Saturday, April 27, 2013

Ethan Paquin

[polycount forum]

Bags Don’t Come Free

Saturday morning
I plan to ride my bike to Target
to buy 
front-closing bras
for post-surgical Esther 
but the fog is down —
the temperature's barely 50.

Instead, I bike to her house
where no one’s up. I unlatch
the chicken house ramp —
Say hello, chicks, to the new day —
park in the basement
& snag the key to the little car.

I drive the route I’d meant to bike
along river, ocean, harbor
via East Cliff, Murray, 7th, Brommer, 
41st.
Target's not even open
then they are, but they don’t
stock front-closing bras.

I walk through the dark mall & outside
& into Kohl's to find bras.
No one’s here. Thousands of bras.
I haven’t bought a bra
in 45 years — a nursing bra
I tried once & tossed.

No clerks in sight so I scan
rack after rack — 1500 styles of bra. 
Only three close in the front
in 38B, so I buy them
from a checker who asks me
do you need a bag? No

though I think about how
I will look walking outside
then in, through the empty mall
back to Target & out to my car
holding a beige, a black
& a salmon pink bra.

The checker calls me back
& hands me a black cloth bag
marked Kohl’s — I thought
she says, we’d given
these all away.
 She doesn't know
I pass no one

while walking my Kohl's bag
back to Target to shop 
for placemats, napkins, & a spatula.
Do you need a bag? No 
thank you. Let my housewares
share space with Esther's bras.

Ethan Paquin [The PIP Blog]
from Ethan Paquin's Cloud vs. Cloud, Ahsahta, 2013:

Kinoglaz

No matter the latitude, dearest sky,
something ill-mannered’s about you —

It might hold a staff and pace atop you
It might be rain, supreme toy and gray

It might like a tough wife be gravity’s
balling you up It might be. Just might

But down here, the bottom, I’ll get to it,
I’ll get to the bottom of you and report

back. I had no dinner tonight an attempt
at clear thought monosyllabic in ease.

I can see through you whom I know
and have never met via balloon force

but I’m coming and I’m ruminating.
Cacti in a desert aahing matins upward

Birds zesting aloft from eaves and trees
We’re all coming to find you god all of us

all of it. Storm the gate with matchsticks
we will. It will be violent when we find you.

Ars Nihil

I think we write poetry to see what a dun flower might smell like,
what a razor meticulous in its upkeep spurs in the barnyard festivus,
to see what frost feels like expanding scrotum of morning, hillocks all
smooth with cow and or goat, I think this is a wonderful life we’ve got
because we can ejaculate and erase. I think we write poetry up all night
paperweighted as we are to lilac awards, I think there is a man wandering
up a driveway in my poem to be wandering up a driveway in my poem to be
and I know where to start, with the man sawing wood and then leaving
to a hole at or of which he can’t even perceive. He just exits his workshop
and begins walking to reach my driveway’s base, then up the angle toward
me and my home white nicety yellow clapboard New England noon-timeish
famous and well-practised. I think we write poetry cuz it comes like yknow
Halloween. I think that guy is still walking I think I will SHOCK THE FUCK
OUT OF YOU WITH NEEDLESS CAPS. I think we write poetry all bummed
because an iceberg is on the way and there’s an orgy on the communication bridge
and we weren’t invited. The dun flower I think it stinks I think it just might stink.

1 comment:

  1. wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I'm walking around weeping, THE FUCK SHOCKED OUT OF ME WITH NEEDLESS CAPS for sure. Somebody get me a bag.

    ReplyDelete