Squelchy Ear

I was sitting in the coffee shop and I put my finger in my ear. I could feel something in there, wax, a drop of water, moving a bit. This was uncouth, but how much decorum is left in this world anyway. Still, I should have been able to wait a few minutes until I was walking home. It, my index finger, made a satisfying squelchy noise. Of course, because it was happening deep in my own ear, the noise was loud. It was also a feeling at the same time. This was irresistible. At this point, the feeling of anonymity— not feeling— the realization that no one was looking at me was no longer reliable. I was lost— my full senses abandoned— in the squelchy pleasure. What was once like a very subtle nose picking had been replaced with a vigorous motion and a finger jammed in my ear at an awkward angle. Elbow pointed out. When I stopped, I took the shameful glance around but they all, the patrons and baristas, seemed oblivious in their own actions. Or they had looked and turned away quickly, like you might look at someone you are attracted to or something specific and revolting about a person that you want to like. 

Before I wrote that I was reading from a novel. Turgenev was describing in detail a woman’s face. I thought because I indeed had a finger in my ear that if I described a character doing that action, it should different and appropriate to that character. I wanted to try it but of course the writing became a journal entry rather than a piece of fiction. 

I did not check my finger for wax. 

No. 

Of course, I did. 

With my eyes and my opposing thumb. 

From the journals of Vika Amon. 

Poem for Jim Tolan

For a couple of years, Jim Tolan was one of the first readers of my poems. It was a particularly fruitful time for me as a poet. When I thought I was done with one of my poems or commenting on one of his, he always had more questions, more angles to explore. I’m not sure what to make of that time now. It was like a low grade fever dream in which I actually thought I was a poet doing the work, being in conversation with the long line of poets that came before. And if that sounds like hyperbole, imagine what it felt like to be living in that exaggeration. Believing it. That is what Jim could make you feel about your poems. Here is a link to one of his poems that I had the good fortune of seeing through many drafts.

Filched

He died before the pandemic. We weren’t talking much. Friendships built on poetry tend to be short, especially between relatively young poets, and by relatively young, I mean middle aged. It takes a lot of ego to think you can turn a blank page into something people would want to read or hear. Letting people read drafts really exposes that ego. Truth telling or not truth telling or telling just a little bit of truth in the service of some greater longterm goal, have to be mixed up and applied like a salve to those open cuts of ink on a page. Trading poems is a medium rife with misunderstandings and useless competition. Here’s a poem I wrote for him after his funeral in Carroll Gardens. I’m proud that I got the poem published, but maybe it is bullshit for me to make a post like this. If he were still around, he would call me on it.

Parnassus

Resolutions 2022

Resolutions include but are not limited to the following items:

More pages less screens.

Don’t get myself involved with any Cannonball Run style cross country races.

Keep an open mind on pasta shapes and styles.

Groom more.

Try pickleball.

No more humble brags on social media.

Cook more leafy greens.

Sink less into the already sunken.

Be more social.

Develop one new vice and one good habit to offset it.

Wear cutoffs when summer rolls around. I remember life being more fun when I had cutoffs.

Play more tennis.

Obtain select plus status on Amtrak.

Worry less. Sleep more!

A few years back…

A few years back I roused my rotting carcass to write some poems. I’m looking at them now because I have some time and nowhere to go.   The poem that I am posting below was published in 2015 on a website that was defunct by 2017 or so. Of course, I am grateful to have been in the journal and that the editors and readers of Here/There Poety read and liked the poem enough to choose it. The poem is definitely an artifact from before times. I can tell because it is about riding the subway, something that I haven’t done for a little over three months.

“For Smith and Ninth…”
(A service announcement on the F-line, heard approximately from 2010-2012)

Some conductors swing it,
Flattening the vowels on the heavy beat
And snapping short the consonants.
Some of them mumble
Like it’s too much to give
Their voices to all these strangers. 
The one today has got no rhythm,
Syllables held too long and given up too easily.
None of the notes hitting lucky,
Each remaining off-key in a key-less song.
In the absence of art, I think I know him.
I hear his too earnest song to women,
His stubbornness in singing it,
Until one, to his amazement,
Puts her hand on his shoulder 
And corrects with silence.
Maybe a woman like the one standing above me.
She wants to join with summer
By being alluring. 
I see her in front of morning’s mirror
Evaluating herself, using her hand to smooth
The tremors of doubt in the flat field
Between her hips. 
This is all I know
Of these strangers in a train full of strangers.
It is almost more than I can bear.

More than usual…

More than usual, I don’t know what the next thing will be. Today, I had beers with friends behind my apartment building. We sat in chairs a little more than six feet apart. It was the first time that I had spent time with anyone other than my family in over two months. I enjoyed it but the first moments were frightening. Here’s a story from before times:

https://louisville.edu/miraclemonocle/issue-14/jason-primm

Two Poems from Last Year

Here are two poems. One is a poem about disliking poetry. I think every poet must write those poems, sooner or later. It’s true on the odd days of the week I guess. And on the first day of a month. And when the joints of my body ache. Or when some stupidity plays out in front of me on the subway. And when it’s not true, I don’t spend my time talking about it.

Dodge-ball in Breakwater Review

This other poem is about trains and poetry and a junkyard.

Endings in Atticus Review