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CONJUNCTIONS
Bi-Annual Volumes of New Writing
Edited by
Bradford Morrow
Contributing Editors
Walter Abish
Chinua Achebe
John Ashbery
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Mary Caponegro
Robert Creeley
Elizabeth Frank
William H. Gass
Jorie Graham
Robert Kelly
Ann Lauterbach
Norman Manea
Patrick McGrath
Rick Moody
Joanna Scott
Mona Simpson
Quincy Troupe
William Weaver
John Edgar Wideman
published by Bard College
Contents
To minimize the need for your device to wrap long and indented lines of poetry, you are encouraged to allow the contributions throughout this e-book as large a reading space as possible, by using full-screen mode, landscape rather than portrait mode, and/or as small a font size as is comfortable.
John Ashbery, Four Poems
Lyn Hejinian, Two Poems
Myung Mi Kim, Siege Document
Brenda Coultas, Three Poems
Arthur Sze, Quipu
Jorie Graham, Six Poems
Michael Palmer, Three Poems
Mark McMorris, Reef: Shadow of Green
Susan Wheeler, Each’s Cot An Altar Then
Ann Lauterbach, Three Poems
Clark Coolidge, Arc of His Slow Demeanors
Gustaf Sobin, Two Poems
Alice Notley, Four Poems
Tessa Rumsey, The Expansion of the Self
Anne Waldman and Andrew Schelling, Two Landscapes
Forrest Gander, Voiced Stops
Tan Lin, Ambient Stylistics
Marjorie Welish, Delight Instruct
Laynie Browne, Roseate, Points of Gold
James Tate, Two Poems
Honor Moore, Four Poems
Leslie Scalapino, From The Tango
Bin Ramke, Gravity & Levity
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Two Poems
Charles Bernstein, Reading Red
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Charles Bernstein, A Dialogue
Rosmarie Waldrop, Five Poems
Martine Bellen, Two Poems
Peter Sacks, Five Poems
Reginald Shepherd, Two Poems
Barbara Guest, Two Poems
Donald Revell, Two Poems for the Seventeenth Century
Paul Hoover, Resemblance
Elaine Equi, Five Poems
Norma Cole, Conjunctions
Jena Osman, Boxing Captions
Ron Silliman, Fubar Clus
John Yau, Three Movie Poems
Melanie Neilson, Two Poems
Robert Kelly, Orion: Opening the Seals
Nathaniel Mackey, Two Poems
C. D. Wright, From One Big Self
Peter Gizzi, Fin Amor
Carol Moldaw, Festina Lente
Charles North, Five Poems
Robert Creeley, Supper
Brenda Shaughnessy, Three Poems
Malinda Markham, Four Poems
Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Draft 38: Georgics and Shadow
Nathaniel Tarn, Two Poems
Peter Cole, Proverbial Drawing
Fanny Howe, Splinter
Anne Tardos, Four Plus One K
Roberto Tejada, Four Poems
Andrew Mossin, The Forest
Elizabeth Willis, Two Poems
David Shapiro, Two Poems
Camille Guthrie, At the Fountain
Susan Howe, From Preterient
Cole Swensen, Seven Hands
Susan Howe and Cole Swensen, A Dialogue
Keith Waldrop, A Vanity
Will Alexander, Fishing as Impenetrable Stray
Juliana Spahr, Blood Sonnets
Jerome Sala, Two Poems
Leonard Schwartz, Ecstatic Persistence
Catherine Imbriglio, Three Poems
Vincent Katz, Two Poems
Thalia Field, Land at Church City
John Taggart, Not Egypt
Renee Gladman, The Interrogation
Laura Moriarty, Seven Poems
Kevin Young, Film Noir
Jackson Mac Low, Five Stein Poems
Rae Armantrout, Four Poems
Anselm Hollo, Guests of Space
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
A Note from Open Road Media
Vraiment,
Poetry can be so many more things
Than what people mostly believe it is.
—Anselm Hollo
Four Poems
John Ashbery
A NICE PRESENTATION
I have a friendly disposition but am forgetful, though I tend to forget only important things. Several mornings ago I was lying in my bed listening to a sound of leisurely hammering coming from a nearby building. For some reason it made me think of spring which it is. Listening I heard also a man and woman talking together. I couldn’t hear very well but it seemed they were discussing the work that was being done. This made me smile, they sounded like good and dear people and I was slipping back into dreams when the phone rang. No one was there.
Some of these are perhaps people having to do with anything in the world. I wish to go away, on a dark night, to leave people and the rain behind but am too caught up in my own selfish thoughts and desires for this. For it to happen I would have to be asleep and already started on my voyage of self-discovery around the world. One is certain then to meet many people and to hear many strange things being said. I like this in a way but wish it would stop as the unexpectedness of it conflicts with my desire to revolve in a constant, deliberate motion. To drink tea from a samovar. To use chopsticks in the land of the Asiatics. To be stung by the sun’s bees and have it not matter.
Most things don’t matter but an old woman of my acquaintance is always predicting doom and gloom and her prophecies matter though they may never be fulfilled. That’s one reason I don’t worry too much but I like to tell her she is right but also wrong because what she says won’t happen. Yet how can I or anyone know this? For the seasons do come round in leisurely fashion and one takes a pinch of something from each, according to one’s desires and what it leaves behind. Not long ago I was in a quandary about this but now it’s too late. The evening comes on and the aspens leaven its stars. It’s all about this observatory a shout fills.
AS UMBRELLAS FOLLOW RAIN
Too bad he never tried it—
he might have liked it.
She saw us make eye contact.
And that was that for that day.
Too bad he too, when I
am
meaning if I came along it’d
already be too late.
Some of the swans are swarming.
The spring has gone under—it wasn’t
supposed to be like this.
Now they watch him and cringe.
Who are they? Who is he?
We decided to fly Chinese.
The food wasn’t that good.
And oh Erwin did I tell you
that man—the one—I didn’t
know if I was supposed to or not.
He crawled back listlessly,
holding a bunch of divas.
It’s hard work getting these out,
but so’s any thing you’re entitled to do:
Classes to attend.
The morning of school.
Evening almost over,
they bend the security rules.
It’s time for another fog bomb.
Lookit the way they all roost.
Poor souls clashed together
until almost the root’s roof
separates us from our beginning.
We slew many giants in our day,
burned many libraries.
Roundabouts, swings,
it was all one piece of luck to us.
Now we’re washed up it’s almost cold
not bad enough to put up a stand.
Now everyone who crosses this bridge is wiser.
It doesn’t tilt much.
Look, the shore is arriving laterally.
Some people literally think they know a lot,
gets ’em in trouble, we must rake out
cafés looking for rats and exploded babies.
There was one too many last week.
I don’t know if you’re coding.
The cop pulled us over
in a shawl. Why do you want to go around me
when there are other circulars
to be had for the looking?
I never thought about being grounded forever.
This is Mademoiselle. Take your hat off.
There’s no need, I was here last Thursday.
All the best creatures are thwarted
for their pains. He removed my chains deftly,
processed my passport with gunk.
Now two times five geese fly across
the crescent moon, it is time to get down to
facts, in the tiny park.
There were priests posing as nuns,
quinces and stuff.
Tilt me a little more to the sun,
I want to see it one last time. There,
that’s just fine. I’ve seen it.
You can roll me inside. On the wings of what perturbation?
He came for the julep.
He was gone in an instant.
We cry too much over
drowned dogs.
He came in last week too.
Said he knew you or somebody else.
It’s the pain just of replying
that makes so many of them take up different lines.
Too many goods—we are spoiled indeed.
Had we learned to subsist on less
the changing of the world might be different,
earth come to greet us. I say, the chairs have grown back.
The couple sat in the dish drainer
pondering an uncertain future.
The kitchen had never looked bleaker
except for two chinchillas near the stove, a beaker
of mulled claret, shaving soap smelling
so fresh and new, like smoke, almost.
He says leave it here,
that he comes here.
OK harness the DeSoto,
we’ll have other plans
for newness, for a renewing, kind of—
picnics in the individual cells
so no one falls asleep for it, dreams
she is a viola, instrument of care, of sorts.
You should have seen him when we got back.
He was absolutely wild. Hadn’t wanted us to go
to the picture show. But in a way it was all over,
we were back, the harm had been done.
Gradually he came to realize this
over a period of many years, spanning
two world wars and a major depression.
After that it was time to get up and go,
but who had the get up and go? A child’s
party, painted paper hats, bowlfuls of lemonade,
no more at the lemonade stand, it sold out.
That was cheerful. A man came right up behind you,
he had two tickets to the door.
We need starve no more
but religion is elastic too—
might want some at some future date—
if so you’ll find it here.
We have to hurry in now,
hurry away, it’s the same thing
she said as rain came and stole the king.
MEET ME TONIGHT IN DREAMLAND
It was an hour ago. I walked upstairs to dreamland. Took a cab and got out and somebody else backed in. Now we weren’t actually on the Dreamland floor. That would be for later. Look, these are the proper plans, plants. They used to have a Chautauqua here, far out into the lake. Now it’s peeled. No one actually comes here. Yet there are people. You just hardly ever see them. No I wasn’t being modest. Some get out on the floor, several a year, whose purple glass sheds an eldritch glow on the trottoirs, as Whitman called them. Or spittoons. Look, we are almost a half a mile later, it must link up. The Tennessee drifter smiled sharkly. Then it was on to native board games.
Je bois trop.
In one of these, called “Skunk,” you are a weasel chasing a leveret back to its hole when Bop! the mother weasel, about ten stories tall, traps you with her apron string, patterned with poppies and rotted docks. You see, you thought every noun had to have an adjective, even “sperm,” and that’s where you made your first big mistake. Later it’s raining and we have to take a car. But the game isn’t over—there are sixteen thousand marble steps coming up, down which you glide as effortlessly as you please, as though on a bicycle, weasel in tow. It’s an exercise bike. What a time to tell me, the solar wind has sandpapered everything as smooth as quartz. Now it’s back to the finish line with you.
You’re not quite out of the woods yet. Dreamland has other pastures, other melodies to chew on. Hummingbirds mate with dragonflies beneath the broken dome of the air, and it’s three o’clock, the sun is raining mineral-colored candy. I’d like one of these. It’s yours. Now I’m glad we came. I hate drafts though and the sun is slowly moving away. I’m standing on the poopdeck wiggling colored pennants at the coal-colored iceberg that seems to be curious about us, is sliding this way and that, then turns abruptly back into the moors with their correct hills in the distance. If it was me I’d take a trip like this every day of my life.
IN THE TIME OF PUSSY WILLOWS
Nope, it’s almost over. For today anyway.
We’ll have a beautiful story, old story
to fish for as his gasps come undone.
I never dreamed the pond of chagrin
would affect me this much. Look, I’m shaking.
No, it’s you who are doing the shaking.
Well, it all comes round to us
sooner or later. Shrinking with the devil
in the stagey sunrise he devised.
And then there will be no letters for what is truth,
to make up the words of it. It will be standing still
for all it’s worth. Then a hireling shepherd came along,
whistling, his eyes on the trees. He was a servant of two masters,
which is some excuse, though not really all that much of a one.
Anyway, he overstayed his welcome. But the last train had already left.
How does one conduct one’s life amid such circumstances,
dear snake, who want the best for us
as long as you are not hurt by it.
My goodness, I thought I’d seen a whole lot of generations,
but they are endless, one keeps following another,
treading on its train, hissing.
What a beautiful old story it could be after all
if those in the back rows would stop giggling for a minute.
By day, we have paddled and arbitraged
to get to this spot. By night, it hardly matters.
Funny we didn’t anticipate this,
but the dumbest clues get overlooked by the smartest gumshoe
and we are back in some fetishist’s vinyl paradise
with no clue as to how we got here
exce
pt the tiny diamond on your pillow—it must have been a tear
hatched from a dream, when you actually knew what you were doing.
Now, it’s all fear. Fear and wrongdoing.
The outboard motor sputters and quits, and a tremendous silence
beats down from every point in the sky. To have digested this
when we were younger, and felt a set of balls coming on …
It may be that thunder and lightning are two-dimensional,
that there was never really any place for fear,
that others get trapped, same as us, and make up
amusing stories to cover their tracks. Wait,
there’s one in the donjon wants to speak his piece. Rats,
now he’s gone too.
Yes, he near slipped and died in front of you,
and you intend to twist this into an ethos?
Go make up other stories.
Window reflected in the bubble,
how often I’ve tried to pray to you,
but your sphere would have nothing of it.
I felt almost jinxed. Then a spider led the way
back into the room.
And we knew why we’d never left. Outside was brushfires.
Here was the peace of Philemon and Baucis,
offering chunks of bread and salami to the tattered stranger,
and a beaker of wine darker than the deepest twilight,
a table spread with singularities
for the desperate and tragic among us.
Angel, come back please. Let us smell your heavenly smell again.
Two Poems
Lyn Hejinian
THE DISTANCE
Banned from ships as if I were fate herself, I nonetheless long hankered after adventures
At sea
But buckets, lifeboats, gulls, and fishguts on wharves were as near as I got
Or the beach. The ban was inoperative on the sands, I boarded
Wrecks. The terns, godwits and gulls were ashore as at sea, and I learned the fine points
By which one can distinguish between the sandpipers
Just as I learned that there are many fine points to fate
Which divulges what comes to pass indefinitely
So that we can hardly say of things that happen that they were meant to be
Or that they were not. Like a pupil
I was ruled by obedience
To rules I broke. I floundered around
And enjoyed my choices—I was eager
To receive—
But not without perplexity, I was endowed with doubt
And that is one of the few things I can say of myself then that I can say of myself
Now, for the most part there has been little confluence. I’ve been swept