Here’s something: a first
whir, the next step…a fewfeats more. I’ve “already”
retched…reached, I mean;taken the jump so to speak.
It seems right. And sothe so-called story as it exists
in the so-called here-and-now.•
That to mount his defence Sidney should with one hand palm like a little oiled apple
the pommel, so to speak, of one of Pugliano’s stabled stallions (besaddled “I knowe not
by what miſchance”) while with the other (polite nod, heel-of-hand-to-face, downswept-doff-like-wave) announce himself logician first (“peece of a Logician”—crumb enough
of one, syllogists being a sort of dry biscuit, to’ve resisted the temptation to wish himself
a palomino or Percheron, the captivating flame of Iohn Pietro’s equine ardors aside:the tear-stained hay bale homilies (…and whilst lifting to the lips of my beloved Lippizaner
an infusion of honey and essence of orange blossom in a little silver finger bowl once
owned,
as it chanced to happen, by her ladyship, the Duchess of Malfi…), the vivid troughsidesermons (…with but a tin of custard and these two tiny castanets, in a little alley behind
a public stables near the docks of Swansea, I once soothed a skittish Andalusian, bless
her dear sweet delicate soul; she belonging to the captain of a Spanish schooner (la belleof the lot!) I’d met that afternoon over a game of draughts in a booth at the back of The
Poop
& Rudder…), the tender tack room recitatives (…and now, if I may, my first eyeful
of an unbloused bosom, that of my boyhood milkmaid Genevieve gigglingly bent to groomthe foreleg of a big bay mare (or was she a chestnut?) with a Grecian loofa and mohair
brush, grandfather seated before her on a little wicker chair grinning ear-to-tufted-ear;
I having one rainy summer Sunday by chance chased from the barnyard into the stablesa pair of fatted hens only to behold there the pater of our familias (humming all the while
an old sea shanty of which he’d always been fond) extract through his undone fly the
entire
pink mass of his privates, select the chief part, and in full view of that poor unknowinganimal start to rub his glossy shaft like Aladdin his magic lamp (soon abetted, no less,
by our befreckled milkmaid! the little German hands of whom had, like the gentle jiggle
of her name itself, worked their rhythmical magic on every udder in the barn, a simplefact the sobering significance of which I fully grasped (Gesundheit!) in a sudden flash
a decade hence, upon falling to the floor of a brothel in Hoofddorp, overcome by madam’s
house specialty: with one hand “the fist of ecstasy,” with the second “the fist of bliss,”a nifty twist the like of which is seldom met with, I can assure you), the scene then ending
with a snort (grandpapa? horse?) and two laughs (mine of disbelief, Ginny’s whinny-
like titter, of surprise), the one, as luck would have it, in chorus with the other, and so,gift of that timely eclipse, I remained undiscovered (hidden away between a forsaken
horse blanket and overturned handbarrow) and with me the secret shame of my own
unsaintliness: how my innocence was lost that day, taken by my own hand, as it were,atop a pile of hay; stirred by the leathern frankincense-like fragrance of bridles,
nosebands,
browbands, saddle pads…provoked by the sight of throatlatches, breastplates, halters,
whips, crops, girths…inflamed by the calambac-like perfumery of dry straw, turnip tops,fresh dung, horse sweat; “…the ill-effects of an unfortunate fall…” (per mother (stage left)
atop a taboret to assembled servants in the hall, she being but the height of an ornamental
hedge of holly) summoned, as it so happens, my dear nonno that very noon to eternal rest;
The wisest men do not lose their
jest even in the hour
of death, so let us be merry.
For here lieth Lorenzo beside
his beloved junipers, done unto
his end from excess joy.
his pale, dimpled, plump-faced playmate (an orphan from…Strasbourg, if memory
serves) I saw again only once, softly singing to herself at a little table beneath the kitchen
window one morning wearing only slippers and a bonnet arranging poppies in a vase,whom soon after which was sent to a distant cousin’s country estate (near Padua? Pisa?
Parma? somewhere beside the banks of the Po deep in green Piedmont? no matter)
where she disappeared one winter whilst crossing a frozen pond to deliver a basket of eggsto a neighboring farm, departing behind a clump of rushes into a cold but colorful coda
by way of an angler’s innocently un-marked hole in the ice…), the enthralling little patties
of horsy hyperbole placidly pinched off atop a pinto or painted pony while roamingshamrocked pastures, little green paddocks, long country lanes (…how now! to tame
an Appaloosa with a tambourine is but the work of a wet nurse…), the somber soliloquies
delivered in the midst of calming a finicky filly, fawning over a colicky colt (…to “marble”at one’s misfortune, as if to pulp oneself into the endpapers of a bad book, may we presume
to know better…) or hissed through a split lip (…for surely this is but love or friendship,
or merely a ray of sun that gleams in the eye of this beast…) while fending off (…not ill willfor me…) with a horsewhip (Fermo!) and suddenly headless hayrake (Attento!) the wild-
eyed kick (Ecco!) of a foaming Arabian), poet second (“my vnelected vocation”), so too
I’ve “ſlipt” (whoops): having “this”—say, bamboo bookmark, fauxly kanji’d to boot, ironweathervane in the shape of a pair of napping loons, split muskmelon, lettuce leavings,
moldy bolt of muslin, chisel-and-wooden-mallet’s phit-phit-phit, little blue dish of caraway
pips—as much a delphinium or daisy or aster or asphodel its turning-toward-sunness.•
Like this, and I would put up not down—not
because of tempo, because of sound—a map
of my own movement: from a simple journey
a few stone’s throws away to what shapely
manifold of dovetailed doublings and wrinkled
rabbets, dadoes, mortises and miters I fantasize
the so-called trek might knit me into if only it would.
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones