510 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
510 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
inter\face 5
|
|
summer 1993
|
|
|
|
contributors:
|
|
(in random order)
|
|
Susan Bertot
|
|
Emily R. Novack
|
|
John Malboeuf
|
|
Ron MacLean
|
|
David Connolley
|
|
Nancy Dunlop
|
|
Michael Rae
|
|
Katie Yates
|
|
Benjamin H. Henry
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
inter\face is.
|
|
|
|
===========================================================================
|
|
|
|
inter\face 5 is published at the University of Albany, State University of
|
|
New York, down in the basement of the Humanities building. If you would
|
|
like any information, to contribute, or have any comments, e-mail to
|
|
bh4781@rachel.albany.edu.
|
|
|
|
===========================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
Benjamin H. Henry
|
|
|
|
Aram Aram
|
|
|
|
Aram Aram big-u-ity
|
|
wise -o- wizened
|
|
ample morph, sit you on
|
|
meta morph - for
|
|
silly frightened : tetra town
|
|
building blocks
|
|
a no mo in men si ty
|
|
am probable
|
|
invincible
|
|
about a ble
|
|
in tense
|
|
too.
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Spring '93 Collage
|
|
|
|
1. An invisible man peers in,
|
|
offers his hand to shake, throttle, or excelerate to paced speeds,
|
|
raceway along city streets with postcard visions,
|
|
a woman with long hair smiling.
|
|
|
|
2. My motor failed exhaustive tests,
|
|
emissions blurted out; the priest says,
|
|
holding a subscription,
|
|
at the stairs of the empire state building,
|
|
clutching a plastic model,
|
|
an exact duplicate in structure
|
|
|
|
or taking elevators, their sliding doors
|
|
shutting, but the soft bumper and the button,
|
|
being pushed from some distant point...
|
|
|
|
3. I immediately failed to notice that
|
|
screeching sound, a horrible sensation,
|
|
a plenty of thirst, succumbing, ending.
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
|
July 18, 1993
|
|
|
|
And, today, if you must know,
|
|
I am tread:
|
|
Tracks behind wheels,
|
|
behind a cylinder rolling down
|
|
an inclined plane --
|
|
I am a simple geometric figure,
|
|
drawn to perceive three dimensions
|
|
on flat paper --
|
|
I am fixed in movement and time.
|
|
|
|
|
|
==========================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
Susan Bertot
|
|
|
|
The Eucharist
|
|
|
|
I.
|
|
|
|
I am saved!
|
|
I am God
|
|
We are one
|
|
the blood I have drank
|
|
the wine flows within my veins
|
|
Drowning me in a sea of fumes
|
|
|
|
II.
|
|
|
|
Cannibalism's holy
|
|
Flesh tastes like bread
|
|
Toast would be nice
|
|
Red Blood toast
|
|
Where's the butter?
|
|
I want my country's cock
|
|
Blood is thick
|
|
I'd really like a cherry
|
|
coke
|
|
Get me one human
|
|
God gets hungry too.
|
|
|
|
===========================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
Emily R. Novack
|
|
|
|
Reena
|
|
|
|
now through recurrence
|
|
now through the long thin
|
|
hands
|
|
i
|
|
within
|
|
|
|
seizures
|
|
|
|
one woman I knew
|
|
raped, found behind
|
|
a store unconscious,
|
|
the water from the rafter dripping
|
|
long lines into
|
|
her face
|
|
|
|
twenty three years old
|
|
coat covering up where
|
|
the skin shows
|
|
said she saw
|
|
the running water
|
|
the
|
|
swallowing whole
|
|
the
|
|
swallowing
|
|
of her image
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
|
Towards
|
|
|
|
you tell me
|
|
for years
|
|
I've longed for mountains
|
|
|
|
for the feeling
|
|
of rising
|
|
|
|
the flat land
|
|
agitated
|
|
by
|
|
wild
|
|
occurrence
|
|
and the smell
|
|
of dried flowers
|
|
|
|
your pale hands
|
|
reach for copper
|
|
crosses
|
|
loose on blankets
|
|
|
|
we've circled
|
|
these years-
|
|
a drawing open
|
|
of living things
|
|
and wounds
|
|
the smoke was clawing
|
|
from air
|
|
into air
|
|
and breaking
|
|
and
|
|
i said I've
|
|
lived like this
|
|
for so long now
|
|
|
|
the injury accumulating
|
|
a long
|
|
throat
|
|
of beads
|
|
|
|
shaking,
|
|
|
|
hands in snow.
|
|
|
|
|
|
===========================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nancy Dunlop
|
|
|
|
from: From the Window
|
|
|
|
"The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead." (Heidegger)
|
|
|
|
hers on small head bobbing
|
|
under big goddess-sky-dome
|
|
she is sapling: a happy
|
|
blockhead shaking her baby leaves
|
|
warmth of spring and new starts
|
|
ow! so much it hurts
|
|
how can the pavement hold such radiance?
|
|
has heaven become so encrusted with jewels
|
|
that they are dropping
|
|
at her feet?
|
|
|
|
|
|
each step a little giggle.
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Earth is the serving bearer." (Heidegger)
|
|
|
|
and arches up her feet
|
|
the grasses its tentacles
|
|
its roots the cords to her belly
|
|
the tree of her uprooted
|
|
shaking its remnants of dirt
|
|
the tree of her striding
|
|
down this bright sidewalk
|
|
she's already shed her fruit
|
|
it straggles behind her on the pavement
|
|
a trail of seeds and cast-off reasons
|
|
limbs straining from force of new buds
|
|
she is so new her bark still gives to pressure
|
|
|
|
"Now woman is neither closed nor open . . . form is never complete in her."
|
|
(Irigaray)
|
|
|
|
and she is running through the forest she has chosen as her situation.
|
|
swathed in pre-raphelite fullness. hugged within her husk, within her moist
|
|
shell. and she is falling but the ground left her. she is rolling down moss
|
|
and spores. pulled toward this forest floor and veining as these leaves
|
|
around her. she is photosynthesis and arches toward the light. the tops of
|
|
the white pines. cathedral light in fractured colors. she is prismatic.
|
|
unfolds origami-like. like the finest tissue. she is her own envelope.
|
|
fool-hardy bride-of-air. bird fare. she could rise up. burst through upper
|
|
branches. thrust herself into being. or loll in wet leaves. little lute.
|
|
upon which strums celestial.
|
|
|
|
|
|
===========================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
John Malboeuf
|
|
|
|
Seen Your Dad on the Corner
|
|
|
|
The broken man was wearing new blue/purple jeans and a white T-shirt
|
|
which had "i am in hell and i can live with it" written on the back in
|
|
green magic marker. He made his living selling toothpicks which he carved
|
|
as he walked through the streets during the day. When I first saw him this
|
|
morning, he had part of a tree branch under his arm and he was whittling at
|
|
it, leaving a trail of shavings behind on the sidewalk. Now, he was holding
|
|
a coffee can, which I guess was full of toothpicks, and he was stopped at
|
|
the corner and was looking at people walking by.
|
|
I started playing some rhythm, hoping people would give me enough
|
|
change to buy a bus ticket. I had made one buck fifty-two and had four
|
|
strings left on my guitar.
|
|
The broken man walked towards me slowly, nervous and listening to the
|
|
music. His face was smeared. He was angry. He took the change out of my
|
|
hat, replaced it with four thin six inch toothpicks. "I've seen sky," he
|
|
said to me.
|
|
"Then dance," I replied. "I would."
|
|
The broken man scowled. "I've seen sky," he said again, touched my
|
|
shoulder, paused to let me look into his smeared eyes, walked away. I was
|
|
hoping he would get hit by a car.
|
|
it was about time I got a move on, so I smashed what was left of my
|
|
guitar on the front stoop. Stones go through me. Catch, cut,, a tear. Right
|
|
down the middle. Why do you expect so much from me? Stones and candy carry
|
|
a punch.
|
|
Standing, you said you'd visit. Causing a stir, it was just me. I
|
|
noticed the blink of your eye, your sudden hesitation, your cut short stop
|
|
breath before you returned my look. We don't need to do this, we could
|
|
forget it or the reverse. Sunday, over at the stones, I met you on the
|
|
corner. The pavement was all that I could, see it.
|
|
So wait. Stones cut, through me, I let them. I can't stop them, it
|
|
isn't human. A sudden stop, change of key. A zone.
|
|
I tossed the toothpicks out into the street. It had rained the night
|
|
before, so they floated in a puddle.
|
|
|
|
|
|
===========================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ron MacLean
|
|
|
|
How to be Happy
|
|
|
|
This year, she's decided to be happy.
|
|
She may not know what she wants, or how to get there, but she's
|
|
determined to accept the uncertainty that for years has depressed her.
|
|
Besides, she knows what she does not want. She's certain of that. She does
|
|
not want Ray.
|
|
Here are some of the things she does when she decides to be happy.
|
|
1. Walk by the river. Afternoons, after work, for at least an hour,
|
|
she walks on a footpath that runs alongside the Charles River. She's lived
|
|
her life near water, and cultivates this connection now that she's decided
|
|
to be happy. Since water makes her happy, she walks by it, right next to
|
|
it, every day. What does not make her happy is the pollution, but the city
|
|
of Boston claims the river is being cleaned up, that the Charles Watershed
|
|
Authority is having an impact. Liz maintains hope by taking a water sample,
|
|
once a week, in a glass, and leaving it on a shelf in her kitchen, watching
|
|
to see what will settle to the bottom of the glass, how it will compare to
|
|
the previous week's sediment. The shelf is above the antique stove that
|
|
Ray, her former lover, had bought for her, the stove that she is always
|
|
threatening to get rid of. Because it reminds her of him. Because it leaks
|
|
gas sometimes. But it's such a beautiful stove. Irreplaceable.
|
|
2. Read tabloids. Weekly World News is her favorite. Best covers, she
|
|
says. The photos are sometimes breathtaking, she says. A couple weeks ago
|
|
she showed one to her daughter Katie, about a bat child found in a cave in
|
|
South Dakota. A kid with fangs and pointy ears. She was right. The photo
|
|
was amazing. Airbrushed into a soft focus, the eerie child's open mouth and
|
|
sharp fangs dominating the page, eyes popped open. No hair anywhere on his
|
|
head. He demanded your attention. These tabloids are placed on the floor of
|
|
her second story bedroom, in a neat stack by the radiator, in the house
|
|
that she shares, most of the time, with Katie. It's okay to leave the
|
|
papers next to the radiator for now, because it's summer. The tabloids lay
|
|
under an article that Liz had clipped from The Boston Globe two weeks
|
|
before, headlined "4th slaying of lesbian reported in area," which
|
|
describes a stabbing in the Back bay, and which quotes a Boston detective
|
|
as saying that it's the fourth such murder in the past few months. There
|
|
are enough similarities in method that they are beginning to investigate
|
|
the possibility of a single killer, of a pattern. Liz has been unable to
|
|
dispose of the article. Each time she buys a tabloid, she lifts the article
|
|
off of the pile next to the radiator, places the new issue on top of the
|
|
old issue and then the article on top of the pile.
|
|
3. Make collages. Pictures cut from magazines, newspapers. Abstract
|
|
geometric shapes cut from construction paper. Objects she finds in her
|
|
travels, the refuse from the worlds around her. Ticket stubs. Gum wrappers.
|
|
Lately, it has taken a new twist. Words. Phrases clipped from publications
|
|
have started to appear, rubber cemented over images on the cardboard. These
|
|
have begun to capture her interest. Reminding her of a game she and her
|
|
brother, Otis, used to play as children, where they would chose a word and
|
|
recite it, chant it, invoke it, over and over until it lost meaning, and
|
|
then keep going. Later that day, whenever one of them would use the word,
|
|
the other would laugh, at the joke they shared, at the new meanings it
|
|
hinted at that no one else suspected. Now, visually, Liz does this with
|
|
words, placing them alongside other words in unexpected combinations,
|
|
pasting them on magazine photos, over cutout cardboard shapes. She has
|
|
started to send these to Otis. It is a way of keeping in touch.
|
|
4. Bake. She loves to make cookies, in her antique stove, but she
|
|
never eats them, so Katie ends up having to eat two dozen cookies, or
|
|
convince Liz to give some to friends. The numbers are escalating lately.
|
|
Even her friends are telling her they can't handle any more cookies.
|
|
They're starting to gain weight. Tell me about it, Katie says. Katie is
|
|
eleven, and mature for her age. The trouble is, Liz bakes really good
|
|
cookies. The successful recipes she keeps in a folder on the bookshelf.
|
|
There are many folders on the bookshelf. A folder of possible night courses
|
|
she might take, like the one in the Indian Cooking and Nutrition she just
|
|
signed up for. A folder of cover photos -- the really good ones -- from the
|
|
tabloids. A folder containing notes on her romantic relationships, and why
|
|
they ended. All part of an orderliness she's instituting into her life,
|
|
part of the same impulse that has led her to conclude, in the wake of Ray's
|
|
eviction, that what it really takes to be happy is to give up the
|
|
possibility of a relationship.
|
|
|
|
|
|
===========================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
David Connolley
|
|
|
|
Rampart reservoir pigs
|
|
play bluegrass
|
|
with dirty words
|
|
on a gray lake's
|
|
gravely shores.
|
|
|
|
It is hard,
|
|
this kind of life
|
|
|
|
water towers and skies,
|
|
the light of potatoes. Here we work.
|
|
We eat.
|
|
We starve.
|
|
|
|
|
|
===========================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Michael Rae
|
|
|
|
band names
|
|
|
|
virtue and gender
|
|
naked melody
|
|
|
|
the 4th husband
|
|
JOLLY AS A PEA
|
|
|
|
with a wicked tongue
|
|
bullet the suicidal dog
|
|
|
|
palemento bug
|
|
at the master's gate
|
|
|
|
a urine sample
|
|
(stool).
|
|
|
|
|
|
===========================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
Katie Yates
|
|
|
|
Book Two had not the quality of beauty, was alone
|
|
|
|
life in fragile water mockingbird and clam kneedeep with tounge burning
|
|
nothing admitted change
|
|
tones of memory all at once held on to : couldn't touch
|
|
you were this source of amazement to me : beauty & anger propelling
|
|
terse transience explains the force of interruption
|
|
playbill volkswagon tentless numbness as free to carry us
|
|
penniless you wander to me finally at ease with method
|
|
we can't obtain assurance nor the insular logics of love -
|
|
?great morning. sky down to field. there is nothing between us
|
|
|
|
resolved as epithet
|
|
linger to wear longer
|
|
bright dales in lips
|
|
pocket-full-of-swim
|
|
Dive, she said & watch.
|
|
|
|
re(scind) ~ god-wanted you nearer than this tin midnight
|
|
hope ^ dire to be remembered pose at brisk lake - STOP
|
|
the sake of brittlest limnia scurvia metal wilder wilder
|
|
beast past coming
|
|
|
|
compelled by falling or awakening from a sleep more truthful than you are
|
|
separated into frames: tauto in - in toto - {{ vascular
|
|
limb in reflection - yours - take by Take - affirming
|
|
Covenant . envelope ^^ stasis . inside a mortal time
|
|
come to the defense
|
|
restricted by a memory
|
|
full-fold - quadrophenia
|
|
alert in most ways & dying
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
|
Book Four (3) wash is to wain
|
|
less
|
|
u
|
|
n
|
|
l
|
|
e
|
|
s
|
|
s
|
|
strictness
|
|
w i s h
|
|
f
|
|
i
|
|
n
|
|
i
|
|
s
|
|
h
|
|
|
|
able to touch lavender, could call out my name as loudly
|
|
in what we stole from you
|
|
in what we stole from the lovers
|
|
(scant blossoms with tremendous scent)
|
|
|
|
found equaled mingling
|
|
circuits, frets - finger locks in our heads
|
|
cling is to fervor
|
|
is to happen is too good
|
|
|
|
a choice
|
|
|
|
religio/region
|
|
cum
|
|
un
|
|
do circumstance
|
|
/
|
|
one
|
|
thunderous
|
|
|
|
secret
|
|
all secret matter came back for you
|
|
|
|
to
|
|
|
|
remember
|
|
|
|
em: me.
|
|
|
|
days before a Winter/close
|
|
friend of belittling syntax stung
|
|
|
|
a Most equall = squall
|
|
(elle)
|
|
halcayon the brightest
|
|
|