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This issue of JACKET is a co-production with New American Writing magazine
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Clark Coolidge

Ten poems


Settled in August

Floyd Atmosphere had his cups repossessed
they were amethyst and the buckweed falls
I think it's arbitrary the poem
shaped by idiots rising like a sun
thinking the universe doesn't get it
Gogo Flam arrived home goose step by back stoop
I'll give the wall everything even blood it's higher
Spodumene Bob presiding draws mouth on glass
a highway to the moon the only bout they'll join
ugh said the centipede it's a classic!
and Monk names tunes by trying to name them
well we'll see but now the loquat is gone
no semblance even but plenty of mirrors
aren't the heroes nervous? psilocybin notation
to outright cry and be ready for the beach
scooter then the cash cow the bulk finagle
I watch TV I'm no longer a Cherokee
just a live impersonation till the ceiling falls
join you then join you in bed maybe
I live in a borrowed multiplicity
my brothers are the smoke

1IX00

Besides Being Overheard

The Red Mountain Honor Society wants to see your plans
the oven with additional holes in your filing station
the whole cheese around these parts
so you better sashay off this land
alright travel! get that sleep wool out
I just crave to meet up with
if'n these cow barns measure up
chaw down on tetanus root and sit it out
sposed to be quite a fellow up north but
you don't stack up deuce high down here
still best hold that door for the Cassius of Bar None
a raw turf for old coots the whole country tied in ropes
and gets shot through the pants like some gumption not yet
can drive a nail at twenty paces a bandanna full of doubt
walks off a good ways hollering riders
up to their necks in hot bacon
ready to draw down on this whole tar nation
and I hear Cassidy's waiting

3IX00

Not Reptiles

This one is about clean rooms
a clear light full of brain damage
a bit too clubby at times
get that chocolate off the dolomite

Coffin? just a handful of microbes
then the walls come in
cornice of tomatoes "never let me go"
no farm not to play catch up

A moisture of comets to blame
deep in the zone's suffering collection
a bogus Getz in mundane shock
the way blue jeans correct things

Sob story Toronto tattered tape of
try not to slobber over the Woman in Black
toasties and corn cakes mutilation therefore
pulled out of a machine before you can feel it's paper

Have you got your helmet? hornet's nest?
view of dove-shooting day at the Bushes?
I was hired to go west but the boats kept snapping
sweating and grey being taken as people
that's PEOPLE

3IX00

A Spot of Frazzle and Then

The braincase was loose and the rest saw pie melting
we'd have to come home to the lineaments of fire
a lot of squatting included with the sleeping
I imagine pennants with the clothing closing in
dimity fudge due to silence in the breccias
partial poinsettias they lived on Olive Street
inclined toward wicked pencils we stayed
us jamokes quite worn through and bundled
to blow things up beyond all proportion
and crow in wacky dingle a portion of cheek
dried in detonator the telemetry theater
now the cheese quarry its more than human wails
present time now added it's long past time
to get the gargoyles to descend a history of pokers
then someone up near the ceiling he turns and
silence in the Vanguard silence to bring things to
then someone blew it or is this the copper time?

31X00

Traced Red Dot

Hello I'm Jack Jerk
I live with Molly Ringwald in a hutch
the streets outside the Barleycorn Stretch
they burst it all slims down to a point
a golden gingerale of rockhewn source
buy Grotex it helps your cusp
always thought a corpse would tell me what to do
skin pulling its surface moisture
Barbizon sauce personality like a peanut
just need a new parrot and sink a pressure capsule
grotesque what happens to the lasted soul
a bad mouth liver pills in short bursts
maybe nothing but shirt in strong daylight
a punk trains his fist on the green monkey
it's Bruce Surtees capturing latent death
stacked along contention lines black gleam salt
he's now contented he saw his wrist
rosy featured landschaft grass as a pointer
this all comes from one hand's limited desk
clear before the metal starts flying

4IX00

An Undue Blather

The opportunity to be dull
makes cowards of us all
no way I know to get by with it
blood in the glass down below
a mellotron fixed on futurity
where they like to see a bone twist before it falls

Basket of a man named Thomas caused all the problems
there are pupils in all eyes growing darker
more familiar as incipient papyrus lessons
the bark on the civil council gone scratchy
browbeaten and loaded with scaffolding
blizzard coming okay? nothing but a bullet's whizzes
and a brightness whittles sympathy from the dimness

29IX00

Icing at the Corners

I came to the planet in the desert
where there are tubes underground
shock tubes Buster Crabbe in
all the dependable serials you ever see
the locked Hitler of elevator fame?
no? pour you lick you date you
an animal farm in my capital fun zone
think we can lap ourselves? Swanny!
the idea was to part myself like hair
give me a rumbleseat and I'll call my double friend
snow diamond chevrons on the pole wall
soon someone will close all your closets
glubglub came the sound of goulash breakup
and we're out on the sound no grist few tears
I can't forget those burlap-covered signs

29VIII00
for Dick Gallup

The Plush of a Negative Cat

Blackened fingers on the sterling rug
and you'll find frottage by the stump
it's Hans Dustin and too many other Hoffmans
all gaga or got lemon verbena mainly
imagine all this waiting on one tortured sickness
zoomer babies without the frame
the title the madness in a boobie's eyes
scusa? too much rosemary in the window
sparks from Saratoga the scriptures snowing
I'll never be able to read without turpentine
without stopping to dry my eyes
Saint Bartholomew and the Oobleck standing
hard by Barstow and still pushing

29VIII00

End Gone Flat

The envelope floats
the pull on a bottle
the shoots go up from the orange refrigerator

I will bring you to the apron door
where all the bicycles were icicles
yeah yeah yeah a sphere

Touch your toes and cure your corns
my favorite color is bluish
fleet title Beau Humps or such

Publish a book or a Chevy or a tree
seems the storms have come to forage
the trick is to discover your density

You know what this is? a gun
the end of a chapter in mid-shit
used to think the rain king was Byron

Opening a new cigarette to calmness
a zipper is there the bottle is pebbled
a boarded pavilion in the rain dance

Obstacle meat lobber let's get stippled
Castle Caves on a useless afternoon
the siphon is loose let's try mahogany

31VIII00

A Dutiful Hardness

In the holy hallway of dry slaves
another iced window this one leaves
3 bucks and a synthesizer down a drink
tiptoe on the money a length of garment
swings in the chest hole darkness is had
cult of the Cave of the Not Okay
Olney Street about where I took my presence
believing in the brass of a kindergarten class
heat face under house bush in regard
Sunderland the place of the fossil face
and green tattersall golf spinnaker
cost one disc in a cemetery ditch
suspended by electric flex
blockade of Mars bars in the silly dusk
you know what he just died of? death
somebody else's cigarette a bung starter
hemoplant dialysis oblate straightener
let's not pretend we know our motives
as the plane rose the other one didn't

31VIII00


New American Writing # 19 and Jacket 13   Contents page
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This issue of Jacket is a co-production with New American Writing magazine
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