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Poetry
SCRAWNY'S
NATURAL LOOK
Gary
Hyland from Just Off Main
The
wind's a real drag
You
get your hair just right
the
wave angling off
scoops
along the sides
the
duck-tail centred—
a
shining construction
of
Brylcreem and water
Then
you step outside
Zap—instant hedgehog
Fifteen
minutes' combing
shot
to ratshit.
Winter's
a better deal
Even
in a blizzard
your
hair freezes
into
a helmet
Then
you amble into the A
join
some girls and sit there
looking
natural
as
your hair melts
and
dribbles down your neck
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THE
LOCAL NEWS
Gary
Hyland from Street of Dreams
Meanwhile
in the hills
southwest
of Moose Jaw
crocus
insurgents
have
infiltrated
outlying
regions.
Early
reports mention
purple
squadrons
apparently
armed
with
stamens and pistils
of
their own design
bombarding
defenders
with
frequent bursts
of
fragrant air.
So
far skirmishes
have
been inconclusive
but
civic officials
expressed
confidence
their
defences are secure.
According
to the mayor
if
the worst comes
tanks
and jets are
standing
by.
The
guerrillas are reported
to
be demanding equal time
with
fiscal considerations
in
public and private fields.
The
effects on school attendance
licence
applications
and
income tax returns
are
not immediately known.
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A SAFE AND EASY THING
Gary
Hyland from After Atlantis
Don't
stop reading, Mildred.
There's
no need to be afraid.
This
is not a poem. Pretend
you
can hear me speaking,
pretend
I am in a small room
far
away playing the music
pictures
happy in your head.
See?
You don't need to think.
The
words are small and easy,
the
lines are short, the print
large,
like an advertisement.
Nothing
will happen to you,
nothing
to buy or believe or give,
like
pudding, pudding on a spoon.
No
one will ask what this means.
No
one will care you've read it.
It is
almost over and nothing
has
happened. Not the sniff
of a
mention of something odd,
nothing
shifty, nothing fancy,
not
one unpleasant anything.
You
can be proud of yourself.
Should
there be a power failure,
should
the bubble puddings stop,
in
the cough and shuffle silence
here's
something nice you can say
to
your friends who never read,
not
even signs or recipes.
Once
I read a whole page of words
that
my husband set into chunks.
It
was easy, really, very easy.
It
was about itself and me
and I
could forget it right away.
That's
something to flaunt safely.
It's
not as if you'd read a poem.
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DANICA AT THE GOYA EXHIBITION
Gary
Hyland from White Crane Spreads Wings
1.
Doctor
Arrieta worked wonders and Goya lived
several
more years. Your first doctor is your father
when
you are four playing his special secret game
between
your legs. There on the floor you want to die.
At
the end of the street the moon is so full and huge
walking
into it would be how you could escape
from
his demands, his probing hands. Dream
of
the moon, dream of being free and clean
on
the dark side where he will never see, safe
in
a cool moondust place. Beyond his camera's greed
for
your body. What does he do with the pictures of you,
"the
examinations" legs spread, or bending over his bench?
The
well-bred illuminati of Madrid affecting French sniffed
at
Goya's absence of poise, his violations of decorum.
Your
mother, your sisters, your aunt believing you
a
born carnal psychopath, a lying slut, head full
of
sick black clouds of vampires, witches, demons.
Salve
regina mater miserecordie you sing in the choir
thinking Virgin Mary please please deliver me from evil.
As
Sister Camellia conducts, the big black rosary
at
her side clicks against itself, and her sleeves flap like bats.
Daddy
his brown suit, slicked hair, his docile wife
and
your brothers and sisters fill an entire pew.
The
priest beams on his good parishioner, his happy brood.
Sister
Camellia's black rosary clicks and clicks.
Take
off your nightie. Click. Take off your panties. Click.
2.
You owe obedience to your father as we owe obedience
to our
father in heaven, explains Sister Camellia.
Pater
noster qui est in caelis. If he hurts you it must be
because
you are bad. How does he hurt you? You cannot say.
That is
darkness. In Goya's paintings how the subjects shine
amidst
a great savage darkness that wants to crush them.
El
Sueno de la razon produce monstrous. The sleep of reason yields
Daddy.
Looking at the family of the Duke of Osuna
you
wonder which of the four is the dump child. You see fear
in
the eyes of the small girl holding her daddy's hand.
And
you are swallowed by another nightmare. Daddy holding
your
hands, his friends on top of you, their whiskey breath,
their
raspy cheeks rubbing yours. You want an axe to kill with.
To
wield as the Spanish partisan in Los Mismo
over
the French soldier himself writhing on a foe
like
a man on his lover. Goya etching your soul.
Sister
Camellia, is that you hooded and fleeing
beneath
the witches feasting on someone in the air?
The
black distended air whirling and whelping demons.
What
penised menace nests in the Countess Chinchon
meek
and misty in her bulging white sprigged muslin?
The
philanderer Manuel Gody macho in military garb,
his
thighs in palomino breeches, his walking stick
hanging
suggestively between. The swinishness of men.
Even
Jovellanos in his gleam of sweet reason
leaning
on the ornate desk in the palace of Carlos
seems
melancholy beneath the anvil of the night.
3.
The small Caprichos etchings tell still more of evil—
whores
sweeping syphilitic customers seen as roosters
plucked
featherless from their brothel. And the artist
sleeping
while bats and owls flap about his head,
evil
seeking a roost while reason dreams.
Panels
from the walls of purgatory.
So
much evil Ruskin set them on fire.
So
much evil Sister Camellia would not look at them.
Your
mother would say they are not what life is like.
And
your father, would he recognize his heart?
In
these images you can tell Goya wanted everyone free.
Yes,
you as well. Freer than doctors and lovers have made you.
Or
the absolutions that bound you to submission.
Free
as Goya painting blithely in France before his death,
ideals
destroyed, deaf, feeble yet captured by, capturing
the
pure grace and beauty of a milkmaid in Bordeaux.
For
you an abandoned church in which to paint, and write
your
life into peace. To make something of the sewage
and
the pain. To be as clean and free as you have dreamed.
To
return from the darkness of the far side, your own
Arrieta
knowing as he did that no hai remedio-
no
foot crushes all the writhing demons.
It
is enough to create a cave of light.
A
place to hold at bay the looming dark.
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REFLECTIONS:
THE LOVE OF MIRRORS
Gary
Hyland from The Work of Snow
They
say the mirror in Elvis Presley's bathroom
never
forgot him, that men looking in
see
a piece of Elvis looking back. They say
Dali
painted a nude self-portrait on the wall
opposite
his so it would not be lonely,
and
that years after Peter Sellers died
his
could be heard doing impersonations
in
accents at night. The day Indira Gandhi
was
slain tears dribbled down her glass.
In
Frida Kahlo's: a v of crow's wings.
In
the way of mirrors, yours watches you try
expressions,
check your tongue, your degrees
of
modesty. It sees your blemishes, your secrets
and
never whispers them. As you settle down
your
mirror accepts those deepening lines,
the
thinner greying hair, the sagging parts.
It
does not pretend, compare, resist the light.
No
one ever loves you like your mirror, not
your
lover, nor your mother, not even you
in
any of the versions trapped in its layers.
The
time will come when you will not be
in
your mirror. Patiently the glass will wait
for
you to wash and brush your teeth,
for
the graze of your self-regarding eyes,
but
you will not appear. Each day it will retain
less
and less in the silver cells of its memory.
And
soon someone new will stand before it
and
the mirror, charmed by a leaner body
that
requires less reflective energy, will try
again
to find a lustre thin enough for myth.
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REMOTE CONTROL
Gary
Hyland
Hammel has fallen asleep climbing through one of the picture windows in a poem by his friend The Poet. He wakes to the TV spouting
the news of Diego Cardenza who has strapped explosives to his lover's body. Via cell phone while hovering over a remote device in his van,
Diego threatens to detonate her and the neighborhood. His terrified lover, Suzette, in view of him and the world, trembles on the balcony
of her apartment, cell phone to her ear. Her building and those nearby evacuated. Helicopters whacking the air. Comely media commentators
lathering over the tactics of terrorism applied to a personal crisis. The special ops brass, cells to their ears, consult with
psychiatrists and hostage specialists. Snipers and demolition experts consider how to take him out in less than a pulse beat.
A commentator deadpans, "Science and technology make this
moment possible." Hammel is horrified. But after a few hours his attention wanders to what would have happened had his ex and he been
wired thus. Or vice versa. The ways of remote control.
Something
dark outside his window startles Diego. A cell phone on a cable. Diego takes
it inside, puts it to his free ear. He explains to the police that he will not
blow the city to microspecks but just neatly dispose of Suzette, if they agree
to charge him jointly with her murder and that of the fetus she carries.
"Now we know what kinda nutto we got," says one of the cops. A
detective's voice tells Diego the cell phone could have been a bomb that left
him headless. Diego tells the policeman that would have automatically wiped
Suzette and most of downtown since his van is trigger-packed with liquid
nitrogen. The detective inquires if he is hungry. He says he has lots of food
and cigarettes. Suzette wants an abortion? He'll give her an abortion. He'll
de-womb the whole damn city.
Hammel's
phone rings. His friend The Poet wants some routine information. She knows
nothing of Diego. "In the garden all day," she says, "tending
sparse and prickly things that may be weeds, watching bees turn into angels
and back again, making notes." So he tells her the story of Suzette and
Diego, the fetus and the police and the reporters and commentators on all the
channels. He speculates on the many who have called in sick or returned from
work and are now ordering pizzas so they will be watching when whatever is
going to happen happens.
The
Poet thanks him and says she is returning to the garden to watch the stars
becoming leaves on her early April trees.
And
there he is, alone with Diego and Suzette, growing uncomfortable watching
himself watch them. So he goes to the window. It is the time of day when the
shrubs lay down shadows longer than themselves. Something moves, almost
hovers, near the lilacs. It may not be an angel but he hopes it is.
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HAMMEL
ATTEMPTS SLEEP
a pantoum- Gary Hyland
He
climbs into the bed where he expects to die,
Old
Hammel who never made a stick's worth of
trouble
and for whom no one is likely to cry
since
he failed with great frequency at love.
Old Hammel, who never made a stick's worth of
trouble
except his own which he made double
since
he failed with great frequency at love,
tried
all his life and never rose above rubble.
Trouble,
except his own which he made double,
other
men managed far more deftly while he
tried
all his life and seldom rose above rubble
Contacts!
said a sage will assure supremacy.
Other
men managed far more deftly, while he,
working
as hard as he could, was submediocre.
Contacts!
said a sage will assure supremacy.
When
once he found a princess his kiss never woke her.
Working
as hard as he could, was submediocre
in
all he pursued—that's what life brought him.
When
once he found a princess his kiss never woke her.
The
first woman who showed an interest got him.
In
all he pursued—that's what life brought him—
one
relationship that never found a focus.
The
first woman who showed an interest got him
and
her love shrivelled faster than a crocus.
One
relationship that never found a focus.
Hammel,
who knew it wasn't his doing only
and
her love shrivelled faster than a crocus,
now finds himself a year beyond lonely.
Hammel
who knew it wasn't fate bringing only
trouble
and for whom no one is likely to cry
now finds himself a year beyond lonely.
He
climbs into the bed where he expects to die,
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