I.
Boat towed past fires as they let coffins down
knout derisory mission critical figment
(Everything as evidence of [something])
as once
behind the bar
Stoli Orange Stoli Peach
warbled
in lambent
iterations
My hangman, what a honey,
wants to thank me for my service
via e-mail, as I dangle,
offers funding for a bash
And here’s Mr. Job heavyset pale
an acolyte
in puffy coat and backpack
diffusing dolor
through the subway car
w/ censer-swinging voice
MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE I’M SORRY to disturb
you can anybody help me I just got out of the hospital at 4 o’clock
pm this afternoon I had a massive seizure rushed to the ER they kept
me in the hospital 27 days everything I own was lost in the
fire so I’m in the shelter now but it’s not a safe space of course you gotta pay
for your own food & clothing and I’m very thirsty and I’m very tired and I’m very
hungry and I’m very sick but blessed to be alive believe me I don’t enjoy
having to find myself in this type of fix always count on that paycheck long as
you got your health can anybody please you’re happy to be so very fortunate
excuse me I’m so thankful
a nickel or a dime
etcetera
and how indeed
shall suffering be remastered
what makes a story of it
in Old Church Slavonic
Esperanto
Kreyol
II.
Anthropocene in freefall here’s some cool
stuff to do
Self-weld a tall bike and ride it into a carbon sink
Sing countertenor in a “complaint choir”
Sketch a pussy in a grievance meeting
Hang reflecting mirrors from the upper atmosphere
Pronounce in a voice of tragedy “I deading”
Exclaim in a dream that sounds like mortar fire
(pleas’d as punch with your savoir vivre)
I open winter cupboards polar air rushes out grit between my teeth
from walking in the wind
III.
E. Flatbush katorga once upon a time
deep in a 2-fare zone Xmas eve the hood-
shadowed faces coat-fortified as only those know how
to bundle up who hail from true warmth
“Can’t get a bus now, just wait’ll these cuts—”
resourceful, intrepid
they leak into abrupt
dollavans or gypsy cabs absorb them
gripping their hard-bought burdens
(So, where’s the sun?)
clumped in the huddled brick three-families
where there is too much furniture & prayer
(Nonetooclearwherethepainis
comingfrom
intheNewYear)
Oncearth
Once “saving” it
sowbugs & sawbones these mortals amaze
“Why can’t they just fix it
so I plug my prosthesis into the nearest USB port?”
bardo bravado
albedo zettabytes mission bye-bye
[illegible]
brothels armadas
hard-wired to go on & on
IV.
Once remember once
turning over in bed
in the gradual gleam
of a cloud-heavy day
the comforting scratch
snow shovel on concrete
beneath the cold-furred pane
once remember
once
when
again
V.
Siberia to blazes
still there’s cool stuff to do
miles north of here
in old-school Yankee wintertime
villages where
rapt icicles drool in sheaves
stout & sparkly-phallic
off
the edges of the eaves
A perfect blue and white day,
margins of the world smoothed by snow. Sun spooling
liquid already adheres to the darkening spine of mountains
at 4:15 p.m., its last hurrah a shout of energy bounced fiery off windows
high on a frozen hill. On the way to this sinking moment, I found a low white bank that
made a brilliant screen for the shadow-projections of tree trunks—maybe birch, more
likely alder—growing along the ditch. As I followed the unpaved road, well sanded over
the ice ruts, the sun low on my right cast my lumpy human shadow into the twiggy mix.
I kept stepping lively, delightedly observing my small flattened self moving through
the shadow-forest.
VI.
Boat towed past fires as they let coffins down
Everything as evidence of nothing
(She foresees “nano” drones the size of hummingbirds
able to pursue targets into homes)
once
still
notyet
nomore
I say
unto
whom
So here’s my Siberia of shaggy winter horse shapes recumbent on frozen upland, shockingly loud
and vulgar donkey bray, slow-mo caravan of snowmobile headlamps in a dusk field. The Rich &
Hollister graveyard up on the ridge, sugar loaf topping on old granite headstones. Miles and
miles of back roads where you rarely meet a car—then sudden town, with its irrational dearth of
sidewalks, the main drag a dangerous two-lane highway squeezing decaying clapboard up
against the nervous little river. I pass a young woman cradling a purse, her face turned
deliberately toward the stream of traffic. I’d say hello if she’d give the slightest sign of
acknowledging my presence in the landscape. She hobbles over the ice ruts, her feet in thin
pumps, and I wonder does she resent the degradation of going on foot in a land where
everybody drives. A quiver of frozen daggers points at a grimy snowdrift, jazzing up the squalor
of houses in disrepair, porches cantilevered over low tricky waters. Dodging commercial
truckers barely slowing to make the curve, I spy asbestos siding sullied to waist height with bits
of frosty filth deposited there by a winter’s worth of wheels in such an awful American hurry.
Barbed cups anointed ship awry
& later still
this latest of late advice
be patient with the body
Note: Katorga: Russian term for the Tsarist system of penal servitude in Siberian labor camps.
Jan Clausen’s eleven books include novels, a memoir, and five poetry collections. Veiled Spill: A Sequence is forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky Press in 2014. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and NYFA, she teaches creative writing at Goddard College and New York University.