I Hazing, they call it in America, but I already knew it from Armagh, the fledgling hauled to the pump, protesting, by the bigger boys to be baptised with his nickname, Froggy, Screwy, Rubberneck or Dopey, some shameful blemish, his least attractive aspect, hauled out to harry, haunt him through his snail years in St….
Myers: Your work on The One Day lasted more than a decade, I believe. How long exactly? Hall: It was sixteen years from the time I started the poem-not knowing what I was starting-until I finished it. (I'm always tempted to put quotations around the word, when I say "finished," because, when I have a…
I sit at McDonald's eating my fragment of forest. The snail and slug taste good, the leaves, the hint of termite and bat, the butterfly trans- substantiated by steer karma, and mine. Another pleasure: to breathe distillate of foam scented with coffee and chemical cream. Another virtue: groups of us all trained the same way,…
It takes me a lot longer to write a poem I like, for three reasons: First, although inevitably I will, I can't consciously bear to repeat myself, so when I find myself writing about a subject I've addressed before, I stop in my tracks till I find a new direction to go. This, of course,…
Before there was anything else, solitude filled space in the form of gas—lavender, thin, smelling like mouthwash. When solitude studied itself in school, it turned into a sphere the size of a ball bearing, unbreakable, yet soft as beans soaked to make soup. When it grew old, solitude sprouted leaves like the winter oak's. Dead,…
At Kwik-Fill, I pump ferns and turtles into my tank. They'll ride here in my dark until they burn. Millions of years later, now, our traffic traverses ancient landscapes, zone by zone, desert by forest by marsh by swamp until we sleep. At night, like you, I almost remember riblike sprays of cattails, pterodactyl eyes…
Once she stuffed me with aspic in the days when I felt I should return invitations. After all, she was my teacher. Her tongue lashings burst as waves of hives on my belly. I'd eaten her lethal low-calorie jelly. When did she eat her jelly doughnuts? Not near me. When I spoke out of turn…
The night Sam Cooke was shot, I ran out into the backyard and shouted, “Suck my dick, God!” My father slapped my face, said if he ever heard me say anything like that again, I could forget about driving, ever— I'd be in my own house with my own kids and he'd show up to…
Poco filo mi resta, ma spero che avrò modo di dedicare al prossimo tiranno i miei poveri carmi. Non mi dirà di svenarmi come Nerone a Lucano. Vorrà una lode spontanea scaturita da un cuore riconoscente e ne avrà ad abbondanza. Potrò egualmente lasciare orma durevole. In poesia quello che conta non è il contenuto…
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