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RON
SILLIMAN
Ron
Silliman has written and edited 26 books to date, most recently Under Albany.
Between 1979 and 2004, he wrote a single poem, entitled The Alphabet. In
addition to Woundwood, a part of VOG, volumes published thus far from
that project have included ABC, Demo to Ink, Jones, Lit, Manifest, N/O,
Paradise, (R), Toner, What and Xing. He has now begun writing a new
poem entitled Universe.
In the 1970s, he was associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry group that also
included Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perlman
and Susan Howe.
He was a 2003 Literary fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, and was a
2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow in the Arts
in 1998. He lives in
Chester County
,
Pennsylvania
, with his wife
and two sons, and works as a market analyst in the computer industry.
From
ZYXT
A
DREAM BEFORE DAWN
Tra
il dire e il fare
c'è
di mezzo il mare
—
Mario Savio
For
Lyn & Leslie
A
dream just before dawn is different
What I thought at first literally to have been a chicken crossing the road
proved, upon
examination,
to be a spruce goose
The border between reverie and sleep, razor thin
He walked into the music store while I waited, but when he failed to re-emerge I
entered
only to find him gone
A
tall girl, quite beautiful but for the buck teeth & receding chin
The eros of adrenalin and vice versa
Your ashes, no larger than a loaf of bread but several times the weight
When setting across Dogtown Commons, take a compass
and tell someone your plans
Eight months may yield only a handful of pages but just possibly the right ones
Three enter the restaurant, taking care to set their black laptop cases down
next to the wall
away from the passing diners, table angled into a diamond configuration to seat
four – the lone empty chair
facing
the aisle as the trio struggles to tip their oversized menus just right to catch
the light
Cut strawberry stain upon the napkin, image of the tiniest kiss
CMON
PUMPKIN BUTT
C’mon pumpkin butt
X described as Charzard-like
Draft of a draft
Are we squirming in our seats yet?
Revolutionette
Lets E
You are here
The perfect mother, Patty Hearst
Wiping the socket that has no eye
I sit cross-legged in a corner of the gallery, barely able to see Mei-mei’s
head between the
rows
of chairs, no height to the podium (which I know is there only by its lamp’s
soft glare spreading across
her
green brown & white shirt), her voice soft, hushed, audible only through its
amplification (behind me,
out
the floor-to-ceiling windows [doors really, tho opening to no balcony] traffic
on bumpy
Second
Street
forms
its own punctuation)
By the time he awoke, her carefully made bed appeared a storm of sundered
blankets – one
barely
saw her own smaller figure asleep beneath the crumpled pile
Pre-apologize
Hushed, stage-whispered reading yields too worshipful a listening
Neither alpha nor beta male, but rather Charlie or delta
You don’t realize how dull the razor’s gotten until you change the blade
Woman with a bruised thumbnail sits silent on the bench, the other hand clenched
tight
about
a Kleenex.
In American Beauty, the daughter, played by actress Thora
Burch, who at the time of filming
was
“only 16,” has a scene in which she removes blouse & bra, filmed as seen
from across the way from her
bedroom
window by neighbor videotaping drug dealer boy friend, his screen projected /
reflected up against
his
own bedroom window, the complex shot construction enabling the use of body
double Marina Freeman
Terse verse
FLUSH
HARD
Flush hard – it’s a long way to the food truck
Wondering if this chair will survive the reading
Hold the pen absolutely perpendicular to the page
Spring Fling, Fall Pall
One rolls the hula hoop down the hill while the other, with a giant orange
“Blaster,”
attempts to shoot ping pong balls through it as it passes
Moment when the sun no longer illumines and the street lamps have yet to take
hold
– child alone sitting before the giant concrete wall beside the rack of locked
bikes
Mercedes Benzine
From server to serve (as ever I swerve)
Here is a ridden art that achieve a rap sure wooly now & gorges
The first page is so seldom numbered 1
Man walks into the bookstore holding a bicycle helmet in one hand
You hear the hiss of an aerosol can in the next room & you wonder to what
purpose
Now the mockingbird mimics the squirrel
Ferrous wheels
Taller than any of these oaks is that old poplar
The golfers were using their clubs as tho it were hockey
Those wonderful curls where the ear spirals down into the skull
A place in the shade (in a few hours this heat will prove unbearable)
The slightest light breeze vibrates the crime scene tape
Prosody of the power mower
In this dream, the woman bumps her head, which spontaneously explodes
Amiri Baraka singing to himself in the men’s room stall
The cardinal’s incessant (now there’s a word) “cheep, cheep” fell over
the
congregation
Yesterday’s stumble (the pizza slice poised mid-air directly below its
overturned,
still-spinning
plate) memorialized this afternoon in the grated flesh of my knee
Butterfly as it goes into the mower’s blades
You stick the signifier into the signified (please pay the syntax)
Infinitesimal red spider walking up my thigh
X of eczema
Of being timorous
High up in that loft space a green neon word (illegible script, perhaps kanji)
hangs
over
the area designated as kitchen
He’s still talking to me but I’ve already stepped outdoors so that all I
hear are the
tones
of his voice through the glass
Glove songs
The tomatoes are fighting
How many summers remain just to sit in the yard reading?
Calling for assistance, “Bailiff, bailiff”
Crow conceived as a discount hawk
Little white butterflies
hover over the grass
Purple fierceness of the thistle in bloom
Off to see a show of Fairfield Porter’s, expecting the work of Trevor
Winkfield
Looking at a page to tell the time
Lone goose, calling as it flies
June, therefore June bugs
Shutting the book with only five pages remaining
Permitting the tea to steam up my glasses, then letting them slowly clear
Power yoga
Although the task seemed simple enough – identify the bird with the green
head,
black
bill and brown chest – none of the field guides offered reasonable options
Even though her mother’s Anglo and she herself was born in
Detroit
,
she retains
a
distinct hint of her father’s Gujarat accent
Fire as a solid
Some power something up the hill sets the trees on edge
Some new thrush’s loud dusk song
Passionate knishes
White butterfly settles into the flowers and disappears
Saturday aircraft
Marketer’s motto: Life’s a pitch!
Already sisters are beginning to worry as to who will inherit the china closet
When the fans go off, the air goes still, then heavy
They stand or crouch at the edge of the building, attempting to stay dry while
they
smoke
Boy sleeps on cot in the nurse’s office until the parent arrives to take him
home
It’s not that a tear is so unexpected, but for it to rise rather than slide
down the
cheek
Little twigs stick in the push mower’s blades,
a pause in the rhythm of these long straight sweeps over the nearly chartreuse
lawn
Fire as a liquid
The smart card’s striped bar chirps under the eye of the reader (time it takes
for
this
sentence to obsolete & opaque)
Aggregate the data
Relearning to chew on that side of your mouth
Outdoors, all the air conditioner means is the sound of a motor
copyright
© Ron Silliman
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