1
Rag wings stitched with an F flat stolen from Ma Rainey's throat:
in her throat it'd gotten by on desire, it'd lived
a poppy's meet me at the Casbah life;
but in the time before time was they were happier maybe, a
black tux, an ivory satin gown (that sort of smile
that's an unrelenting lunule glaring amongst the
crystal candlesticks, that sort of rigorous mouth like a
black tie, Mary Egypt remembers these things
inhabiting movies) until a diamond stylus inured to
tunes wounding the body sewed their tatters to the
scapular muscles;
but once patched together they were disreputable as that
poppy, as problematically smoky, & when they
shuddered it was because they remembered fezzes
congesting the speakeasies, Stutz Bearcats,
Humphrey Bogart, someone whispering huskily take
a message to Garcia, & minarets there in the menstrual
twilight announcing God's absence through the
palms;
& this photograph seemed as fraught with inside dope as the
orange Ford taxi cab that just now sloughs toward
Mary Egypt who's loitering dissonantly on the corner
blowing soap bubbles;
for lack of kisses she blows them between the needle-like
bodies of fish that purl past threading & knotting
through her wings C sharps, typewriter ribbons,
attenuated spit like strings of pinprick white lights
snarled in the cycadeoids;
(Johnny had observed the phenomenon often enough in that
Jurassic edifice where he slumped in the most
visceral red chair while he thought about gulping
lagers amongst humongous fern fronds;
(& they called that joint the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it
hadn't stopped raining there for over 10,000 years—
however they never lacked for insects there, the
insects showing traits of gigantism & a taste for
Stravinsky's most violent strains, they were violins
pitched sharp as if whipped); then
the fish they get euphoric on her & Mary Egypt can't take it
any more, these mouths gulping hunger, spewing
bubbles, & the bubbles actually molten charm
bracelets the fish disgorged— because it is almost
that time;
& the taxi floats past taking on water & churns past water
snakes where they thread through the scuttled
dressmaker's dummy's wire pelvis & past these
hirsute lilypads while it honks dahlias, Storyville
Blues, & a sewing machine in ecstasy;
but mostly it sounds like the mynah bird cracking wise at the
Greek's deli: above the bouzouki's vibrato it cracks
aphorisms regarding the beautiful & the eternity of
love, it sounds like the old guy cracking beer bottles
with a pop & a rasp;
it's several weeks after midnight, in other words, almost
that time, & Johnny lounges in the blue Tiparillo
smoke— as if everyone's lips were evaporating— &
he's dissolved a priori, he's gray eyes afloat between
the brim of a brown fedora & the collar of a
trenchcoat;
& the trenchcoat slumps frazzled & wrinkled & without
ethics, without honor, without a thought for the wide
world's spasmodic splendor;
the world wasn't wide but deep;
& here comes the taxi to take Mary Egypt out...
2
& o yes it takes her out because the wings don't work;
& just then the town seemed more than ever like a Mesozoic
morass, its restaurants all reeking catfish, & decaying
Da Vinci landscapes loomed— it was frightening
how they loomed! you could hear the cabbie remark
on the rocks, how they looked like ears & there Mary
Egypt sits timeless amongst the rocks & looking for a
kiss;
& Johnny feels like an aficionado gulping espresso from a
dirty cup— as if he actually had a face, not
something ersatz sutured;
how many stitches had he taken? how many chances had he
missed? how many windows had his fist shattered
allowing the shadows to rush in, back then when
movies first created night— & he liked to hiss these
scars on my back are Trilobites okay they needed
someplace to sleep it off;
he didn't mean much by it, just ossification & night terrors
like this 3-D screen distending, its wings thrashing
faces watery, wings like an extinct bird's— which is
mostly what he feels like paying the tab with a fin—
& like venetian blinds creaking exhausted from
witnessing sheer lust that often amongst the ashtrays
inside the reptilian buildings— until his whole
existence reeked gingkoes— then he arrives;
how would they be troubled by this beauty into which the soul
with all its maladies has passed? the cabbie asks, though not
in those words exactly, he actually says So do you like
baseball or Stormy Weather, the latter phrased in a
different key & as a question, the way it'd sound
through a pawnshop trumpet;
& Mary Egypt thinks I've got the answer: I am rag wings (the
fabric was 60% a piano's black keys melted down, it
was 40% a movie poster for Casablanca scissored into
a collage;
& they called that jazz;
& Mary Egypt arrives;
3
& this moviehouse half-sunk in the swamp: it was a castle a
tractor hauled in from the late show's Carpathian
tor— it looked that much like a pyorrhetic mouth, it
looked that much like a face turned to stone from
staring at sleep's face— which Johnny knows
something about, as he knows something about what
evil lurks in the hearts of men;
where there is water everywhere usually, or bruised black
motor oil, & a lightbulb dripping hopeless water
which somehow reminds Johnny of a cock getting
wrung-out semi-tumescent in an Exxon station's john
in the absence of beautiful gorgons' mouths;
they were such embittered tidal pools! what did they care
about the Jersey Turnpike's stupendous
petrochemical tanks on stilts or the fishscales
showering everywhere, & Mary walking in asked
Who turned out the lights?
because it seemed more or less insubstantial to her, this
darkness complicated with pupae & recluse spiders
& the echoes of a Django Reinhardt improvisation
trembling near the soda fountain;
not to mention the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the
mysticism of the middle ages with its spiritual
ambition & imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan
world & so forth;
not to mention Johnny envisioning silver light & silhouettes
trying to break free of it— he knows how they feel,
one supposes, because he knows more about
vanishing & suffering & suffering & vanishing &
crawling amongst the bivalves & starfish & salt water
taffy wrappers, crawling through water which seems
strangely dead as well as infiltrated with shadows &
flashes;
it went something like that;
because the movie screen looked like it had a lot on its almost
inert mind besides inertia, besides this mayfly hatch
the projector aimed at, it was a bus mired past the
hubcaps in quicksand & who knew if anything could
ever move again?
The Shadow knows...
4
Nothingness;
& Johnny thought I've got it made— as if the Spanish moss
dangling like so many shrunken heads could give a
damn &
the theater yacked bacteria & electrodes & appendages with a
life of their own: for example thighs, for example ring
fingers— meanwhile
Mary Egypt rose so strangely beside the waters—
as if this were the instant she reached inside herself;
as if this were the instant the movie started to roll out the
silence without any cigarettes, without any
matchbooks;
which isn't silence at all but a phone off the hook spewing
insects;
actually it was pterodactyls & a scream shorn from the body:
for all the world it sounded like Fay Wray's except it
shimmered with tarantellas & luna moths
& they called that jazz
which was the silence Johnny heard like a saxophone's
exhaust pipe— it sounded like hearts convulsing in
surgically-opened chests— meanwhile
he slumped amongst the theater's emphysemic lungs— they
gurgled: hours hours hours ensemble like an
aquarium— it only sounded like horror of horrors;
they had their vestigial gills now they wanted wings— their
talons were cooked lobster claws grappling with
whatever floated past belly-up;
because they lived off hearts & not much else except off
various Jack Teagarden riffs & off unmentionables;
& what could you do with these old fuckers? the next thing
you know they're waterbugs the hotel's sink spit up
as it gasped: loss loss loss— it only sounded
sometimes like Eros;
& whatever else Mary Egypt couldn't get off her mind from
the wax museum— for instance, dolls' knuckles
glued to the backs of their hands as if they gnawed
blue veins— & all she can think is one last kiss
5
because a kiss is just a kiss, despite the fact someone's mouth
bursts into Japanese Beetles, bowties, & carbonation
broadcasting My Funny Valentine through yellow
candlelight amongst the tuxes & gowns, & the
candles are after all poppies with immemorial
recollections;
once upon a time, before time was, they were perhaps
happier, but there's no guarantee of that amongst the
melting blues platters & the belemnites squirting ink
until the entire theater's blotto;
so they step outside into this effusion of music like Green
Dolphin Street down which taxis drift through a
detritus of photographs, crumpled cigarette packs
like someone's notion of crushed gardenias & a
detective novel dredged from the swamp dripping
volvox, oscillatoria, chlorella, & hyacinths, & the
flukes & leeches are inching between the pages;
which summarizes the movie's plot— so who can blame her
if her eyelids are a little weary? because all this has
been to her but as the sound of lyres & flutes & an
entire bandstand jammed with sewing machines
whining mechanical yens & a theater full of caged
mynah birds cawing beauty wrought out from within
upon the flesh;
but Mary Egypt remains unflappable;
but she is thinking about veils, how they spread out across all
space for instance like cobwebs or the negative image
of a jazz platter bodiless hands push under the Singer
Stitch-o-matic's needle & all they wanted to be were
wings composed from memories of Ingrid Bergman
beside a piano;
though the platters were in fact melting, black vinyl melting
into shadows which were not her wings, were
distended dismembered bodies like Johnny's which
is everywhere & nowhere— along the walls, across
the sidewalk, some residue seeping along the
theater's floor until you can't help but think about
lips dribbling musical notes which are really black
dahlias he wants to stitch into his trenchcoat— as if
that could help;
as if that could change the fact that the insects are crawling
for the most part in a dark room amongst the sounds
of plumbing & gulping & the screams of an
archaeopteryx ripping up the curtains— there where
he marks time while itching for some Duke Ellington
cross-hands passenger train solo to shanghai him out
of this lagoon—
where the one is becoming the many &
his face, like something he's known for far too long— for
instance, fossil Paleozoic dragonflies with 30-inch
wingspans enmeshed in fossil cobwebs— when this
unravels;
So what if his face is a spider web thought Mary Egypt, & her
hand crept off by itself to look for big bloody lips
which were not his;
(a diamond stylus hemming the grooves
(retrograde into Ma Rainey's throat
at which point she's flying.
Jack Hayes
© 1990-2010
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4 comments:
My favorite thing here is the the scuttled dressmaker's dummy's wire pelvis!
(and I have a thing for typewriter ribbons)
Hi Willow: Wow--you're intrepid! Thanks for giving this a read.
Bits and pieces I love:
a diamond stylus inured to
tunes wounding the body
scapular muscles
remembered fezzes
congesting the speakeasies
menstrual
twilight
sounds like the old guy cracking beer bottles
Johnny lounges in the blue Tiparillo
smoke
Johnny's entrance changes the whole tone. That's for sure.
Stopping there because I want to enjoy this when I have it in my hands (and that may be as soon as today). That's not to say I won't want to read this blog anymore—of course I will, but this one needs to be devoured up close, not as I strain my bleary eyes in front of the laptop screen.
Kat
Hi Kat: Geez, thanks--I can completely understand wanting to read this one on a page, not on a screen--it's long (longest poem in the book, btw--there was another long one that got cut just before publication). & don't worry--I know you're a good blog friend! I also realized that publishing the poems in book form before they were all posted might have an impact on the blog, but I see them as two separate entities with different purposes! Love to think of you having the book.
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