TINA CELONA

Discourse

The picture of the monster getting ready to eat another monster is my favorite. Don't ask me what a yin-yang is doing between them, or why they seem to be emerging from the shadows. They both have their mouths open as if they are breathing or screaming.

Here is an animal biting a man. It is on his back and it is biting him from behind. They look like a maze.

Here he is preaching to the animals in the desert. They are shrimp-creatures. If it were in color his heart would be pink. He is happy to see them. He is raising his crook to them.

I like The Book Of Ancient American Proverbs but I love you.

A horse is standing up on its hind legs. Another horse is pawing the ground. It is the Scene of Comical Riders. In all there are three horse-beasts and one rider.

I want to ask Renee what she thinks of Paul Klee but I am too embarrassed. I am glad Renee does not ask me what I think of Anne Sexton.

A cloud is following that train. Or perhaps a giant elbow.

I am not yet at the point where I breathe poetry. Can I end the poem like this? In this picture her head is broken off and his arm is cheese.

Robin is bringing me lotion. I love her—I love Robin. She is a talented aromatherapist. She and Amy and Frank—they are all good people. The interesting thing about Dr. Friedes is he does not eat vegetables. He is a steak and hamburger man. That's OK—my family is carnivorous too.

Event Diary

That evening I am thrilled to discover I am still alive. I breathe and it makes a whistling sound. I gnash my teeth and make Dracula faces and stay outside in the car until it is too late.

When I finally do it I realize I have been putting it off all day. The polar bear tipped me off but I was still surprised when I woke up this morning with a rubber heart.

Stop, come back says the dollhouse father. The dollhouse mother walks away and falls through the door. Here, Mother, take these wooden eggs, says the son. Oh, Mother, what’s that under your dress?

The elements of our day were as follows: church, graveyard, community garden, Luna Park, museum park, museum, car, Golden Gate Park, bar, reading, car. I reach for my coffee nastily as a dumbbell nebula fizzes in the distance.

Is there any more?

Naturally there is, there’s John Godfrey. He’s come all the way from Brooklyn and Bill Berkson, Leslie Scalapino and Kevin Killian are in the audience. Bill and Kevin ignore me but Leslie says hi.

There’s a field full of nasturtiums and a ratty columbine and the headlight crashes down the trash chute to land in a quivering pile of filaments and Tic Tacs. I light a little pyre in the yard and wander around aimlessly thinking about things. Then I realize the things are actually thinking about me.

At the Rate of Two Pompoms a Day

At the rate of two pompoms a day

You recorded your impressions of death.

I was easier with myself and when I drank wine I was easier still.

The silence on Sunday was deafening, as was the seepage

In the closet under the stairs.

Traveling burned off my cleverness.

The contents of my brain were insipid and tasteless.

I washed off the broom with detergent, then set it back in the closet.

It was hard to write about asparagus in pea season;

Death glared like an inconstant toad.

My friend stepped off the plane and into my life.

Her distraction was beautiful.

"Why don't you wear that hat with the shades?"

To this she responded with a long, shallow moan.

"You wear your nonsense like a pompom."

Mouses of Misery

I danced like an elf on top of a mushroom.

The mushroom bent under my ponderous steps.

I straddled the mushroom and invoked the Creator.

This met with no reaction and I considered

Pontificating about widowhood.

I danced like a midget on the corpse of my benefactor.

It collapsed, consumed by voracious euphemisms.

With a roll of the die I summoned the Deity.

With a loll of the head you inflicted the TV.

I knew then that wisdom was not a brand of beer.

The elf of my mushroom rotated like

Dirty sheep in their hive.

It burned, sending up tumors of honey.

Flotillas of dolphins floated me to freedom.

Mouses of misery chastened me in my solitude.

I mushed on my mushroom to nodules

Of nonsense. The cavernous chateau

Wet me like the Nile. Holy, holy

Chanted the nurses of Creation.

A thousand nuts spilled from their wimples.

When I Take Off My Top Hat

When I take off my top hat

I tap my head:

Despite the suave fugue

As if wine and egg

Separated.

A newborn ant, claret

Across my foot

Boosted the circulation, wiped its antennae

Ascending a rapid stairway

The slow vulva that you are:

Meat and foot: entire enemies.

The Lichen and the Stone

The lichen riding on the stone

Gummy and green, encircling

The blue mass of the jerboa,

Extends its writing

On the sea

Of rented rocks.

The lee of the earth, the murderous mollusks

And the reverted fish

Skip from stone to stone like fries.

In the long and significant silence

You can hear the clear caddy of the coast.

The liquor I extend to my mother

Comes and goes like boobs:

Folded in the grunting air.

It seems we are bathing in water

That neither comes nor goes.

Dying

How to remove one from oneself

The disconnected rattle

Abrogating the testicles of cows,

Depositing the movement

Of the free air, the green wind.

Where no one declines

Unless there is a shady election,

A rising elevator

Of the dead eyes’ retreat?

The official algae

Is establishing a raise

That will never be established,

Because the curiosity

Ravages the heart

Even as the virus ravages the lips and mouth.

Look at the pies

The friends will assent to.

Golf

When you drag me

To the golf course

You must guard against

My razor and my sister’s razor

Like the large cockroach seen

asleep in his carapace

Discussing our destruction.

Tales are hairless--

A volcano in a cup

Tends your spirit, arranges yours

On the only, melancholy page.

With a green sun star

Snuffling there

As it describes my entire life,

Without words or interpretation:

A solitary shadowed gulf

In pale arms.

Catch-Flower

The seven petals of the sea

Joined with the sun’s corolla

In a loving diadem:

A red buoy

Leaps enamored

Of the thousand lips of the ovary

Of a rose so delicious

It lisps both sun and salt.