By Steve Rogenbuck
from “The random walk”
what can we do with this
the 100,000 years it takes a photon
to reach the surface of the sun
- Peter Gizzi
9
“Motherfucker I love the hail” (Whitman 15).
/ / /
i rent a movie and record over it with a 2-hour video of my hand bones flexing on a chessboard.
i chew peanuts standing in the kitchen shouting compliments at my family
/
“again my dirt-loveing face: again i love the dirt’
BETTY: I burned my car on purpose, that was maybe too much.
GRANT: I unbuckl my dance boots. This is where i am so on fire.
JASON: It’s january and
everybody is licking their cigarettes.
ALL: How uncanny to balance across a thing
13
“shit, this desert weather is temperate as hell” “no shit!”
Works Cited
/ / /
- i didn’t smile at the beach, power washer. i don’t know how many times she called me and i hung up, the library, the stars.
- snowbank next to a windmill: i can’t tell you about the gospel because i don’t know shit about it. the moon
- “this wallpaper cuts my eye like a sword.” my backrest is painful, the horsehead nebula my colon. the watertower 8am sun
/
rip this poem in half
i don t care at all, i ll just make another
16
“Cash is dispensed below the scanner.” – Gandhi
/ / /
In the south it looks like rain (in the south
it looks like rain.
Late july, harvest your wheat!
i scrape rust off a bicycle headlamp:
cornfields even the moon is orange tonight
“Dennis, unhook my car’s air conditioning now.” – Gandhi
I thought football & curling were different sports
I thought algebra & critical theory were separate disciplines.
Good fucking lord we enjoy the wheat season in michigan
18
“see this chair? I’ll burn it, I don’t care about chairs” – Gandhi
/ / /
it’s august in michigan , i’m kicking footballs into a cornfield
(baked squash + jaybirds)
train tracks + the
rain—
it’s august in michigan, efforts to reduce my stress are stressing me out. “if this is dick cheney, where the fuck is my house?”
( now i don’t do anything.
it’s august in michigan. your warm legs fill a dress. we don’t feel bad at all—
the rain comes,
we don’t feel bad in the rain at all