdered lemon bars.He sits down to dinner
Yarns out a spinner
Wonders did I water his roses.Those years we played games
Full of crocodile tears
Red roses pickled for lapels.Behind my blue ear
A yellow umbrella
Shadows my pale ruby nose.Well I think we’re ready now
Better put in the extra leaf
And light the buttery candles.These days he wishes
Plum ditties and fishes
But he gets old-timey cake.Soon will come Lent
We’ll clean out the basement
And hold yet another estate sale.Last year we spent
The profits on beer and pizza
And we watched a movie in a tent.The dishes all washed and put away
Let’s wipe down and pray red roses
Still hue come our capture and rapture.
The Coming of the Toads 