Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney
seven poems
**
II.
She kept a chamois-soft list of Things That Set My Heart Aflutter
& she sent it in a letter, the envelope encrusted with ruby glitter.
The fire-engine sound. The baby-sitter. Her trusty mechanical pencil
w/ the .5 mm lead scraped the rough paper: Rainwater in the gutter.
A post-script warning: I've seen a side of you I plan to exploit from now on.
I want to be fearless. The sky above my hammock snows glitter.
The night we met she said I don’t believe in making plans. Her pristine hands
hovered like lovely hovercraft & made my scented candles gutter.
The night I went mad, she said, That’s none of your beeswax.
But it is, it is. When she was mad her awful violet eyes would glitter.
I want to make my own list. I wish I’d never ever kissed
her. Wish I’d missed. Like in bowling. Straight into the gutter.
**
Temp
Welcome, sir, to the firm of Love, Goode,
Firm & Handshake. Law isn’t a game, but
“Water Grenade Killer” is the name of the lame
position you were brought in to fill. First it was
death from above, then death from behind.
Where do those things you say come from:
I believe my body is a-okay because of love?!
It’s never okay to use a keystroke recorder,
but I suppose it’s okay that you stood there
that way, nylons in hand like coiled black snakes.
Management is inflexible on one rule: absolutely no
eye patches. Ever since you showed up with that
flimsy excuse & inexplicably convex Visitor ID,
I spend half my time trying to get your attention
& the other half dying to deflect it. After
that last round of Pin the Tail on the Intern at
the tail end of our after-hours cocktail party
in the boss’s office, I passed out, exhausted by
your bullying questions: which is better? Land-,
sea-, or cityscape? Someone snuck in & replaced
our mix tape. See—if you hit rewind, you’ll hear
the greatest hits of Schenectady. The wind
has done something to your tie, it’s green &
strangled like a kudzu vine. The air is mangled,
tangled. I can’t breathe in here. Are those
the hands of an angel holding my hair?
Throwing up, I think, it’s just like me to think
this is so unlike me, this thick upheaval.
These short pants & dress socks. Leave it
to a lovable dick like you to pick based on
which cost more: the prick suit, the tracksuit
or the asshole suit? Which is harder to wear?
When you’re away I feel like an incomplete
deck of cards. When you’re near, I want to
cut myself in half, fold over double. You
show me how it’s done when it comes to
inspiring fear, wrecking towns & capsizing
ships. If I could speak I’d tell you
what a joy it’s been to have you here.
**
Rondolet
Your plight is boring.
I remembered to bring the gum.
Your plight is boring.
Your face: in flight, diasporing.
Your slight mouth asking: “How come?”
Essentially sucking your thumb.
Your plight is boring.
**
VIII.
She wanted to grow up & live in a fizzy beau-monde
kind of beautiful world, a rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose
kind of world. No room in this world for identity crises—
room exclusively for beauty which has no use. Beauty as ruse.
Celestial versus terrestrial. Who had time to decide?
No time in this world for choosing between a rose
& an aster. The stars are what they are, & they are
faceless disasters. What was the name of the ruse
she used to use? The Ruse of the Empty City?
Cool electric city where in the morning one star rose
to illumine the empty. It was a dastardly trick.
Sick innovation. Slick execution. No visible bruise.
**
Rondolet
When I was young
I needed everyone. Really.
When I was young
I hung out. I had a quick tongue.
Sharp. I rejected the silly.
Never still. Pretty as a lily.
When I was young.
**
Second Person Omnipotent
Open your eyes: I live on I Street & this
is my bird’s-I-view. Everyone has the right
to use the first person, & everyone knows
college is a rite of middle classage. They said
Write what you know—what I know is
waitressing. So spare me the fatuous
apologia, but leave me the fat tip.
Sometimes it’s kind of fun to feel guilty,
but it’s not a sin to complain of your
amnesiac travails. When it came to
my funky synaesthesia there were no
words, so I had to bring in a visual aid.
My guidance counselor never understood
me when I spoke about the problem
of ultramarine & the threat of scarlet.
Though I’m usually a sucker for exchange
rates, I just don’t know about wearing
galloon & trying to pay bills in doubloons.
Ever since you bought those pantaloons
it’s King Richard’s Feste this, Renaissance
Faire that. Can’t we stay home? I’m sick of
jousting. Any time you go to a spectacle
you expect to be “slayed.” This willingness,
nay, desperateness to be impressed,
your notorious sense of wonder has long
been one of the world’s greatest blunders.
Something really wonderful is what I’d
say, if you’d only allow me to explain.
Back when tattoos were just a fantasy
I wanted cartoon bolts of lightning & a
moth—panting, flexing—the color of hair.
At first I thought it was my own reflection
but it was you all along: propping
open windows with a wooden crucifix.
When I say “you” I often mean “one.”
Sometimes you throw up when you see
the library. Sometimes when I try to go
to sleep I hear driving movie soundtracks
with a monster beat. I want what I drew on
the note to serve as an explanation,
not an excuse. Does overzealous self-
googling cause facial asymmetry? Your left
sideburn is half an inch longer than
your right now that you’re infamous.
I love that you stylized your ‘copter
after the famous Lovecraft spacecraft,
& as for your new blonde entourage,
I give it a nine. I’m not afraid of change,
or stray bullets from the shooting range.
The sound it emits, a high-pitched
whine, has power over them. Children are
awestruck as the eye towers over them.
I like explanations more than images.
**
XIV.
Nothing happens nowhere. You have to set a setting.
Unless you want nothing to happen. That means no sex—
no sex in a bed, no sex in a car, on the floor, on top
of the washer or even the dryer. No sex at all. Not even text-
book sex of the boringest kind: no Tab A & no Slot B.
I’ll call you a liar if you say you don’t think about sex
all day. Everybody thinks about sex all day, I know
that’s a fact. I have textual evidence. I saw it in a text
on Textual Healing. I picked it up at the Bookplex
& while I was at it I picked up the clerk. We had sex
beneath the “Summer Must-Reads” table. It was hot—
a conquest with no subtext, even taken out of context.
**
return to sawbuck 1.2
**
Elisa Gabbert holds degrees from Rice University and Emerson College . She is a reader for Ploughshares and an editor of Absent. Her recent work appears or will appear in journals including LIT, No Tell Motel, Kulture Vulture, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, RealPoetik, H_NGM_N, Redivider, and Shampoo. A chapbook, Thanks for Sending the Engine, is available from Kitchen Press.
Kathleen Rooney's first book is Reading With Oprah ( University of Arkansas, 2005). Her poems have appeared recently in AGNI On-line, Smartish Pace, and Crab Orchard Review. Her essay "Live Nude Girl" is forthcoming in Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (Random House, 2006).
More collaborations have appeared or will appear in Foursquare, Cake Train, Elimae, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Past Simple, Dead Horse Review, & Dusie.
**
II.
She kept a chamois-soft list of Things That Set My Heart Aflutter
& she sent it in a letter, the envelope encrusted with ruby glitter.
The fire-engine sound. The baby-sitter. Her trusty mechanical pencil
w/ the .5 mm lead scraped the rough paper: Rainwater in the gutter.
A post-script warning: I've seen a side of you I plan to exploit from now on.
I want to be fearless. The sky above my hammock snows glitter.
The night we met she said I don’t believe in making plans. Her pristine hands
hovered like lovely hovercraft & made my scented candles gutter.
The night I went mad, she said, That’s none of your beeswax.
But it is, it is. When she was mad her awful violet eyes would glitter.
I want to make my own list. I wish I’d never ever kissed
her. Wish I’d missed. Like in bowling. Straight into the gutter.
**
Temp
Welcome, sir, to the firm of Love, Goode,
Firm & Handshake. Law isn’t a game, but
“Water Grenade Killer” is the name of the lame
position you were brought in to fill. First it was
death from above, then death from behind.
Where do those things you say come from:
I believe my body is a-okay because of love?!
It’s never okay to use a keystroke recorder,
but I suppose it’s okay that you stood there
that way, nylons in hand like coiled black snakes.
Management is inflexible on one rule: absolutely no
eye patches. Ever since you showed up with that
flimsy excuse & inexplicably convex Visitor ID,
I spend half my time trying to get your attention
& the other half dying to deflect it. After
that last round of Pin the Tail on the Intern at
the tail end of our after-hours cocktail party
in the boss’s office, I passed out, exhausted by
your bullying questions: which is better? Land-,
sea-, or cityscape? Someone snuck in & replaced
our mix tape. See—if you hit rewind, you’ll hear
the greatest hits of Schenectady. The wind
has done something to your tie, it’s green &
strangled like a kudzu vine. The air is mangled,
tangled. I can’t breathe in here. Are those
the hands of an angel holding my hair?
Throwing up, I think, it’s just like me to think
this is so unlike me, this thick upheaval.
These short pants & dress socks. Leave it
to a lovable dick like you to pick based on
which cost more: the prick suit, the tracksuit
or the asshole suit? Which is harder to wear?
When you’re away I feel like an incomplete
deck of cards. When you’re near, I want to
cut myself in half, fold over double. You
show me how it’s done when it comes to
inspiring fear, wrecking towns & capsizing
ships. If I could speak I’d tell you
what a joy it’s been to have you here.
**
Rondolet
Your plight is boring.
I remembered to bring the gum.
Your plight is boring.
Your face: in flight, diasporing.
Your slight mouth asking: “How come?”
Essentially sucking your thumb.
Your plight is boring.
**
VIII.
She wanted to grow up & live in a fizzy beau-monde
kind of beautiful world, a rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose
kind of world. No room in this world for identity crises—
room exclusively for beauty which has no use. Beauty as ruse.
Celestial versus terrestrial. Who had time to decide?
No time in this world for choosing between a rose
& an aster. The stars are what they are, & they are
faceless disasters. What was the name of the ruse
she used to use? The Ruse of the Empty City?
Cool electric city where in the morning one star rose
to illumine the empty. It was a dastardly trick.
Sick innovation. Slick execution. No visible bruise.
**
Rondolet
When I was young
I needed everyone. Really.
When I was young
I hung out. I had a quick tongue.
Sharp. I rejected the silly.
Never still. Pretty as a lily.
When I was young.
**
Second Person Omnipotent
Open your eyes: I live on I Street & this
is my bird’s-I-view. Everyone has the right
to use the first person, & everyone knows
college is a rite of middle classage. They said
Write what you know—what I know is
waitressing. So spare me the fatuous
apologia, but leave me the fat tip.
Sometimes it’s kind of fun to feel guilty,
but it’s not a sin to complain of your
amnesiac travails. When it came to
my funky synaesthesia there were no
words, so I had to bring in a visual aid.
My guidance counselor never understood
me when I spoke about the problem
of ultramarine & the threat of scarlet.
Though I’m usually a sucker for exchange
rates, I just don’t know about wearing
galloon & trying to pay bills in doubloons.
Ever since you bought those pantaloons
it’s King Richard’s Feste this, Renaissance
Faire that. Can’t we stay home? I’m sick of
jousting. Any time you go to a spectacle
you expect to be “slayed.” This willingness,
nay, desperateness to be impressed,
your notorious sense of wonder has long
been one of the world’s greatest blunders.
Something really wonderful is what I’d
say, if you’d only allow me to explain.
Back when tattoos were just a fantasy
I wanted cartoon bolts of lightning & a
moth—panting, flexing—the color of hair.
At first I thought it was my own reflection
but it was you all along: propping
open windows with a wooden crucifix.
When I say “you” I often mean “one.”
Sometimes you throw up when you see
the library. Sometimes when I try to go
to sleep I hear driving movie soundtracks
with a monster beat. I want what I drew on
the note to serve as an explanation,
not an excuse. Does overzealous self-
googling cause facial asymmetry? Your left
sideburn is half an inch longer than
your right now that you’re infamous.
I love that you stylized your ‘copter
after the famous Lovecraft spacecraft,
& as for your new blonde entourage,
I give it a nine. I’m not afraid of change,
or stray bullets from the shooting range.
The sound it emits, a high-pitched
whine, has power over them. Children are
awestruck as the eye towers over them.
I like explanations more than images.
**
XIV.
Nothing happens nowhere. You have to set a setting.
Unless you want nothing to happen. That means no sex—
no sex in a bed, no sex in a car, on the floor, on top
of the washer or even the dryer. No sex at all. Not even text-
book sex of the boringest kind: no Tab A & no Slot B.
I’ll call you a liar if you say you don’t think about sex
all day. Everybody thinks about sex all day, I know
that’s a fact. I have textual evidence. I saw it in a text
on Textual Healing. I picked it up at the Bookplex
& while I was at it I picked up the clerk. We had sex
beneath the “Summer Must-Reads” table. It was hot—
a conquest with no subtext, even taken out of context.
**
return to sawbuck 1.2
**
Elisa Gabbert holds degrees from Rice University and Emerson College . She is a reader for Ploughshares and an editor of Absent. Her recent work appears or will appear in journals including LIT, No Tell Motel, Kulture Vulture, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, RealPoetik, H_NGM_N, Redivider, and Shampoo. A chapbook, Thanks for Sending the Engine, is available from Kitchen Press.
Kathleen Rooney's first book is Reading With Oprah ( University of Arkansas, 2005). Her poems have appeared recently in AGNI On-line, Smartish Pace, and Crab Orchard Review. Her essay "Live Nude Girl" is forthcoming in Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (Random House, 2006).
More collaborations have appeared or will appear in Foursquare, Cake Train, Elimae, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Past Simple, Dead Horse Review, & Dusie.
