Champagne In A Paper Cup

How To Reboot Your Brain

Step 1: Do not panic when your screen freezes, this is normal, lie down bury your face in a pillow, do not move it will hurt, do not look it will hurt, do not think it will hurt

Step 2: When they put you in the MRI let it swallow you, a machine trying to understand another machine, pray that it will find something, anything would be better than a phantom pain

Step 3: It doesn’t find anything, nothing wrong with the hardware, no sign of the corrupted file, downloading megabyte after megabyte of railroad spikes and lightning bolts, maybe a working machine can understand a broken one

Step 4: Drink water tell yourself it will help, tell yourself that your circuits are not too fried to accept what gives them life, tell yourself that you are not malfunctioning

Step 5: Command don’t throw up command don’t throw up command don’t throw up, error command not readable

Step 6: The doctor says that sometimes patients exhibit symptoms that we don’t understand, the doctor says let’s just try the next medication on the list, the doctor says my assistant will see you next time

Step 7:

Step 8: Symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, difficulty speaking, difficulty thinking through the pain

Step 9:

Step 8: Symptoms may include error messages, failure to process data, failure to respond

Step 9: Take a pill, step 9 take a pill, step 9 imagine weighing your brain against the meds, the meds against the other meds, hoping that the scales tip the right way

Step 10: Machines do not break, machines do not break repeat it until it comes part of your programming

Step 11: Commands get out of bed, program not responding, command do not think of lightning bolts and railroad spikes, think about ripping out that corrupted file by the root, your brain by the roots, sending off in exchange for a less faulty model, the room is spinning, you are floating in a stream of ones and zeros, you are an error message blinking in the dark

Step 12: Hold down the power button, let the screen go dark, even machines have to rest

–Ellie Vamos

A Romance

He called eel grass
what she called seaweed.
He insulated their house with it.
She was interested in
the transparence of her skin.
He walled the bathroom 
with barn-siding, he built the couch
with wood he had chopped.
She, a friend once said,
was a calligrapher of the dark.
He dug a root cellar
to store vegetables. He built a shack
for his ducks. Once, while asleep,
he said “the half-shut eye of the moon.”
She spoke about the possible
precision of doubt.
He knew when the wind changed
what weather it would bring.

She baked bread, made jam
from sugar berries, kept a notebook
with what she called
little collections of her breath.
He said the angle the nail goes in 
is crucial.
She fed the ducks, called them
her sentient beings.
She wondered how one becomes 
a casualty of desire.
He said a tin roof in summer
sends back the sun’s heat.
She made wine from dandelions.
She once wrote in her notebook
“the ordinary loveliness of this world.”
He built a bookcase
for her books.
They took long walks.

-Stephen Dunn

Bali Hai Calls Mama

As I was putting away the groceries

I’d spent the morning buying

for the week’s meals I’d planned

around things the baby could eat,

things my husband would eat,

and things I should eat

because they aren’t too fattening,

late on a Saturday afternoon

after flinging my coat on a chair

and wiping the baby’s nose

while asking my husband

what he’d fed it for lunch

and whether

the medicine I’d brought for him

had made his cough improve,

wiping the baby’s nose again,

checking its diaper,

stepping over the baby

who was reeling to and from

the bottom kitchen drawer

with pots, pans, and plastic cups,

occasionally clutching the hem of my skirt

and whining to be held,

I was half listening for the phone

which never rings for me

to ring for me

and someone’s voice to say that

I could forget about handing back

my students’ exams which I’d had for a week,

that I was right about The Waste Land,

that I’d been given a raise,

all the time wondering

how my sister was doing,

whatever happened to my old lover(s),

and why my husband wanted

a certain brand of toilet paper;

and wished I hadn’t, but I’d bought

another fashion magazine that promised 

to make me beautiful by Christmas,

and there wasn’t room for the creamed corn

and every time I opened the refrigerator door

the baby rushed to grab whatever was on the bottom shelf

which meant I constantly had to wrestle

jars of its mushy food out of its sticky hands

and I stepped on the baby’s hand and the baby was screaming

and I dropped the bag of cake flour I’d bought to make cookies with

and my husband rushed in to find out what was wrong because the baby

was drowning out the sound of the touchdown although I had scooped

it up and was holding it in my arms so its crying was inside

my head like an echo in a barrel and I was running cold water

on its hand while somewhere in the back of my mind wondering what

to say about The Waste Land and whether I could get away with putting

broccoli in a meatloaf when

suddenly through the window

came the wild cry of geese.

-Marilyn Nelson

this man sometimes forgets who
he is.
sometimes he thinks he’s the
Pope.
other times he thinks he’s a
hunted rabbit
and hides under the
bed.
then
all at once
he’ll recapture total
clarity
and begin creating
works of
art.
then he’ll be all right
for some
time.
-from ‘The Genius’ by Charles Bukowski

“Apology”

That last love poem I gave you, I want to apologize for that. It was
crudely put and several of the metaphors leaned too heavily on sea
life. I love you so much more than that. The best part of the poem
was the beginning, and that had nothing to do with you, or me,
or how much either of us loves each other. It was just a line from
another, better poem. Most of the poem sounds defensive, like I’ve
been accused of not loving you, or you of not loving me. Not that
I think I don’t love you, or you me. I don’t. Still, one could read a
poem by someone else and it’d seem more authentic—you’d be more
likely to think that poem was dedicated to you, I mean, than to think
mine was. One could even argue, too, that by studiously avoiding
your name or any identifying traits, I was making this poem fit for
more than one person, like women in general, or a second wife, or
your very attractive sister.     

–Jason Whitmarsh

“Where He Found Himself”

The new man unfolded a map and pointed
to a dark spot on it. “See, that’s how
far away I feel all the time, right here,
among all of you,” he said.
“Yes,” John the gentle mule replied,
“alienation is clearly your happiness.”
But the group leader interrupted,
“Now, now, let’s hear him out,
let’s try to be fair.” The new man felt
the familiar comfort of everyone against him.

There Is Wind, There Are Matches

A thousand times I have sat in restaurant windows,
through mopping after mopping, letting the ammonia clear
my brain and the music from the kitchens
ruin my heart. I have sat there hiding
my feelings from my neighbors, blowing smoke
carefully into the ceiling, or after I gave
that up, smiling over my empty plate
like a tired wolf. Today I am sitting again
at the long marble table at Horn and Hardart’s,
drinking my coffee and eating my burnt scrapple.
This is the last place left and everyone here
knows it; if the lights were turned down, if the
heat were turned off, if the banging of dishes stopped,
we would all go on, at least for a while, but then
we would drift off one by one toward Locust or Pine.
- I feel this place is like a birch forest
about to go; there is wind, there are matches, there is snow,
and it has been dark and dry for hundreds of years.
I look at the chandelier waving in the glass
and the sticky sugar and the wet spoon.
I take my handkerchief out for the sake of the seven
years we spent in Philadelphia and the
steps we sat on and the tiny patches of lawn.
I believe now more than I ever did before
in my first poems and more and more I feel
that nothing was wasted, that the freezing nights
were not a waste, that the long dull walks and
the boredom, and the secret pity, were
not a waste. I leave the paper sitting,
front page up, beside the cold coffee,
on top of the sugar, on top of the wet spoon,
on top of the grease. I was born for one thing,
and I can leave this place without bitterness
and start my walk down Broad Street past the churches
and the tiny parking lots and the thrift stores.
There was enough justice, and there was enough wisdom,
although it would take the rest of my life - the next
two hundred years - to understand and explain it;
and there was enough time and there was enough affection
even if I did tear my tongue
begging the world for one more empty room
and one more window with clean glass
to let the light in on my last frenzy.
- I do the crow walking clumsily over his meat,
I do the child sitting for his dessert,
I do the poet asleep at his table,
waiting for the sun to light up his forehead.
I suddenly remember every ruined life,
every betrayal, every desolation,
as I walk past Tasker toward the city of Baltimore,
banging my pencil on the iron fences,
whistling Bach and Muczynski through the closed blinds.

-Gerald Stern

Love Poem on a Monday Morning with Mock Complaints, Unreasonable Wishes, Your Name and the Earth for Good Measure

Darling, it’s this binary morning futzing all
I’m trying to say. Clouds glide away.
The sun is pantomime. I can’t understand
an atom of creation. I can’t raise
the garage door with my mind,
the better to escape today’s apocalypse,
the better to fade through all
America. I’m thinking of molten asphalt
and the rorid grass running beside
the roads like deer. I’m thinking of Las Vegas
because I’m thirsty, because
everything there is not free
at all and that’s the precise spot
on the map we should marry
all our troubles. I’ll complain of my bones,
I think it’s safe to say
and I’ll worry the miles
we never drive. I’ll say your name
when I shouldn’t
to every door barred before us
as if you’re known in Belize to be the password
to tumble the last lock
and loose the last bolt.
Ruth, look at the sky peeping down
like an adjective for angels
I really don’t want to use
so I won’t. No one will promise me wings.
There is a simplicity
in such desire
I think you should love
but you don’t.
To bravely want the sky is
to bravely want the sky
despite all the forecasts of rain and sleet
and, oh, yes, gravity,
to which we keep speaking
like vaguely lost travelers,
we are just passing through, we are just passing through.

-Paul Guest