C: It’s as if someone handed him a Magic Hat, but he was like, “Nah, I’m good with this Natty Ice.”
T: It’s like if someone gave him a pressed sandwich with Portobello mushrooms, sautéed onions, and fresh cheese from a goat and he said, “No thanks, I’ll just have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
C: Exactly! Go fuck your pb and j!
T: YEAH! Who turns down a panini??!
The excerpt below is from a poem entitled “In Loving Memory of the Late Author of Dream Songs.” It was written by John Berryman’s good friend, William Meredith. William Meredith taught at Connecticut College for many years, and when he died our school held a memorial for him. I picked up Richard Wilbur at his house in Connecticut in my 1998 Toyota Camry LXE so that he could read a poem at Meredith’s memorial service. His house was in the beautiful Connecticut countryside, and I was a little early so a woman who I assumed was his caretaker had me wait in the sitting room. It was late autumn. I sat on a very stiff couch and his Siamese cats entered while I waited, upright on the sofa: two of them. They stared into my soul with their four blue eyes. Richard Wilbur was much easier to be around than his cats. We talked about weather and dangerous curves of the highway, and he told me a story that took place in Key West, and he told me another story where the punch line involved some sentence which proved a poet he admired knew Latin even better than he did. His voice was very soft and I did not mention that I wrote poetry, or that I had found poetry relatively recently and now knew I had to study it and keep writing poems. I stole a line from something he said to me during that car ride and put it in a poem, but I changed the phrase by taking out a word, and I didn’t credit him, though there’s an invisible footnote there that only I can see. I can show you to that poem, it’s in my thesis. It’s a love poem, but that doesn’t help you much: they all are, especially the ones since the thesis.
Do we wave back now, or what do we do?
You were never reluctant to instruct.
I do what’s in character, I look for things
to praise on the riverbanks and I praise them.
We are all relicts, of some great joy, wearing black,
but this book is full of marvelous songs.
Don’t let us contract your dread recidivism
and start falling from our own iron railings.
Wave from the fat book again, make us wave back.
We are all relicts of some great joy, some of us even newer than relics–some of us perhaps just made.
Pacing around my house, laughing
and crying at the same time, this is
the closest I’ve ever achieved at doing
both together, it’s a Frankie sort of verb,
laughingcrying, and an ice cube is dripping
off my face and onto my sweatshirt and
leaving little puddles as I walk around and
O Caity Baptiste I need you now! This
is going to be a cyborg of a cold sore it’s
gonna be full-on one-sided Botox of the
lip it’s gonna stun all your med schoolies
into silenced awe it’s gonna make y’all
reassess your medical vocations, it’s won
the Golden Globe for Most Likely To Make
You Not Wanna Disrobe Me, it’s the best
and worst thing my body’s done all week,
it’s making me laugh then cry then repeat,
a crunching of the face where I get those
creases round the nose (the face Jen loves
to try to do) and then laughing looking
out the window as the dapper drug dealer
in his white fedora walks by with the dog
-owning homeless addicts and the ice is for
the lip because Lorelei Frantz (of the Blue
Camel Café, of ginger peach tea and my
employment) told me that’s how you burn
a coldsore away, you ice it out, you decide It
Is Not There, you chill it freeze it drip it all
around the house is what I’m doing, a messy
sort of process but somehow worth a poem,
Please come to the sideyard reading on Friday
at 7pm! and see for yourself the evidence! of
me attempting everything at once, of trying
to get everything right the first time around,
the proof is on my lip, it’s a mountainrange
of dripping sickness but wait it’s not so bad
in profile in fact it kind of makes me feel
voluptuous and I hey, NEVER feel voluptuous
“New scenery, new noise”
said Rimbaud. I slept
through the traffic. I’m so
spoiled I get humble then
romantic. I’ve never held
a gun but I’ll sit beside you
or behind and ride and ride
*
Cougar on wheels
The bike changes
gears automatically—
I’m fast I’m slower I’m
skidding a little in the sand
I’m a sea snake on land
*
Last Wednesday
“It’s like your name is
‘Taylor Katz comma poet’
she said across a burrito
as the rain decided on us
*
“Hello I love you won’t you tell me your name”
I’ll be your amulet,
baby
*
Lost Angeles
Goodbye hand sewn Barcelona
pouch with the three overlapping
stars. Goodbye mint chapstick
from the pack of three and the birthday
lipstick; goodbye pocket mirror with the red
bunnies from the party’s grab bag. Goodbye
eye drops, olive green pencil from the notebook
set. Adios scar like a broken trident
on the left side of your face, see you
later, see you soon
The Station
9pm, downtown LA,
hugging a book like
it’s my family. Maybe it is.
*
Stir
There’s no real milk
or cream for coffee
Just some terrifying
portioned creamers
*
How do we know?
A man’s on his laptop
at dinner. The drink
I order comes lidded
in a jar, sprig of rosemary.
*
Convenience
In Venice Beach
you can buy a joint
& get your teeth
whitened next door.
*
Doncha know?
A hot dog on a stick,
I learn, is something different
than a corn dog.
panache, perhaps 