Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals Read online

  of the lake. Would like to go to universe . . . al . . . ity?

  She has heard there is a good one in Germany.

  They stay up all night drinking some black sludge,

  and grow long beards rather than look at them-

  selves, and do thought experiments like: if I am not

  in Scotland, does Scotland even exist? What do I look

  like when no one is looking? She would listen to them

  just as hard as she could with the mud-sucking holes

  in her head—and they, she thinks, would listen back,

  with their ears so regularly described as seashell.

  The half of her that is underwater would like to be

  under a desk, the head of her that is underwater

  would like to be fully immersed.

  I will be different there,

  she thinks, with a powerful wake ahead of me.

  When will the thinkers come for me. Visited only

  here by believers. Is so deep-sea-sick of believers.

  When will the thinkers come for me here, where

  the green stretches out before me, and I am my own

  front lawn. The green is a reflective green, a green

  in the juicy shadows of leaves—a bosky even green—

  a word I will learn to use, and use without self-

  consciousness, when at last I go to Germany. I have

  holed myself away here, sometimes I am not here

  at all, and I feel like the nice clean hole in the leaf

  and the magnifying glass above me.

  She looks to the believers on the shore. A picture

  it would last longer! shouts Nessie.

  Does NOT believe photography can rise to the level

  of art, no matter how much rain falls in it, as levels

  of the lake they rose to art when Nessie dipped

  her body in it. Nessie wants to watch herself doing

  it. Doing what, I don’t know, being alive. The lake

  bought one Nessie and brought her home. She almost

  died of loneliness until it gave her a mirror. The lake

  could be a mirror, thinks Nessie. Would be perfectly

  still if I weren’t in it.

  Bedbugs Conspire to Keep Me from Greatness

  In the cities all the poets, and in all the cities,

  bedbugs. Fat with their black lyric blood! Alive

  at only night, and there and then not there. Better

  bedbugs than the ones that eat paper, say poets—

  the ones that eat paper are in our blood

  and the bedbugs eat them up, rip rip, and our paper

  creamily goes on whole, with not a single real space

  between sentences in it. They say come to the cities

  and there

  become Great! The poets have money to spend

  in the cities: they spend the newest American dollars,

  the crisp-aired greenest American dollars, blazing

  with pictures of National Parks. “The Old Faithful

  Geyser almost gushes off the note!” At last money admits

  the power of poetry, at last money admits it is written

  on—and this piece of paper almost gushes, so go to a city

  and spend it. The poets in cities save their money

  and travel to National Parks, and never sleep at night

  there, no one sleeps in a National Park, they stay up late

  and inseminate each other with memories of mountains

  and glimpses of wildlife, and human reflections in stilly

  chill lakes, and afterward they lie awake, miles away

  from any city, miles away from their living mattresses

  where their absent shapes are getting sucked

  for their blood. Oh the bedbugs are happy; in bedbug prison,

  the locked-up poet is writing his poems, in blood just like

  the first time. Oh the poets are happy back in the cities, there

  are legible smears on their sheets every day, and a pricking

  always on their skin like something is coming

  for them through the grass, long green grass

  of where they came from.

  Last of the Late Great Gorilla-Suit Actors

  Is the last man alive on this earth. He has the cities

  to himself, and even has the blondes, who are over

  his shoulders not kicking or screaming. He carries

  them wherever he carries the gorilla. “I can see straight

  through and past your mask,” the gorilla-suit actor

  tells himself. “I can see your eyes twinkle way up

  with the stars. Between two skyscrapers I can see them.

  By the end the audience will recognize you. By the end

  they will see you as one of them, by the end they will see

  their faces in your face,”

  and the audience feels themselves lifted up too,

  and the audience leaves one by one. “Where is the movie,

  where is my movie?” the gorilla cries in despair. He beats

  his bass chest, there is only silence. He opens his mouth

  and makes the loud frightened music the score makes

  when we first see him. He is taller than even he remembers.

  Comets streak through and through his head. All the blondes

  are thrown over his shoulders, the blondes he never even

  liked, the bunches of blondes he mistook for bananas. What

  he likes is the Chrysler Building, all nipped and shirred

  at the waist. What he likes is the cool copper Statue of Liberty.

  What he likes, getting bigger, is that high-heeled continent.

  What he likes, he thinks, sweat dripping sky to the ground,

  is the great gorilla-suit itself and its long great line of inhabitants.

  The late great is alone, is alone on the earth. The sun approaches

  hotter than hot, the last and screamingest of the blondes.

  The last of the great is as big as deep space, the last of the late

  is as big as the night, he reaches out and grabs the sun, he is

  stuffed with the stars of gorilla-suit acting, all gorilla-suit

  actors are moving his arms, all gorilla-suit actors are moving

  his legs, and we make the sad music the score makes

  when the gorilla is shot full of holes, and “Remember me!”

  we cry to no one at large, and burst out of the suit at last

  to breathe, last of the late great gorilla-suit actions.

  Factories Are Everywhere in Poetry Right Now

  We are watching a crayon being made, we are children,

  we are watching the crayon become crayons

  and more crayons and thinking how can there be enough

  room in America to make what makes it up, we are thinking

  all America is a factory by now, the head of it churning out

  fake oranges, the hand of it churning out glass bottles,

  the heel of it churning out Lego men.

  We are watching lifelike snakes get made, we are watching

  lifelike rats get made, we are watching army men get made;

  a whole factory for magic wands, a whole factory

  for endless scarves, a whole factory, America, for the making

  of the doves, a whole factory, America,

  for the making of long-eared

  rabbits and their love of deep dark holes. We are watching

  a marble being made, how does the cat’s eye get in the marble

  and how does the sight get into that, how does the ha
nd get

  on it, how does the hand attach to the child, how does the child

  attach to the dirt, and how does the dirt attach to its only name,

  America. The name is manufactured here by rows of me in airless

  rooms. Sunlight is accidental, sunlight is runoff

  from the lightbulb factory, is ooze on the surface of all our rivers.

  Our abandoned factories make empty space and our largest

  factory produces distance and its endless conveyor produces miles.

  And people in the basement produce our underground. Hillbilly

  teeth are made here, but hillbilly teeth are made everywhere

  maybe. The factory that makes us is overseas, and meanwhile we,

  America, churn out China, France, Russia, Spain, and our glimpses

  of them from across the ocean. Above the factory billowing clouds

  can be seen for miles around. Long line of us never glances up

  from the long line of glimpses we’re making, we could make

  those glimpses in the dark, our fingertips could see to do it,

  all the flashing fish in the Finger Lakes

  have extra-plus eyes in America. The last factory, which makes last

  lines, makes zippers for sudden reveals: a break in the trees opens

  ziiiip on a view, the last line opens ziiiip on enormous meaning.

  Revealing Nature Photographs

  In a field where else you found a stack

  of revealing nature photographs, of supernude nature

  photographs, split beaver of course nature photographs,

  photographs full of 70s bush, nature taking come

  from every man for miles around, nature with come back

  to me just dripping from her lips. The stack came

  up to your eye, you saw: nature is big into bloodplay,

  nature is into extreme age play, nature does wild inter-

  racial, nature she wants you to pee in her mouth, nature

  is dead and nature is sleeping and still nature is on all fours,

  a horse it fucks nature to death up in Oregon, nature is hot

  young amateur redheads, the foxes are all in their holes

  for the night, nature is hot old used-up cougars, nature

  makes gaping fake-agony faces, nature is consensual dad-

  on-daughter, nature is completely obsessed with twins,

  nature doing specialty and nature doing niche, exotic females

  they line up to drip for you, nature getting paddled as hard

  as you can paddle her, oh a whitewater rapid with her ass

  in the air, high snowy tail on display just everywhere.

  The pictures were so many they started to move. Let me

  watch for the rest of my natural life, you said and sank down

  in the field and breathed hard. Let me watch and watch

  without her knowing, let me see her where she can’t see me.

  As long as she can’t see me, I can breathe hard here forever.

  See nature do untold animals sex, see nature’s Sicko Teeen

  Farm SexFeest, see her gush like the geyser at Yellowstone,

  see the shocking act that got her banned in fifty-one states including

  Canada. See men for miles around give nature what she needs,

  rivers and rivers and rivers of it. You exhale with perfect

  happiness. Nature turned you down in high school.

  Now you can come in her eye.

  See a Furious Waterfall Without Water

  Never has an empty hand been made

  into more of a fist, and Waterfall Without

  it swings so hard it swings out

  of existence. How will anyone get married

  now, with no wall of water behind them?

  How will Over Niagara Falls in a Barrel

  marry Across Niagara Falls on a Tightrope?

  Over the Falls would have worn a veil,

  Across the Falls would have tied a tie,

  hand in hand they would have poured

  down the aisle to the sound of rustling

  silks. Later they would narrow

  to a lovely neck, later they would make

  a gentle elbow in the water, later

  they would pour into a still round pool,

  and dance for three minutes to what they

  called music. Niagara Falls is a family

  member. He is drunk for the first time

  in a hundred years. “I don’t call that music

  I call that noise,” would have screamed

  Niagara Falls, right through his aquiline

  family nose. All of Niagara’s ex-lovers

  are here. The World’s Steepest Dive

  stands up and says, “I’ve been diving

  so long now, and when will I hit?

  When will you be there for me, Niagara?”

  First Woman Behind the Falls stands up

  so everyone can see her, so everyone

  can see what has happened to her looks.

  “You took the best day of my life,

  Niagara.” The World’s

  Longest Breath-Hold stands up,

  she loves him, she drew in her breath

  the first time she saw him and never

  breathed out again, not ever. The furious

  waterfall without water he punches her

  into tomorrow; the World’s Longest

  Breath-Hold is longer now and she calls

  to him from the future, “You’re here,

  you’re roaring again where I am,

  Tomorrow.” Finally his first love the U-

  Shape stands up. Stands up and she says,

  “Niagara.” The sound curves down and up

  again, even the shape of her voice is a U.

  “I don’t call that music I call that noise,”

  says the furious waterfall without water,

  trembling at the very lip, unable to contain

  himself, and there he goes roaring

  back into her arms.

  Love Poem Like We Used to Write It

  Says here is a girl who gets written like palms,

  says here is a girl who moves paint like Tahiti.

  Teeth infinite white and infinite many and with

  them she infinite eat me, and mouth full of invert

  and cane and coarse sugar, and her dresses all

  came from across

  the water, and they rode a light chop

  on the sea in fast ships, and she owns twenty

  pairs of the shape of her hands, and slashed silk

  on her shoulder like claws of a parrot, and here

  the love poem delights:

  the word parrot will never

  be replaced, and will continue meaning always

  exactly what it means, as none of the words

  in this sentence have done—come read me again

  in a hundred years and see how I keep my shape!

  Love poem back to your subject, the word parrot

  is not the right woman for you, hard to hold

  and too much red; love poem think long arms

  and flies nowhere.

  I remember her now, it says, and says she is far

  from me, says hear how her voice is a Western

  slope, when west meant the sun it rose and set

  there, and monstrous the shadows of flowers all

  down it, in the days before voice meant something

  you wrote with. Love poem as we used to write it

  says her small brown paw is adorable, which is

  to say brown a
s we used to use it, which is to say

  just sunburned,

  just monstrous the shadows of flowers all on it,

  which is to say paw as we used to use it, which is

  to say a human hand, and human as we used

  to use it, which is to say almost no one among us.

  Blond of course and blond. Blond as a coil of rope,

  and someone hauled on her somewhere, and loop

  after loop flew out of her helpless. The someone

  was out at sea, and language on my shoulder like

  claws of a parrot. I sailed the world over

  to deliver one letter, one letter of even one letter,

  one word, and one word as we used to use it:

  in those days she was the only Lady, in those days

  she wrote a small round hand,

  and I hauled on it saw it fly loop by loop out of her.

  Why Haven’t You Written

  The past, when it was sick right down

  to its roses, obsessively checked the mail.

  We wore all of our pathways checking

  the mail. We went into the woods because

  we heard the letters rustling, and we swore

  they sounded like letters to us. Even Thoreau,

  on Walden Pond, checked his open mouth

  every morning, foolishly believing it to be

  the mail. We worshipped a great white

  body that was an avalanche of good news,

  and we slit it open in every part. “That can’t

  go through the mail,” the postman gasped,

  “because that is a super-stabbed body!”

  The super-stabbed body rose up, with many

  butterknives sticking out of it, and said, “I AM

  the mail.” It had so many lovers.

  Everyone alive had a finger in it, ripping it open,

  sometimes with blood, deep bleeding wounds

  of information all over the back-and-forth form.

  It took a long time to be delivered then, and traveled

  in sacks like shapes of women, and women were

  full of secret sharp corners where their postcards

  were poking out, and at last in their bedrooms they

  sighed with relief as they shook out their sacks

  with both hands, and faithfully and affectionately

  and yours tumbled out, and even I am tumbled out.