—Poetry and Photos of Puget Sound by Douglas Cole,
Seattle, WA
DARK CARNIVAL
I use your business cards as bookmarks—that way you ride with me for sure. Let someone else explain the equation of that without confusing heart, matter, spirit and thought. On page seventy-three, this cloud parts, and there’s the door to your magic shop, the mystery telephone on an upper shelf—you can call any time, you can call the dead, you can call yourself in another head—ugly dolls and tarot packs, glow-in-the-dark skeletons, a safe space for the off kid in the dusty aisle patting his own shoulders and mumbling his locker combination and on occasion pieces of particle theory dialogue he heard in a movie. I love there’s always access, here, new volumes, old tomes stacked high and rare collectables in the back, rooms I haven’t the lives to explore going off and additions on the way. Everything from ragged science fiction, esoterica, philosophy and good old standards, even The Gold Tooth and more coming, and you, homuncular in your bric-a-brac, still sullen but with a glint of never-ending wonder in your eye.
I use your business cards as bookmarks—that way you ride with me for sure. Let someone else explain the equation of that without confusing heart, matter, spirit and thought. On page seventy-three, this cloud parts, and there’s the door to your magic shop, the mystery telephone on an upper shelf—you can call any time, you can call the dead, you can call yourself in another head—ugly dolls and tarot packs, glow-in-the-dark skeletons, a safe space for the off kid in the dusty aisle patting his own shoulders and mumbling his locker combination and on occasion pieces of particle theory dialogue he heard in a movie. I love there’s always access, here, new volumes, old tomes stacked high and rare collectables in the back, rooms I haven’t the lives to explore going off and additions on the way. Everything from ragged science fiction, esoterica, philosophy and good old standards, even The Gold Tooth and more coming, and you, homuncular in your bric-a-brac, still sullen but with a glint of never-ending wonder in your eye.
ON BECOMING
Will I ever get home, he thinks, a ticket in one hand, Gladstone with notebooks in the other—these things quickly evaporate, but the contents remain accessible through remote-viewing. So much for your secrets. We’re all doing a fan-dance with the truth. He walks through the gray wall of clouds calling themselves attorneys and escrow holdings, fortunes made and lost, bridges meant to last a century or more, air full of shadow you need an archeology degree to sift through, brushing off selves like dust—here, says the attendant, your aneurism has arrived. He hands over his ticket, takes the jewel he thinks he’s hidden all these years and exposes it to the light—a nova couldn’t explode that loudly or that big nor open so many doorways in and out of every paradise decorated like spring. Here, he says, after revealing everything, take some of this fire. I have enough to spare.
Will I ever get home, he thinks, a ticket in one hand, Gladstone with notebooks in the other—these things quickly evaporate, but the contents remain accessible through remote-viewing. So much for your secrets. We’re all doing a fan-dance with the truth. He walks through the gray wall of clouds calling themselves attorneys and escrow holdings, fortunes made and lost, bridges meant to last a century or more, air full of shadow you need an archeology degree to sift through, brushing off selves like dust—here, says the attendant, your aneurism has arrived. He hands over his ticket, takes the jewel he thinks he’s hidden all these years and exposes it to the light—a nova couldn’t explode that loudly or that big nor open so many doorways in and out of every paradise decorated like spring. Here, he says, after revealing everything, take some of this fire. I have enough to spare.
BACKWARDS REVOLVED THE LUMINOUS WHEEL
I got your book in French. I don’t read French, but I’ve been Tarzaning the Latin roots and bushwhacking my way through it like a temple explorer, a Naturalist in the wild—cataloguing as I go. I know, I should be working. I’m in a lull, you see? Somewhere between the Buddha garden and the wine dark sea. I know you hate that pretentious shit, coffee spills, empty boxes, armies of workers clearing out your recycling as punishment, strictly as punishment for what the haze-maker can do. What’s the value of a diamond now except for its flaws? There is something so retro—beaux arts and steampunk in a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sort of way about these glasses and your laughter, I mean, it’s like you’ve grown into that Empire chair, your body at least. I sense what you’d call your brain hanging from a hook light in the garage with drills and band saws. Explains the million-mile stare. But your book! Your book! I see you in there character slumming, running lines, hovering between the period and the scene. I do. These glasses are amazing. Neither snow nor sleet nor dark of night, time, distance, death—I understand. I’ve made a few heavens myself. In fact, I’m in Zone Eight now. I mean, what can I say? I love the undulations, the footnotes, biographical and historical references. Even the symbol of the heron turning into a lighthouse: that was pure genius. I always knew you had it in you.
I got your book in French. I don’t read French, but I’ve been Tarzaning the Latin roots and bushwhacking my way through it like a temple explorer, a Naturalist in the wild—cataloguing as I go. I know, I should be working. I’m in a lull, you see? Somewhere between the Buddha garden and the wine dark sea. I know you hate that pretentious shit, coffee spills, empty boxes, armies of workers clearing out your recycling as punishment, strictly as punishment for what the haze-maker can do. What’s the value of a diamond now except for its flaws? There is something so retro—beaux arts and steampunk in a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sort of way about these glasses and your laughter, I mean, it’s like you’ve grown into that Empire chair, your body at least. I sense what you’d call your brain hanging from a hook light in the garage with drills and band saws. Explains the million-mile stare. But your book! Your book! I see you in there character slumming, running lines, hovering between the period and the scene. I do. These glasses are amazing. Neither snow nor sleet nor dark of night, time, distance, death—I understand. I’ve made a few heavens myself. In fact, I’m in Zone Eight now. I mean, what can I say? I love the undulations, the footnotes, biographical and historical references. Even the symbol of the heron turning into a lighthouse: that was pure genius. I always knew you had it in you.
PRAIRIE DOGS
I know you’re counting down the number of afternoons you can junk out or pick the right criterion bubble to hide a century on the head of a pin or the basket of un-labeled dreams, pop one in and go. I know how it all flowers coming out of the sewer and how the sea says Ah Ha with your mouth as we rise from your eye with antibodies falling off like ash. I know I know, you say as you come around, a whole age can go underground or mad and follow a shoe over a cliff or a commercial into a war.
Aren’t you tired of the chaos, the road bathrooms with broken handles and all the grainy reruns? I am holding the cloud door open and that’s not screaming you hear coming out of the white tile burn, it’s a big cheer for the team marching towards the goal.
I know you’re counting down the number of afternoons you can junk out or pick the right criterion bubble to hide a century on the head of a pin or the basket of un-labeled dreams, pop one in and go. I know how it all flowers coming out of the sewer and how the sea says Ah Ha with your mouth as we rise from your eye with antibodies falling off like ash. I know I know, you say as you come around, a whole age can go underground or mad and follow a shoe over a cliff or a commercial into a war.
Aren’t you tired of the chaos, the road bathrooms with broken handles and all the grainy reruns? I am holding the cloud door open and that’s not screaming you hear coming out of the white tile burn, it’s a big cheer for the team marching towards the goal.
Today’s LittleNip:
PRAYER FOR FISHING
—Douglas Cole
There is a perfect hour to rise and ask
the ocean for food, to give us a life.
Think of it, as we stand on the dock
at the edge of the sound, wanting death
to drop a body and attach it to a line
deep under water, one we can carry back,
hold high and say, See, we’re not
the dirtbags you thought we were.
PRAYER FOR FISHING
—Douglas Cole
There is a perfect hour to rise and ask
the ocean for food, to give us a life.
Think of it, as we stand on the dock
at the edge of the sound, wanting death
to drop a body and attach it to a line
deep under water, one we can carry back,
hold high and say, See, we’re not
the dirtbags you thought we were.
Douglas Cole
Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry, a novella, and The White Field, a novel. His work has appeared in several anthologies as well as The Chicago Quarterly Review, The Galway Review, Bitter Oleander, Louisiana Literature and Slipstream. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart and Best of the Net and received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry. He lives and teaches in Seattle. His website is douglastcole.com/. Welcome to the Kitchen, Douglas, and don’t be a stranger!
Today (Sun., 3/21) at 3pm: Lincoln Poets Club holds its open mic online, along with guest poet Jerry Steinman on Zoom: us02web.zoom.us/j/8281685839/. Meeting ID: 828 1685 8339; passcode: 40179. Host: David Anderson.
Also today a, 3pm: Poetry Flash and Moe’s Books in Berkeley present Indigo Moor and Maxima Kahn online. Info: www.facebook.com/events/903003200451690/?acontext={"event_action_history"%3A[{"mechanism"%3A"search_results"%2C"surface"%3A"search”}]}/. See the featured books at bookshop.org/lists/poetry-flash-readings/.
__________________________
—Medusa
Today (Sun., 3/21) at 3pm: Lincoln Poets Club holds its open mic online, along with guest poet Jerry Steinman on Zoom: us02web.zoom.us/j/8281685839/. Meeting ID: 828 1685 8339; passcode: 40179. Host: David Anderson.
Also today a, 3pm: Poetry Flash and Moe’s Books in Berkeley present Indigo Moor and Maxima Kahn online. Info: www.facebook.com/events/903003200451690/?acontext={"event_action_history"%3A[{"mechanism"%3A"search_results"%2C"surface"%3A"search”}]}/. See the featured books at bookshop.org/lists/poetry-flash-readings/.
__________________________
—Medusa
Douglas Cole
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