Alamo Theory. Josh Bell
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poems. We didn’t remember how or why the Stranger’s poems sucked, but we thought Holly was good, so it scared us when the Stranger’s poems refused to suck Holly’s poems. A lot of people want to suck Fred’s new poems, which suck, but they are too difficult for us to suck, and we’d rather suck his old ones, for though they are old, and suck, it is much easier to suck them. When she reads them out loud, Clarise’s poems suck pretty good, but we are reserving our final judgment until we’ve seen them sucking on the page. We think Martha’s poems suck. Sometimes when we think we’re sucking on one of Theodore’s poems, we’re actually sucking on two. We think Ed’s poems have that Girl Scout look, which makes us want to start a family when we hear them through the keyhole, sucking. Philbert’s poems suck like they’ve been sucking Annie’s poems too much. Annie’s poems sucked, but at least they brought something new to the act of sucking, we’d never seen a poem sucked like that before, and we thrilled to suck on them, as if sucking on household appliances. Many people enjoy the austere sucking of Terry’s poems. Still, no one pays to suck Terry’s poems like they pay to suck Anton’s. We think Tom-Tom’s poems suck so hard. We think Wendy’s mature poems suck near the unassailable power of the Stranger’s poems, and at first we are frightened, as if forced to suck an entire opera, when Wendy gets that Viking look and makes us suck her poems. Maybe we could arrange for Terry’s poems, Wendy will say, to suck the Stranger’s poems, but the Stranger’s poems are missing, and Terry is afraid, and we do not blame him, as some of us recall the first time we heard the Stranger’s poems, which enter sucking bird and beast and flower, sucking queen and beggar, Oldsmobile and go-kart, saying long-time-no-suck-me, saying Terry: suck Wendy, suck Holly, saying suck the redwood forest, saying suck me lonely mannequin, saying suck the abundant splendored thrice jismatic suck of lonely mannequin, saying suck theology, missile launch, stirrups and ballet. Some of us choose to recall, instead, how the Stranger’s poems seemed capable of sucking themselves, as if they no longer required us to suck them, and filled with obsolescence we had to run next door to suck our neighbor’s poems, real quick. But we all agree on the way, when the Stranger’s poems end, they appear to suck the entire round planet, all at once, the planet which — in the Stranger’s poem’s unhinged jaws — comes dressed up like the Bride who was a Sailor, but all in the white of clouds and with a metallic S&M rig peeking through underneath, showing the chaste girdle of skyscrapers inside of which we suck and sleep and suck the poems we’ve written in fear of sucking the Stranger’s poems, which go on sucking hard for us, through the disastered warp of Time, the Stranger’s poems uncanonized, built to be sucked in a way we will never understand, as the Stranger’s poems are a work of genius, and only our children’s children will ever fully suck them.
Here Are Some Problems I Have with Your Wife
I
She’s a lot more fluent in Portuguese
than she used to be. Holds hands with all
my ex-girlfriends, who afterward seem
so much taller. And later, as I blew out
my candles, she said to those gathered, I’ll bet
he wished to be sodomized by thieves.
Your wife comes from a family of thieves.
Her mother taught her never to confuse
sex with the doing of one’s taxes. I’ll get
to her father later. Her father is a series
of furnaces. About your wife’s novel I wrote,
Friends, this is the worst birthday party, ever.
She took it as a compliment. Love, kill,
betray, deify, vote for, nap with, or bury alive?
II
She changed her telephone number.
She doesn’t have any birds inside of her.
Her idea becomes flesh by early afternoon.
When I first read your wife’s new memoir,
Sir, it felt like watching the lighthouse
go dark, like doing inventory, finding one
planet missing. No doubt your wife knows
very well which planet. I look forward to
your next dinner party, where I may sample
from the catered board, ask your wife
about said memoir. Last time I read it, I awoke
to find myself burning heretics. I guess
what it is, is that probably your wife puts
her allotted birds inside of other people.
III
Your wife’s police are a very special
kind of police. They fingereth the apple
of mine eye, and there are way too many
testicles to count. Likewise, this is a strange-
looking bed. And this is a magic handkerchief.
You wish it were eighteen horseflies. You wish
your wife’s police were far more brutal. Me,
I never bought the premise that your wife
was ever a girl, but if I did, I wouldn’t
take it personally. I’m not a nest of living
wig-hair, nor baby-bits, nor eighteen flies pouring
from the mouth of whoever’s hiding in this
weird new bed with me. Come out, Inflatabilium.
Don’t make me call your wife’s police.
Vince Neil Accompanies Josh to Luncheon with Scholars, Poets, and Others — Gets Cell Phone Number of Grad Student Sitting at Far End of Table — Orders Cheeseburger, No Tomato — Borrows Josh’s Cell Phone — Calls Grad Student Sitting at Far End of Table
If I’d been born a girl, like you,
I wouldn’t have lived any longer than I will,
and whether I’d be waiting
in my new long johns, or in the plus-size version
of your blouse and Target pumps,
still the ancient Boy Scout Death would sidle up
and find me in the houseboat,
compliment my penmanship, my knots, and then
he’d lead me to the minivan, never to be seen
with this hairstyle again, the handsome scalp
and blond fringe now worn
by seagulls, who hit the high notes like it was nothing,
who think in unison, though they never
seem to fly that way, instead go dropping singular
from the squiggled flock
after bread crust and fish eye, blip-blip
down from the sky, rogue threads of EKG. I mean to say
what’s globbed is globbed for good
and even John Keats will not unfuck it for us.
Though maybe you have this feeling
about me — good! — and maybe then
you paste that feeling down with words
and I do the same, and then dreaming in our beds
we get the lonely message from each other,
just in time, just as the jackbooted soldiers
come