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and something eventually

  will. all I can say is that

  today

  I have just inserted a new

  typewriter ribbon

  into this old machine

  and I am pleased with the way it

  works and that makes for more than just an

  ordinary day, thank

  you.

  residue

  there’s an old movie

  based on a Hemingway short story

  I saw the beginning of it

  again on late night /

  early morning tv

  but the fellow who plays

  Hem

  his ears aren’t right

  neither are

  his chin

  his hair

  his voice;

  and there’s this lovely

  wench

  in the film

  with perfect buns

  whose role it is to

  endure his precious

  literary abuse

  while he slowly dies in the

  African jungle.

  I click the movie off.

  of course, I never met

  Hemingway.

  maybe he was like that fellow.

  I hope

  not.

  then I look about my bedroom and

  think, Jesus Jesus,

  why am I so upset by this

  lousy tv movie?

  what did I want them to make him

  look like?

  act like?

  he was just a journalist from

  Michigan who liked to shoot

  big game

  and his last kill was his

  biggest;

  surely he would have deserved the

  nice buns

  and the adoring eyes

  of that actress who

  he never saw and

  who

  in real life

  later

  drank herself to

  death.

  (the actor

  who plays Hem

  in the film is

  still around

  however

  but barely

  functioning.)

  I guess when I look at that

  movie

  all I can think of to say

  is:

  bwana, bring me a

  drink.

  Coronado Street: 1954

  listen, I been in the navy and I never heard cussing like you and

  your girlfriend, man, and it lasts all night, every night.

  we got religious people here, children, decent working folk, you’re

  keeping them awake every night and look at this place! everything’s

  broken, when I evict you you’ve got to pay to replace everything, buddy!

  what do you mean, you don’t have no fucking money?

  what do you buy all that booze with?

  credit?

  don’t give me that!

  listen, I want it so quiet in here tonight we’ll be able to hear the

  church mice pray!

  what’s that?

  well, up yours too, buddy!

  and you wanna know what?

  I saw your old lady sucking some guy’s banana in the alley!

  you don’t give a damn?

  what do you give a damn about?

  nothing?

  what kind of shit is that, nothing!

  did you get a lobotomy somewhere along the way?

  I got a good mind to wipe up the floor with you!

  you say I’m the one with a lobotomy?

  hey, don’t go closing the door on me, pal!

  I own this fucking place!

  OPEN UP, BUDDY! I’M COMING IN!

  WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?

  HEY, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?

  a vision

  we are in the clubhouse

  3rd race, 83 degrees in June,

  they have just sent in a 40-to-1 shot

  in a maiden race,

  the tote has clicked 3 or 4 times,

  the old general feeling of futility

  has arrived early

  and then a girl walks by

  to the window to make a bet

  her skirt is slit

  almost to the waist

  and as she walks

  this

  most beautiful leg

  is exposed

  it sneaks out as she walks

  flashes and vanishes.

  every male in the clubhouse

  watches that leg.

  the girl is with a woman

  who looks like her mother

  and her mother keeps close

  to the side of the skirt

  that is slit,

  trying to block our view.

  the girl makes her bet

  turns and now the leg is on

  the other side

  along with her mother.

  the girl disappears down an

  aisle to her seat

  as all around us

  there is a rising,

  silent applause.

  then the applause stops

  and like forsaken children

  we go back to our

  Racing Forms.

  cut-rate drugstore: 4:30 p.m.

  this woman at the counter ahead of me

  was buying four pairs of panties:

  yellow, pink, blue and orange.

  the lady at the register kept picking up

  the panties and

  counting them:

  one, two, three, four.

  then she counted them again:

  one, two, three, four.

  will there be anything else?

  she asked the lady who was buying the

  panties.

  no, that’s it, she answered.

  no cigarettes or anything?

  no, that’s it.

  the woman at the register

  rang up the sale

  collected the money

  gave change

  looked off into the distance

  for a bit

  and then she bent under the counter

  and got a bag

  and put the panties in this bag

  one at a time—

  first the blue pair, then the yellow,

  then the orange, then the pink.

  she looked at me next:

  how are you doing today?

  fair, I said.

  is there anything else?

  cigarettes?

  all I want is what you see in front of

  you.

  I had hemorrhoid ointment

  laxatives

  and a box of paper clips.

  she rang it up, took my money, made

  change, bagged my things, handed them

  to me.

  have a nice day, she did not say.

  and you too,

  I said.

  you can’t tell a turkey by its feathers

  son, my father said, if you only had some

  ambition! you have no

  get up and go! no

  drive!

  it’s hard for me to believe that you are really

  my son.

  yeah, I

  said.

  I mean, he went on, how are you going to

  make it?

  your mother is worried sick and the neighbors

  think you’re some kind of

  imbecile.

  what are you going to

  do?

  we can’t take care of you all your

  life!

  I’m 15 now, I told him, I won’t be around

  much longer.

  but look at you, you just sit around in your room

  all day! other

  boys have jobs, paper routes, Jim Stover works

  as an usher at the

  Bayou!

  HOW IN THE HEL
L ARE YOU GOING TO

  SURVIVE IN THIS

  WORLD?

  I don’t

  know …

  you make me SICK! sometimes, having a son like

  you, I wish I was

  dead.

  well, he did die, he died more than 30 years

  ago.

  and last year I paid

  $59,000 income

  tax.

  too early!

  there are some people who will

  phone a man at 7 a.m.

  when he is desperately sick and

  hungover.

  I always greet

  these idiots

  with a few violent

  words

  and the slamming

  down of the

  receiver

  knowing that their

  morning eagerness

  means that

  they retired early

  and thus wasted the

  preceding

  night

  (and most likely

  the preceding days, weeks and

  years).

  that they could

  imagine

  that

  I’d want to

  converse with

  them

  at 7 a.m.

  is an insult

  to

  whatever

  intelligent life

  is left

  in our dwindling

  universe.

  the green Cadillac

  he hung the green Cadillac

  almost straight up and down

  standing on its nose

  against the phone pole

  next to the

  All-American Hamburger

  Hut.

  I was

  in the laundromat

  with my girlfriend when

  we heard the sound of it.

  when we got there

  the driver had

  dropped out of the car

  and run off.

  and there was the

  green Caddy

  standing straight

  up and down

  against

  the phone pole.

  it was one of the most

  magnificent sights

  I had seen

  in years:

  in the 9 p.m. moonlight

  it just stood there—

  the people gathered

  the people stood back

  knowing the Caddy

  could come crashing down

  at any moment

  but it didn’t

  it just stood there

  straight as an arrow

  alongside

  the phone pole.

  how the hell

  they were going to get

  that down

  without wrecking it

  was beyond me.

  my girlfriend wanted to

  wait and see how

  they did it

  but we hadn’t

  had dinner

  yet

  and I

  talked her into

  going back into the

  laundromat and then

  back to my place.

  I was not

  mechanically inclined

  and it pissed

  me off

  to watch people

  who were.

  anyhow

  about noon

  the next day

  when I went out to

  buy a newspaper

  the green Caddy

  was gone.

  there was just

  an old bum

  at the counter

  in the All-American

  having a coffee

  but I had already seen

  the real miracle

  and I

  walked back to

  my place

  satisfied.

  I’m not all-knowing but …

  one of the problems is

  that when most people

  sit down to write a poem

  they think,

  “now I am going to write a

  poem”

  and then

  they go on to write a poem

  that

  sounds like a poem

  or what they think

  a poem should sound like.

  this is one of their

  problems.

  of course, there are other

  problems:

  those writers of poems

  that sound like poems

  think that they then must

  go around

  reading them

  to other people.

  this, they say, is done

  for status and recognition

  (they are careful

  not to mention

  vanity

  or the need for

  instantaneous

  approbation

  from some

  sparse, addled

  crowd).

  the best poems

  it seems to me

  are written out of

  an ultimate

  need.

  and once the poem is

  written,

  the only need

  after that

  is to write

  another.

  and the silence

  of the printed page

  is the

  best response

  to a finished

  work.

  in decades past

  I once warned

  some poet-friends

  of mine

  about the masturbatory

  nature of poetry readings

  done just

  for the applause of

  a handful of

  idiots.

  “isolate yourself and

  do your work and if you

  must mix, then do it

  with those who

  have no interest at all

  in what you consider

  so

  important.”

  such anger,

  such a self-righteous

  response

  did I receive then

  from my poet-friends

  that it seemed to me

  that I had exactly

  proved my

  point.

  after that,

  we all drifted

  apart.

  and that solved just

  one of my

  problems

  and I suppose

  just one of

  theirs.

  in the clubhouse

  he is behind me,

  talking to somebody:

  “well, I like the 5 horse, he closed well last

  time, I like a horse who can close.

  but you know, you gotta kinda consider

  the 4 and the 12.

  the 4 needed his last race and look at

  him, he’s reading 40-to-1 now.

  the 12’s got a chance too.

  and look at the 9, he looks really good,

  really got a shine to his skin.

  then too, you also gotta consider the 7 …”

  every now and then I consider murdering

  somebody, it just flashes in my mind for a

  moment, then I dismiss it and rightfully

  so.

  I considered murdering the man who

  belonged to the voice I heard,

  then I worked on dismissing the thought.

  and to make sure, I changed my seat,

  I moved far down to my left,

  I found a seat between a woman wearing a

  sun shade and a young man violently

  chewing on a mouthful of

  gum.

  then I felt

  better.

  a famished orphan sits somewhere in the mind

  a heavyweight fighter cal
led Young Stribling

  was killed in the ring

  so long ago

  that I am certain

  that I am the only one remembering him

  tonight.

  I am thinking of nobody else.

  I sit here in this room and stare at the

  lamp

  and I think,

  Stribling, Stribling.

  outside

  the starved palms continue to

  decay

  while in here

  I remember and

  watch a cigarette lighter,

  an empty glass and a

  wristwatch propped delicately on its

  side.

  Stribling.

  son-of-a-bitch,

  what causes me to think

  about things like this?

  I really don’t need to know,

  yet I wonder.

  form letter

  dear sir:

  thank you for your manuscript

  but this is to inform you

  that I have no special influence

  with any editor or publisher

  and if I did

  I would never dream of telling

  them who or what

  to publish.

  I myself have never mailed any

  of my work to anybody but

  an editor or a publisher.

  despite the fact that

  my own work

  was rejected for

  decades,

  I still never considered

  mailing my work to

  another writer

  hoping that this other

  writer might help me

  get published.

  and although I have

  read some of what you

  have mailed me

  I return the work without

  comment

  except to ask

  how did you get my

  address?

  and the effrontery

  to mail me such

  obvious

  crap?

  if you think me unkind,

  fine.

  and thank you for telling

  me that I am a

  great writer.