Indexical Elegies Read online

  Indexical Elegies

  -- Jon Paul Fiorentino.

  Coach House Books

  -- Toronto.

  copyright © Jon Paul Fiorentino, 2010

  first edition

  This epub edition published in 2010. Electronic ISBN 978 1 77056 271 4.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges and appreciates the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Fiorentino, Jon Paul

  Indexical elegies / Jon Paul Fiorentino.

  Poems.

  isbn 978-1-55245-234-9

  I. Title.

  ps8561.i585i64 2010 c811'.6 c2010-903887-8

  For Marisa Grizenko

  Elizabeth Conway

  (A Montreal Suite)

  the echo deferred, dispersal, the night declines its relays.

  To explore: the ultimate intimate elsewhere.

  – Nicole Brossard

  The high ones die, die. They die. You look up and who’s there?

  – John Berryman (‘Dream Song 36’)

  Life, friend, is boring. We must not say so.

  – John Berryman (‘Dream Song 14’)

  Contents

  ELIZABETH CONWAY

  JOBLESS WONDERBOY

  MENTHOLISM

  MONTREAL SONG

  POLICE DRIVE HATCHBACKS

  WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN, COURTNEY?

  HYSTERICAL NARRATIVE

  CRUELTY-AS-TREND

  GRIFT ECONOMY

  MONTREAL IS AN IDIOT

  I’M PULLING FOR YOUR NARRATIVE

  CELLPHONE GLITTER

  ABJECTIVE

  MENTHOL HYMN

  CAUTIOUSLY SOLIPSISITIC

  TELEGRAPHIA

  DO YOU FALL IN LOVE AT THE DROP OF HAPPY?

  SELF-STORAGE

  POLYCLINIQUE

  HYMN

  CSP

  HYMN

  CSP

  HYMN

  CSP

  HYMN

  CSP

  YOU WERE MY ONLY TERRAN

  HYMN

  CSP

  MY SINCERE APOLOGISTS

  TRANSPRAIRIE

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR SPROUTING A POET IN WINNIPEG

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR SPROUTING A POST-PRAIRIE POET IN WINNIPEG

  PROCESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

  LATCHKEYED

  MIASMA MEDICATION

  FAMOUS GREY CHEVETTE

  ST. TRANSCONA

  STOP KNOWING HOW I AM

  CIVIC POEM

  DYING IN WINNIPEG

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ELIZABETH CONWAY

  We visit Elizabeth Conway on Sundays, select Mondays

  and stumble, habitually untied

  above Snowdon, Mile End

  We take the long way on these days

  release captivating missives

  wake up later

  Maybe croon names like Edith McCord,

  Ellie Dowling, or maybe not, still we

  drive ourselves civic

  One day, road-tripping ourselves

  to l’Epiphanie, QC, we will

  turn around just in time

  Look for home firmly planted

  on a Sunday, select Mondays, too easy to parse

  and so still, so departed

  There’s a Montreal I’m

  beginning to see and

  you’re everywhere in it,Conway.

  Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, Spring 2008

  JOBLESS WONDERBOY

  Jobless little wonder

  needs his antibiotics

  Jobber never leaves

  never earns his lesions

  Got paper and markers

  and motherfucking whiteout

  Listen, sent you a text

  message in 1983

  One day you’ll get it

  MENTHOLISM

  Cold is your gift

  spend countless hours grifting

  Sole proprietorship

  of these barricades

  Close eyes

  pretend we have talent

  Not swayed

  too into too craven

  Can’t hold liquor

  can’t hold sobriety

  Smoke Craven Menthols

  not sure why

  Get frigid

  ride late night

  Last call

  scratch open white scabs

  Walk-in therapist sees you

  there you are

  Don’t have a problem

  in writing

  Need a

  room in which to brood

  An adjacent

  room from which to watch

  So hard to keep

  the stories straight

  This poem makes

  sure of that

  MONTREAL SONG

  And then she said

  being despotic is almost

  as rewarding as being enlightened

  Then he said

  I love everything about

  you except your company

  And then we all agreed

  that power politics were

  depressing

  POLICE DRIVE HATCHBACKS

  Ask for cocaine

  sane currency

  petulant

  continent

  Walk the

  strip-mined outlet mall

  make eye contact

  with retailers

  Enter hostel

  fall asleep

  to your

  bitmap

  One weak moment

  that won’t

  stop

  happening

  WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN, COURTNEY?

  She slides out of a launderette

  No, wait. She struts out of a café

  Check that. She stumbles out of a bus

  Or not. She steps out of a bank

  Too dull. She stirs out of a dream

  That sucks. She slips out of a clinic

  The washer is old; the smoke is thick

  the transit is slow; the credit is wrecked

  the fear is real; the doctor is sick

  Her clothes are stained; her coffee is cold

  her transfer is lost; her money is low

  her mind is made up; her pills do not work

  HYSTERICAL NARRATIVE

  Shouldn’t think so

  I’ve been so thoughtless

  Mispronounce hegemony

  that’s nothing

  Announce too candidly

  my candidacy

  Something I hardly know

  protects itself from being happy

  Years saunter by, increasingly devoid of lyric

  thankful, they say, wheezing:

  It’s all about your breath all about you breathing

  every beta male needs a better Maud Gonne

  Very well aware: close readings

  find me lacking or treading or tactless or fruitless

  But here’s something: it’s 4:07 a.m.

  you are asleep; and I am in the midst of

  an historical narrative

  CRUELTY-AS-TREND

  Suppose you supplant someone

  suppose it’s not unwelcome

  Suppose you uproot or unseed or unseat him, that

  certain someone, and discover cruelty-as-trend in the process

  Suppose you have an art project to work on now, but no

  matter, because you haven’t the ethic or ethics

  Suppose you understand pro
cess a little better now

  but don’t feel convertible in your own skin

  Suppose you will need this, this making strange

  this continual troubling

  Suppose you’ve been found out and you find out you

  don’t care. Suppose you process this supposition

  GRIFT ECONOMY

  Manage to in syntax

  Xerox massage it

  Bedsores soothe, bedsitters swoon

  Back when X cared about things

  Intentions pulped or stapled

  closer

  So close to sleep

  yet so closed

  The epiphany changes

  whenever the font does

  It’s easy to look down on you

  from this basement suite

  MONTREAL IS AN IDIOT

  in October as the slumlords

  slur the ruddy Plateau

  Third-hand bicycles

  gun-toting angels

  last last cigarettes

  activist boyfriends

  projectivist adjuncts

  protectionist tracts

  And at night the mayor

  gets colder than we could

  ever imagine

  And we love him

  and we love her

  I’M PULLING FOR YOUR NARRATIVE

  It’s a trope

  I think you know it

  The atm looks lovely tonight

  if you believe in the word lovely

  You kill an adjective

  and then

  The word lovely wakes

  you up at 4 p.m. and says:

  It’s been a while

  it’s lost its charm

  You sleep too much

  you drink too long

  CELLPHONE GLITTER

  Write long line

  angry young kick

  Gain Saint Joe; lose Saint Joe

  daddy bank robber sputter

  Stroke cellphone glitter

  rock suffocate coke

  Protest too much

  protest tumult

  Drain muse battery

  suck fake epic on

  prick strike for

  Lo, the tired are punch-drunk

  let’s get ’em, Uncle Job

  ABJECTIVE

  Abject stirring

  prose project stalled

  Stab injection

  the wrecked and the appalled

  When does the second head

  drop

  When does the adjective

  leave you alone

  Jab injure

  zero

  When does the crop

  come?

  MENTHOL HYMN

  What do you mean right on?

  extract life menthol

  what do you mean unhappy?

  excursion retreat menthol

  what do you mean my fault?

  cure yourself again menthol

  what do you mean your fault?

  children crave sick menthol

  what do you mean not now?

  make it new menthol

  what do you mean hurtful?

  hey it’s only menthol

  what do you mean virgin?

  shame on you menthol

  what do you mean never?

  preen espouse menthol

  what do you mean twenty bucks?

  sexually transmuted menthol

  what do you mean leaving?

  montreal city menthol

  what do you mean verb?

  aim low miss menthol

  what do you mean noun?

  first thought best menthol

  what do you mean problem?

  literal mean menthol

  what do you mean dead locution?

  liked your recent menthol

  what do you mean archive?

  it’s not you it’s menthol

  CAUTIOUSLY SOLIPSISITIC

  If self is dishappy

  cautionary tale stuck on repeat

  If posed self is paused

  solitary drive drivel

  If drive is inward

  sociological, heteronormative slapstick

  If you feel you can drive it home

  power outage, gender outrage

  If triage is trendy

  crack and hiss Christmas illness

  Don’t let yourself let

  everyone know you get paid

  TELEGRAPHIA

  Real ones happen when you are post-telegraphic

  almost at sleep

  Real ones happen when the mind trips post-

  Sapphic

  Real ones are itches and pre-dream clutter

  they happen shallow

  Dream curvature and whisper inertial

  the mind wakes up at dreadful times

  Deep

  post-happen

  DO YOU FALL IN LOVE AT THE DROP OF HAPPY?

  Do you fall in love at the drop of happy?

  are you brink? did you clean?

  do you miss yourself? are you dripping?

  you are taken for

  Did you fail?

  are you held? did you internet café?

  do you slum? are you napping?

  you were missed

  Do you last?

  are you heading there? did it out you?

  do you lure? are you dropping?

  you miss bugs

  Do you lull?

  are your friends? did you pulp?

  do you mean this? are we meant for this?

  yes

  SELF-STORAGE

  Laminated name tags everywhere everywhere

  shelf space for the wicked timid

  Bottles tremble in November treble

  everyone dying or leaving or straying

  Meanwhile quiz-takers make some sonic sense

  pitch perfect prose, retail summons

  Sermon perfect-lit compartments down

  oh value-added mainstays whisper

  This name tag, that toe tag

  November swallows the widowed

  Comedic grievers mutter lame phonemes:

  did you hear the one about the laminated coffin?

  Heard it –

  big year for that joke

  POLYCLINIQUE

  Find your place –

  a local, measure the paces

  Arrive with head down

  headlong into intent

  Lace the notion

  with disrigorous play and ploy, somehow

  Put the idea under chloroform

  deliberate and douse the thing

  in a flow of solvents

  not as remedy, nor as spark nor wick

  but as strategic sublimation

  conspicuously consumed

  Trick your dreams into commonplace routine –

  matte offerings of concrete nouns that ease and shame

  Stitch up a coterie of kindreds

  note where connections are severed

  Finally sew lazily, forcefully. See the language

  gnaw at its sutures as you go

  Tip well

  Indexical Elegies

  There is no truth

  but in dead event, shaken, stunned

  I miss everybody

  – Gilbert Sorrentino

  The index is physically connected with its object; they make

  an organic pair.

  – Charles Sanders Peirce

  Little Lucifer falls

  despite listless prayers

  The palliative strain

  and cigarette drama