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EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
THREE POEMS THAT MAKE FUN OF POETRY
by Neal Pollack


Assimilation Triptych:
A Fugue in G Major

One

My Aunt Carmen smelled like
Snot.
I often wondered,
Looking at her
Sitting in her cushionless
Chair.
Staring at her empty
Fishbowl
How she endured the
Painful throbbing of
Her missing arm.
Did she curse the
Calabrian goat that
Wrenched it from her
When she was only two?
Or the immigration officials
At Ellis Island
Who refused to believe
That it was really a stump?
No special privileges,
Little girl,
They said
As they gave her a last name that wasn’t hers.

Now what does she have?
A velvet painting of Jesus
At Disney World.
A pot of fusilli
Boiling over on the stove.
Legs like prime ribs
Ballooning out of her stockings.
Tsk, tsk, little one,
She says to me.
Come and sit
On Auntie’s knee.
Although I am 32, I concede,
Because she looks so sad.
“Rudolph Valentino once pinched my ass
In a swimming pool,”
She says.
Like always.
And I start to cry.
Next she will tell me
That he told her
That she was as pretty
As a girl with two arms.

America,
What have you done to my Italian aunt?

Two

My Uncle Ronald
Kept a cow
In the living room
That he shared
With seventeen other men
Who were also my uncles.
I often wondered
Decades later
Why these men never spoke
Of their wives
Or children
Or anyone they left behind
In Mexico.
Even now, they all live
In the same apartment
Work in the same factory
Play in the same soccer
League.
One day,
While we watched a video
Of Cantinflas live at
The Hollywood Bowl,
I asked my uncle
About the old country.
“We remember nothing,”
He said,
A beer in each hand
And in each foot.
“La migra knocked us cold
At the border
And now we have
Amnesia.”

Who is my uncle?

A man without a country
But with a pretty good job.
To give up the homeland
Of your dreams
For the bachelor
Apartment
Of your nightmares?
This is harsh stuff.
Ach, pequeno,
Says my uncle.
Come and sit on
Uncle’s lap.
I am 35 now, and his lap
Disgusts me.
So I sit at his feet instead.
“I remember one thing,”
He says.
His eyes dry
As a tap
In Indiana
On Sunday.
“I was assistant undersecretary of education
For President Lazaro Cardenas
In 1935.
One day, he pulled me aside and
Said, ‘Ronaldo, you are the
Future of this country. You will
Save Mexico
From all its curses.
All you have to do is…”
“What?” I shout. “What?”
“I  cannot remember.”

America!
What have you done to my Mexican uncle?


Three

My cousin Lois weaved
Baskets
Out of dried
Noodles.
And sold them
In front of the
Peruvian embassy
At lunchtime.
Complaining that business was slow.
Her thoughts often turned
To December 8, 1941
The day the feds
Came to her classroom
In San Francisco
And took away her
Japanese friends.
She screamed that
She wanted to go too.
“You can’t,” said the G-Man.
“Because you are a Filipino.”
And she cried
Because her friends
Got to go to camp
While she stayed behind
In an empty classroom
And learned how to multiply.
“Fuckload of good it did me,”
She says now
As she spits
Into the coffee cup
That is her only friend.

She lives alone
In a mansion
Bequeathed to her
By the Filipino Special Privileges Act
Of 1943.
Just her
And her baskets
And her five hundred cats.
“Come sit in the litter box next to me,” she says.
I am 43 now, and too old,
To squat in a pile of crap,
So I perch by her side.
“Toshiro Mifune once grabbed my breast
In a movie theater,” she says,
And I begin to sob.
“He told me that I would have been his forever
If only I were Japanese."

America,
What have you done to my Filipino cousin?

And what terrors do you hold for me,
An Italian-Filipino son of
Mexican parents?
This melting pot
This tossed salad
This rancid stew
Called America
Has destroyed the old
Neighborhoods
The old fantasies
And replaced them with
The death rattle
Of a dying rattle.
I weep
My relatives weep
And we are all
Becoming
Becoming
Becoming
American.

The F Train Stops Here Every Day
For Jeffrey Zizmor, MD


Godamn you, Bedford Avenue!
Five AM
Three bottles of Night Train
One Mr. Fatty smoked
Down to the stub
But the train
THE TRAIN
The train
It never comes.
And when it comes
Full of the all-night
Rave junkies
The pulp-mystery-reading
SecretariesThe immigrant breakfast
Busboys
The New York
Posts
It costs a dollar-fifty
Because
The train always
Costs
A dollar-fifty.

Next stop, Canarsie!
Transfer here for
The G,B,D,1,2,3
4,5,L,P and Q.
Transfer here
For Avenue C.
For Bay Ridge
And all points east,
For a time when
Turnstile jumping
Was an art
Practiced by vatos
Who had no hope,
No prayers,
No long-term investment strategy.
Nowhere to go
After school, or before.
For a time when
Tamales
Smelt like tamales
And the Bowery
Was just another name
For hell.

Lick my nuts, Soho!
Two PM
Two briefcases
Two backpacks
Full of poetry
Two publishers
Who said,
“Your work is
Too street
For our audience.”
The train
THE TRAIN
The train
It never comes.
And when it comes
Full of the poets
The almost-poets
The used-to-be-poets
The poets to come
The poetry of
New York,
I think,
THE TRAIN IS POETRY!
It costs a dollar-fifty.
Poetry costs
A dollar fifty.




Our Music

Our music
They have robbed us of
Our music
Our shanteys
Our chantings
The bleating rhythm
Of a thousand kazoos
The silky throat
Of Etta James
They have faced us
Disgraced us
They have robbed us of
Our music.

Hip-hop is not an accounting decision!
No one lands the mothership
In a corporate boardroom!
The 5:18 to Cold Spring Harbor
Doesn't harbor
Absolute torch and twang!
The songs are alive
In the gum on the sidewalks
In the swinging b-boy hips
Of the B-side girls.
You can steal our music
But you can't take away
Our rhythm.
Oh, no.

Our music.
They have robbed us of
Our music.
Our singing.
Our swinging.
The furious wiggling
Of a thousand turntables
The hard-knock rhymes
Of Jay-Z
And Schooly D
And me.
They have whored us
Ignored us.
They have robbed us of
Our music.

Who are they?
Who are we?
We are they.
And He is she.
You are us And we are you.
The foot is on
The other shoe.
Our music.
They have robbed us of
Our music.
Bambaata
Cole Porter
The fastidious lyrics
Of a thousand horny minds
The righteous blowings of
A Bird
A Trane
Of Superman.
They have boned us.
Dethroned us.
They have never, ever
Telephoned us.
They have robbed us.
They have jobbed us.
They have robbed us of
Our music.