CHRIS MARTIN
Chris Martin's book, American Music, winner of the 2006 Hayden Carruth Prize,
will be coming out next year from Copper Canyon Press. He is the editor of the
online magazine Puppy Flowers and lives in Brooklyn, though he originally hails
from The West.
I Am No Proprioceptivist
Sometimes when nothing
Happens the world feels terribly
Sincere, the gloom
Unsettles, its heaving cape
Perforated by dazzling
Banalities, just to stare out the window
Conjures children to go out squealing
Over the half-obscured remains
Of a bird delicately sprouting from a snow
Bank or a man relieving
Himself into a trashcan delicately
Placed in the trash, it is too
Ontologically wondrous and likewise
Disconcerting—to be a thing, to be a thing
That is, that organizes other
Things into its own harmony
Or discord, sitting on a found sofa cluttered
With posies, contemplating The West
And her talking horses when out
The corner of your eye something rises against
The crisp blue winter sky
And you assimilate it, allow it
To manufacture in the peripheral
Coloring that inquires
Eye to word to ear—bluebird, bluebell,
Bellbottom, and so
On, unraveling, a sea of cyborgs
Proliferating endlessly only
To end up jump
Cutting as one man lusts
After a curve and there are advertisers
Clamoring after its import, objects looming
Into our very selves, but this
Is no news to you, you
Live here every day, there are fish
Swimming and your hands
Have touched them, impossible
Notions have come to you as simply
As breathing, you don't fear
Your own sun, that which
Nurtures and browns
You, or you do, it terrifies you
Every morning, so it is with our minds
They make us these things
That are, and as such we stand
Apart from them, ladders interrogating
Half-curtained windows, I have
A trophy from coaching a girls' basketball
Team and it pleases me, the Atlantic
Is somewhere relatively close and I think
Of it rarely, as I did
The mountains of my youth, so you
Can tell I am no proprioceptivist
A fragile thing giddy at its own interior
Movements, the wet way a finger
Knows its duty among the twittering
Of its counterparts, I carry
On, my legs do, I see no point
In letting them talk
It through, I am within no
Winsome casing, if my mind wanders
Around this airy apartment
My body does not transiently
Abide, it directs, and so I affirm
The radio waves, Otis
Redding, even the stupidity
Of traffic, give me a pane to spy
Through and I will reflect
The world in its dubious elocution
Of forms, I don't have time
To rub my own eyes or
I have forever, a natural disaster
Strikes and all the animals survive, can't you
See what I'm saying, nobody is going
To give you permission, planets will go unnamed
Woman will bathe, unprofitable
Beings will suffer terribly and smile
All the same, if God has to
Die so does jazz, all I'm asking
Is for a comely child to wrap
Its hand around one of my fingers
At the end—it will know what to do.
The Asymptotic Approaches
I woke to the laughter of a friend from
A dream of life
Caught in the balance
Between teleology
And the moment, in which spires
Were merely sideways
Horizons and so the sky
Was an infinite
Instant carelessly looming
Above our heads, this is why sexuality
Is not a reflex, the intentions
Of a cloud wait patiently to be
Coupled to the eye, which in
Touching the newspaper relates to me
Partial things, my friend
Ben tends to shake
Superfluous things from the tips
Of his fingers, this car
Things like an immaculate
Animal at the far
End of 16th Street, for
My ear has its own crass
Manner of making phantoms
Of beauty into
Familiar symbols, I say the earth
Is not unfriendly, the end is not always
Deadly, when the desert
Closes one in
Its alien
Throat and discloses
Its whispery valence the sun
Leaves his perfect
Shadows strewn like capes
Upon the dazzling
Promiscuities of America, I pictured
That on the side of bus
Bisecting Park Ave. as the song
Sang men make sense
When they prevail, I make
The bed, turn on
The light over the turtle's
Head and catch the 6
Uptown, tonight I will register
The pornographic
Constellating of smog-woozy
Stars, but here the man
Daydreams with his fading tattoos
Peeking from beneath white
Sleeves and a previous
Occupant has left a crossword
For me to complete, pen
Jabbing my thigh, my thought
Distracted by its asymptotic
Approach to reality, we are never
Quiet, never quite
Free from the hallucinations
Of meaning, the feather
In the hat of the woman is not even
The limit of her
Body and as it stirs within
The passersby, I say to myself I
Have made your body
Hurt, the weather says hope
I get the wind right
This time, Hiroyuki Doi says suppose
Every creature is a circle that exists
In this world, how many of them can I draw?
Grandpa Was A Salesman
It's the day the day
Everyone else is vacationing
At Fire Island, the gleam
In the glasses of the thin business
Man peddling Duracell AA's
From car to car, coloring the inevitable
Thrill I feel being
Surrounded by insolent creatures
Daring someone to fuck
With them on their commute to the dreary
Sonic lassitude of burned-out
Church skewering the horizon or a wall
Map gone secretly
Glue under the cramped corpse-light
Blue of an airplane bathroom
The sign of the defunct
Psychic persists, a distant foal
Stammers, stamps, and who
Is responsible for crowding the world
With such a cowardly delirium
Of thoughts, the soft focus of death
Rifling each tacky eye
Of the passersby, I am mired
In these pithy forensics
To which such contagious
Dreams gravitate, I like
To get stupid with my friends
To get nostalgic for the remote
Future that never was
In the dusky resettlement
Of chances, Ben wrote a poem
At age seven about a robot made entirely
Of panthers, yesterday I
Squeezed my bicycle past
A sleeping man meticulously
Wrapped in Mylar
Balloons, this is a study
For a larger ancestral
Portrait, this poem was actually
Purchased in Beijing in 1890
For a handful of silver
Fillings, I used to sneeze
Constantly until I had my braces
Removed, my dad
Tore his off in a practical
Response to poverty, you see grandpa
Was a salesman who drank
Half-a-dozen Coca-Colas every
Afternoon, his mother had twenty-two
Children, three sets
Of twins, many died, as did
She, before she was fifty, before
I was born and it strikes me
That every person in every passenger
Seat in every car in
Every town in every country
Is having some goddamn
Thought—this is mine.
Flouting Determinism
We eat afternoon
To bones in
A metropolis where ghosts
Are always hungry, their vivisected
Steam-plume quotations
Coddled by racket or carved
Into disappearing paper
Snowflakes against the charcoal
Doors, all these
Memories pass in
The way veins
Collapse, little bruises
Surfacing on twice
Exposed film, I do not wish
To wash the fingerprints
From my thought nor burnish
An age made rough
By understanding, I imagine the cat
Dreams of a fluttering
Hand in a lush
Leafy darkness, when I was
Twelve there was nothing
More pleasant than the startling
Ping of crab
Apples hitting hoods and here
I am disheartened
By the flat, arid music
Of Western Imperialism, its accord
Looming, the epiphanies
Gutted, but all parts are not
Pieces, the eyes close most
Often to open
Upon the diminishing
Grandeur of amputated scenes
Those that ebb only
To bare the imperative
Quality contained therein, one has
But to walk the deserted
Halls of a museum to know
How much life these portraits
Need gathered about, how much trouble
Resides in the definite
Mind when our best defense
Against terrorist attacks is to be late
To work, my love
Loves me enormous and the coincidence
Of these emotions dispels
Dogma in the same way it spells
Out a burdensome absurdity, my sister
Fears the introduction
To her book will cast a wraithlike
Pall over the remainder but
I appraise her
Of certain things:
1) all well-intentioned beginnings
2) wander in the hope
3) of flouting determinism
The wolfman weeps
Half-conscious in the unfinished
Suburban development
As here in the botanical gardens
The turtles stick their necks
Out for sun, and my god if the turtles
Stick their necks out why not we?
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