rarlington

I meant what I said: I am going back to prose in the morning.

But once, when I was twenty-years old and living in New York, I went on a rant against Starbucks to this person I was trying to impress. The P.I.W.T.T.I. said that I seemed a “wee bit inauthentic”: that was his exact phrase; it stung so stupidly that sometimes I still wake up in a panic over it, over this person.

The worst part was that this person was right, of course.

I’d like to think that I’ve since grown into a much more sincere figure; that I left New York and its influences at the right time. That I love Starbucks and can say I love Starbucks because they are all the same, everywhere, which is what I need, having traveled around a lot since New York; so that each Starbucks-the-same feels like a home. (Andy Warhol would have approved.) That I have friends who are understanding; who understand who they are. Who think better of me than I do myself, even, at times; at just the right times. I’d like to think that to my students I am who I am, too. One high school student of mine said, upon graduating and to another teacher, “He always treated us like equals.” I’m sure some administrators would consider that a criticism, but I thought it a great compliment. And, Amy, do you remember what you said about me in your graduation speech that year before I left for London? You said, “Richard Arlington R––, who always told us to just be ourselves.” I still cry about that sometimes, because the principal, he yelled at me that day I wore Chuck Taylors to school, saying it wasn’t professional. But I was just being myself. And you knew that. And all we have in the end, I sometimes think, are our connections to other people, like Forster said. I don’t know that I need much more than that.

Although I used to want better teeth.

Derrida Goes to the Dentist

When I was 17, the dentist said,
“I can put something
behind your front teeth
that will close up that gap.”
I thanked him, but
said I wasn’t ready.

At 24, I made an appointment
with a cosmetic specialist
in Paramus. I went in
and was ambushed by
dayglow smiles; all I remember
are those freaky beams, Alice.
That doctor said, “We’ll fit
two porcelain veneers that will
last twenty years.” I
took the literature and left.

That night I stared at myself
in the mirror, trying to imagine
it. I fashioned a small strip of
paper to cast over my mouth’s
lacuna. Then I stashed away
the pricing plan and
never went back for a follow-up,
fearing, What if that’s how
I’ve learned to breathe; what if I
couldn’t, not after that.

The next year, before
I left for London,
a student said, “Don’t go there
(don’t leave us).
They have bad teeth
over there. (Why are you
leaving us for a land
of people with bad teeth?)”

I am going back to
my homeland; will everyone
have teeth like me?
I don’t know if they
did. But I know that
I learned what it meant to be
to just be happy with this lost, lusty
countenance. To have it

maybe
(almost)

be enough.

Poetry month is almost over; up next: May. Tomorrow is my last day at Stockton until the fall. Until the fall. It has such an ache to it.

I am grading research papers. I also need to start revising four poems for Kathy’s class. We’re having a class reading tomorrow, but I will not be revised into action by then.

One of the poems I am thinking of revising is this:

Notes from the Printer

Put the cover
in the
bleed

All there is
is white-
space

The bleed is
white-space(cuticle

The cover needs
to bleed; bleed
the cuticle

Stretching
will pixellate the

Pink leaves and
purple vetch

coverThe title is
too close to the
edge

You can’t
have that I
don’t

I don’t know
what to
tell you

All I
asked for
was

bleeding
purple
vetch and

Call me
at your
convenience.

Kathy Graber is reading at the Noyes this afternoon! Afterwards, I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend thereafter. I feel very calm, for some reason, this morning, and hope it will last.

At the South Jersey translation
of Irish pub, the cover band
re-interprets
a youth re-remembered:
All that shimmers in
this world is…

You invent backstories for
them; give them a context
for their trouble.
The Stevie Nicks frontwoman
works in a doctor’s office by day;
she sings along to the radio.
Her backup, in cargo short fatigues
& goatee, labors at the Jiffy Lube while
dreaming of soft bunnies.

Tonight, you say,
here in a strip mall bar,
they will have a peak
experience; feelings of
limitless horizons;
maybe not unlike the
connection of Forster;
the one-ness of Brahman;

(but they do not cover
Nirvana.) It is like
having Lithium on,
everything slowing

And she screams and
her voice is straining

as refracted
through late April night.

Poetry month is almost over. In anticipation of that (perhaps), I have apparently won a fiction contest over at Elephant Talk.

Today, I return to my alma mater, Ocean City High School, for their poetry day. I’ll be bringing copies of the literary magazine.

In honor of this, another very v. short four lines from the high school collection:

Zen then when the
hen was walking,
whistling down the
Lane.

***

I Skyped with my sister last night. I said, “So, I’ve been posting poems, old and new, mostly new now, to feed the new blog, you know, but now I’m getting good-anxious for poetry month to be over so I can go back to prose.” But I figure I should have 3 or 4 weekly columns-like, so that it does not continue as it rather started out (or end up like the old blog): just me banging fists, etc.

My sister wants me to write up more movie annotations about anything I stream on Netflix so that she’ll know what to watch. Also, she wants a serialized soap opera, like the kind I used to write in high school (more about that another time). And advice on writing. So, I guess that’s three; how’s that sound? Something to look forward to in May, right?

Later last night, I was surprised to find this in the poetry section of my bookcase when I was searching for something else; I’d plum forgotten all about it.

beJeweled

Black coffee
drinks you down;
my flesh melts
on your tongue.
I find Jewel’s night
without armor
on a bookcase;
a friend gave me this
as a joke the year
it was published/year
I cried a lot.
“Every English major
needs a copy,” she
prescribed & I
perished:

Next year is
meant to be the happiest
one.

(no one should feel this alone.)
A girl writes her final paper
on neutrinos; I imagine them
trying to be strung
together like a narrative
for an intransigent fabula

Collect beads of night
Fill your
skin with the dark weight of the
wet sky. I cannot be
a bead counter, I fear;
magic beads I plant
in the Fisher’s garden;
water them with my skin.
(Wilt they
grow this Giant young,
though?)

Perhaps Robert will
teach me how to knit,
instead; and I will take
to counting stitches
instead of the scars.

(That last line is
just for you,
Jewel.)

***

Poems quoted here: “Communion,” “Saved from Myself,”  “Collect Beads of Night”

It is that time of year when one thinks of getting older, for some reason, and of moving on to the next season & newer stage.

My friend Rita is joining the alleyways group this summer as an artist-in-residence, to join us (reluctant) poets-in-residence, who will set up our chairs along the haunted byways of Somers Point. I am excited to sit there with her, and with my friend Gerri.

And I am still thinking about Aubri’s poem from the other night, too.

i who is am
not the i
once charted
across stars

i could not
read u
then, so
fell down
not in grass
but on pavement
scratched
a cornea
there, well

u called i
inauthentic
once when i
said it was
like every other

now when i
is there
i think,
andy warhol

and every star-
bucks the same:
that is what
i love
that this one
here, mays landing
the same as
yrs in astor pl
& another
tottenham ct rd
or glen rock

one xmas
my sister &
i walked
all over london
nothing open
but bucks &

after a whole
day, she said
one more, but

i couldn’t take
no more,
sister.

i is still
so full from
the last &
might, will i
never be so full
again