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