Upon Reading Norman Dubie I Feel Compelled to Write to Sam Pereira
My wife hates landscapes & long books.
I imagine her rewritten as a dark-eyed junco
In the snow under the shadow of a large spruce,
Her wing extended harbouring a solitary fledgeling,
Which is unusual, thin legs of weeds & grass dangle
From the point of her exquisite & delicate beak.
In 1988, NYC is blue
& orange & yellow & dead at dusk.
A red-winged blackbird screams in the face
Of a bloated man in an Armani suit
Who just puked all over the sidewalk.
Cardboard boxes melt in the rain
& dealers use the soused remains
For shelter in Washington Square Park.
Sam, I knew a Portuguese kid w a red birthmark
That covered half his face, he was left-handed,
Uncoordinated & had to fight practically every day
Because of the blemish. His father was a janitor
Not a doctor like he told us & his mother was made
Of porcelain. Her brother was the poet Arthur Smith
& she would emerge from the dark corridors
Of their austere & sterile home wrapped in terry-cloth
& sit with her hands raised in a hello or a goodbye
To let her newly painted acrylics dry & stare
At the low coffee table, where atop wrinkled stacks
Of Vogue, sat a pristine, unread, signed copy of
Elegy on Independence Day.
In 1988, Fresno, Ca is bone-white:
A girl named Chelsea, a replica of Andy Warhol,
Sits in the last row of Dwayne Rail’s
Poetry workshop sniffing ditto-sheets.
She is the only poet in the room
Aside from Rail who teaches three things:
Punctuality is over-rated, the french inhale
& the existence of existential despair is real.
How can you not shoot dope
In the face of those stares at Mr. Chows
Knowing NYC cops are outside with bats & guns
Drawn crudely over a mangled Michael Stewart?
Inside M’s duck turns gray on the plate;
Wherever you go you don’t want to be there.
Sam, your forays into eastern cuisine
Are a nice addendum to your daily verse.
Marinaded squares of tofu; ribbed seitan,
Faux duck, eggplant & carmelized onions in a wok.
Sam, how long since you smoked a camel,
Burned an all-nighter or roasted your noodle
The way we were taught to in The Valley?
My wife likes bok-choy & steamed kale,
Movies shot in the dark,
Stories where the only thing that happens
Are lives slowly unraveling,
Loss after loss in the low light
The protagonist slowly giving in
One orange drink at a time & fucking
Over that one true friend:
The insoluble Harper Lee
She’s watched, I know, Capote
At least sixty-three times.
My wife never lost a fist-fight
At Johnny’s Tavern in Boonton, NJ
Where the cops were just down there
At the end of the bar waiting for somebody
They didn’t like to leave.
I like to imagine her pouring a full beer
Over the head of some loud-mouth
Right before delivering a lethal elbow
To the face, then looking around the room
As it clears out to see who else is in need
Of punishment, who else has strayed
From the path of decency & kindness.
As an end to mass mindlessness
& mediocre art, how about a pie in the face?
Godard in the chow line in NYC.
Jean-Michel outside the gates of St. Anne’s.
Andy Warhol at the head of the table
At Edie Sedgwick’s place
The massive polaroid obscuring his pock-marks
& The flash illuminating the mirrored irises
Of the lost who have missed the amuse-bouche
Blowing lines in the John.
Sam, what good is an education
In the wee hours of the morning
When you are busy speaking to the wind?
Carving out verse after verse into the maw of ether.
SAMO would dig the copyright symbol
You place at the end to signify what’s yours.
After all, you earned it.
Sam, I think one has to be a wolf
To run with & eradicate wolves.
It’s in the running we recognize
We are the prey.
The straggler or the lost soul.
It’s in the tearing of the flesh of the weak
We realize we are the weak.
You can stay for dinner in the banquet hall
Only for so long Sam…
But the common folk need you to leave.
Sam, I like to imagine my wife
As a luna wolf in the forest
Under the white moon always changing
Always waxing & waning
Using her broad & coarse tongue
To remove the blood from the matted fur
Of her solitary cub.