Ms. Clairol

Ms. Clairol

Ms. Clairol gets rejection after rejection

She sends in poems, plays, and stories

But none are accepted

So she goes home and dies her hair another shade of black

While she is waiting for the dye to set

She reads the Bedford Guide to Drama

And jots down notes

For a novel she's writing

In the novel Peter Golub

Reads a translation of Juan Emar by Megan Mcdowell

He calls Megan Al and Oliver

He loves her the way Ms. Clairol loves hair dye and similes

"Love is like a good simile," thinks Ms. Clairol,

"It fills both with extra meaning

Which you can save for later

When the day is a day and your Megan is away"

So this Peter fancies himself a poet

He like Ms. Clairol gets rejections often

When he gets an acceptance

He still feels like a chamber pot --empty or full of shit

But he loves his Megan

And Ms. Clairol having invented Peter Golub

Loves his Megan too

Ms. Clairol is an amateur

Ms. Clairol does not know you're not supposed to love your protagonist's girlfriend

She does not know what Gertrude Stein said about composition as explanation

But Ms. Clairon yearns deep down for revelation

She yearns for contemporaries; she knows Peter wants to marry

She knows he must write a poem every Friday

Or else his fiance will start making eyes at men with hamburgers

That she'll gallop away in a German automobile and leave him wanting

She also knows this is all Peter's paranoia but who hasn't loved and been paranoid you tell me

She has Peter jot down some notes for a poem

Which he knows he must write

Then he knows he must water the garden

Write Megan something in Spanish

His notes read:

Friday Love Poem

notes:

inaugural speeches: Franklin Pierce

chan marshall's bangs

why you love her bangs

shall i compare her bangs to a summers day

that might by juvenile and charming

somehow fit in the small kids you saw at the outdoor daycare

their is sun everywhere and these little kids

about 2-4

clung to the green chainlink fence with their little paws

their faces pressed against it like like little bundles of animals

pressing their maws against the green fence

saying hi to the people walking buy

i felt like a like a boy passing a pet store

so the green fence

is like everything

our death and lives are like the small children

i dreamt of a brontosaurus

this year's lucky direction is north east

Alexander Terekhov: Myself as a Russian Designer

Tiger Beckett

I.

in the jungles of the tigers's heart

the same jungles are burning

while your mother draws calligrams

with a wooden spoon

the soup of her heart

fogs the eyes of her windows

she hears the songs in the subway

they are inaudible

II.

the tunnels of this imagined city sleep in the ground

a thousand years before their construction

in the dumb myths of the savages

who skin the most beautiful princess for their gods

she rises with agni’s smoke

into cerulean blue

the drums keeping time

the air is full of our cries

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New Year

With things almost ending/But not quite ending /Nothing seems to end /Through the white noise of last week’s dream /The relatives come /An eager spirit haunts us /Like a pornographic treatise from the 18th century / We feel old /And Babble incoherently / Snow falls /It is December 26th 2008   /A pink headless corpse with two bright blue eyeballs watches our every move /At the mall  /A limousine makes a wide ox cart turn /With nowhere to park /The driver slowly circumambulates the lot /An hour later he is still there /In the car /On the way back from shopping /A female reporter tells the usual story of a recent natural disaster /Figures and numbers /7.8; 7.9; 1976; 1989; 9000, 250,000; 70,000 /The curious part of the story is that the Chinese Decided to make the place into a park /And tourism is predicted to go up by 25% /At around this time /A fat baby grabs a plastic toy off the tree /Dogs throw up grandmas’ fudge /Anxious step-moms step out for a cigarette /At one point you stand at the mirror /Thinking somewhere else /And then notice the equable look /Of a cheap plastic Buddha    

Fish

gregorovius thought that somewhere chestov had written about aquariums
with a removable glass partition which could be taken out any time
and that the fish, who was accustomed to his compartment, would
never try to go over to the other side. he would come to a point in the water,
turn around, and swim back, without discovering that the obstacle was gone,
that all he had to do was to keep on going forward...

Danse Russe

when grandma is sleeping
and the cat in the kitchen
is sleeping
and the moon is a pale-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if i in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my bookshelves
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"i am eating, eating.
i was born to eat borsch,
i am best so!"
if i admire the sour cream, my spoon,
your cabbage, beets, potatoes
against the yellow drawn shades—

who shall say i am not
the happy genius of my household?