by Mark Bibbins, Editor
Today, a new poem from Sam Donsky.
Where the Wild Things Are
Saturday sounds for the Situational Sweethearts, Sunday collapses
in Renaissance Bros. The drinks are smeared off & ink is sworn off &
paved in pencil our vision is plural. Letters for pleasure
from friends in infinitude, abstracts of triumphs
on loan for display. “I love you” is falling
untrammeled like family, the words come out
& they are hard to connect. Righteously no one tries, righteously
everyone does (they’re recording now as we speak).
Shook our fists, shook our hips, it was a Dance Anthem
apocalypse, the proximal gist: Farewell; Everything Is Connected;
You Are Your Face & I Am the Mirror-Filled Air.
“I love you” is falling & we belong to the ground,
there is nothing to say but we have words on retainer:
“The plot is uncolored,” “it snaps together like snow,”
we walk into it late, a little
Indie Rock, a little tired of people,
its remains distant, its absence
the kind of genius that won’t concern you
in this millennium, welcome to it by the way
where the boys tear possible pure, where the girls
frenzy fashion from doubt, where everybody’s a gin & tonic,
everyone’s a beer with a glossaried past, & have the boys
mentioned they’re talk chicken soup, & have the girls mentioned
they’re essays first published in The Paris Review
in the spring of 1985. It’s October but the night
performs August equations, it’s “downright anecdotal!”
I imagine, New York is woozy & London is awake & my ideas
are children sweating in their sleep. When it sleeps the city dreams
of re-ending the century, of rewinding what was said about
the sweetness of crisis, of glitchy accomplishment
& food in the bed. Sex lapsing into focus. Stars lapsing into focus.
In the kitchen is magic & in the bedroom is bad data, age & its ratio
of flexible terms: 9 is for Stop wearing heart couture. 24 is for
Start wearing heart couture. 23 is for the strength
to wane, the will to feel primal / throw your hands in the air,
U2, Rihanna, Nirvana, Rolling Stones,
amen, deep in my heart, couldn’t care less, against against
against against. “I love you” is falling & the charts don’t forgive,
I’ve got sisters shaking themselves with success, I’ve got
cities shaking themselves with architecture, One-Hit Wonder’s
gonna bang the drum, No-Hit Nothing’s gonna end the Cold War.
Which is already over, congratulations: Dance Pop Class of 2000;
Mnemonic Kissing Class of 2000; Getting Into Politics,
I Mean It Class of 2000; Four Meals a Day Class of 2000;
Smoking for Looks Class of 2000; Like a Virgin Class of 2000;
Like Wild, Like Things, Like Places, Like People Class of 2000.
Like It Was Class of 2000. It’s 2009, Sing me a compliment
your memory mumbles but with time cowering still
I’ve already written it, your heart pumps my brain
with ballads of blood, “J you were the bright-ish lights,”
“K you rock like a baby,” “L your lips are a globe on the street.”
New without the novelty, exclaimed without a point:
“I love you” is falling but there’s water below,
you’re 9 you’re the King, you’re 24 you can swim,
23 exiles you, 21 crowns you Prince of Boats, by 15 there is
no memory of this at all-that’s the 20th Century for you-
we were against it from the start, we were against this one too
but now we’re for it, it asks the wrong questions but who here doesn’t,
How are you, How’s poetry, How’s X, How’s Y, even the right ones
insist on their commas, whatever happened to making a point,
or a mark, or haste, or out, you’re a pretty good idea but who here isn’t,
it’s Saturday, it’s Sunday, it’s Monday, Happy Birthday,
eat your food, it’s getting cold, we love you very, very much.
Sam Donsky’s first book of poems, Poems vs. the Volcano, is a stack of Word documents sitting somewhere on his computer. It is a collection of 100 poems-one for each movie that he has seen since graduating from college in 2007. This is the first of those to be published. Sam is currently a law student at the University of Pennsylvania.
You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.
