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EDITORIAL

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LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Poem
by Carmine G. Simmons


Dereliction, into January.

          Wasting time is my new boredom,
been waking to wasting time
almost two years now.
Not that Amanda’s a waste
and not Matt, none of them; or
the luxury of sausage and eggs
($1.95) every morning, or Sammy’s
grim lessons on High Albania
as he scrapes burnt cheese crispies
onto a splayed roll. None of that.
But those ways, times really,
there’s a forgetting to count,
refusal really, the bubbles trapped
within these panes of clouded glass.
Dust motes slough a film across
the desk, and in graphite shades.

***

          I bared all this to Amanda,
and my immovable suspicion
that the house is haunted.
She knew that shit, she said,
from last winter. Thought
it was them Jehovah’s
who kept ringing the bell,
to piss her off;
and opening the fridge and flushing
the toilet; me thinking all that time
she was doing it,
to piss me off. She pushed
till I agreed to a snip
of her dad’s Sunday best hair,
that shit being fucked-up –
him too evil whenever he
was pulled off beating them
on the landing of a chipped Victorian
house they shared with the post office,
always open through holes in the
plaster walls. Evil enough
to chase my tame spooks gone, anyway

          That cleared up,
we wrought some rumors
we’d been itching to hear, and clawed
them that’s been stealing
our best shit (we know who you are).
She in kind of clairvoyant knew
that I was stoned by the strain
of breath on the phone. No need
talking about that shit. She knew it
for what it was:

          the rhythm of unfingered
chimes..

                            (Over the phone even, her eyes:
          captives of cornflower.)

We prayed together that it wasn’t
too late for her sore ass or my
right lung, and made plans
to eat Vietnamese. All the time
refusing counting. We agree
that conspiracy wasn’t quite
foist upon us; nor the casual
frist of poets. Then similar
of similar lint stored
deep in our cotton crotches, between
hankies and our hunger.
That must have been mid-Autumn.
Sometimes lines come later.

***

          Weeks, maybe months after, the council
convened among black olives, cabernet,
and the crackle of fresh work. Between
futures steeked too dearly to
pasts, between simpatico,
the count began, tapping unbid
against the walls of a bistro decidedly
lacking panache. Of lycra, spent snags
along the banquette
—swish between full-bodied sips—
His flannel froze against
Sixth Avenue. Talk turns
to fame, and the glad dissonance
of intention—Of bleak December, dare
we stake such claims?

                  —and the form that finds it.
Sometimes there’s lines between.
Wonder the hoarfrost of wasted sheets
to find this gaggle together again,
blistered hip by praise, O’Hara’s all
after our fashions, after brilliant
conversations with the Sun,
(not too early in the morning) soon
enough in our day. Best intentions prop
the bubbled window. Today,
sleet melts across it. Boredom
in graphite shades. December.