andrew
demčak
*The Applicant*
*for Ted Hughes*
bright eyes and a hole to marry
the warm
hook of her breasts
the way her empty hand
shut
and wrote away from you
paper doll
just another Fulbright Scholar
searching
for the poultice
a ticket to her own
execution
remember you were stark
in your *Saville Row* suit
stiff and fire-
proof
but naked
wearing your salt stitches
and she lent a wily hand
how scored
her spirit was
like a punch-drunk eyelid
guaranteed to cause you cups of sorrows
think of all the life you had completed
tiny wonder
she was not a bad thing:
sewing socks
and making heady thunder
* *
*La Bonne Chanson*
close up of Paris Hilton
far a-field
the look of orgasm
filaments of
disaster
supplication
ready to
rewrite her footnote
*Be here *
*now, on E…*
* *
prosthetic
only a short clip of that
penetrative moment
the evidence:
key in her name on a certain website
in the throws of numeric action
ones
and zeros
an example
by hidden
camera
she would live it again
caught
on digital
quicker than some demon
of fast-forward
she was all there
her lean
body appeared
mad-delirious
history watching itself from the screen
* *
*Troy***
who knew those light rooms
that ancient somewhere
its rotting joints?
there were no photos of
the place
just a myth needled in
a rope
tethering the throat of the capital
what restraint and fear among the broken
militia-
or the hollow of Helen's
bed that would swallow you up like Scylla?
and were the drifting
sounds of enemy boats
military
intelligence-
those skiffs coasting in full
of knives and bronze spears?
didn't some God speak
fighting his hair
about a kidnapping
avenged
the nature of human-rights?
all this lifted from bric-a-brac
a boot
buckle in the attic
from an island
store
a horse found
given out of love- or
the prospect of war?
*The **Munich** Mannequins*
intestines twist like hydras
empty as
the rattle of bones beneath slacks
weeks of
exact diuretics
while complex lace
entwines around necks
a glittering black
a noose of billboards unloosing no blood
Absolut Vodka on calcium smiles
domestic inkling
of a white city
Paris or Rome
the choice positions
there they
stand:
a perfection as bitter as snow
*The Rival*
*for Doris Lessing*
* *
the moon left you something of her O-mouth
a puff of clarity
no one was safe
in your annihilating cloud
here at
the new hospital
unanswerable
so nervous
you sat up in bed
a stone
dropped from height
asking for cigarettes
thinking about your dissatisfaction
African and white
grieving at the gift
of emphysema
death's pink valentine
*Note
on Process:* All of my poems
are "cut-ups" of poems which originally appeared either in *The New Yorker *or
in Sylvia Plath's *Ariel*. I use a variation of the "cut-up" method pioneered
in the 1920's by both the DADA and Surrealist movements, refined in the
late 1950's by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gyson. I have further
augmented it, moving the praxis farther from the creation of non-objectivist
"collages" and into what I can only describe as facilitating textual
"mutations." I edit the meanings of the poems as they evolve from the various
permutations of word fragments. I further edit for syllabic line length and
maximum line total, making the end product a hybrid of English blank
verse and French syllabic, e.g. OULIPO method. Each poem retains its
original title.
andrew demčak is
currently working
on his second Master's Degree, an MLIS, at
U. C. Berkeley. When he is not hard at work driving the
Bookmobile for Oakland Public Library, he can be
found attending "Guy Writers" poetry
readings at Anthony's house in San Francisco, or eating Tibetan momos
with his partner, Peter. Viva
Wallace Stevens!
Read here about his fantastic life.
Read here about his fantastic life.
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