WATCH

let’s see: look up neologisms
— your Detroit Super K SereNgeti —
spam: a non-edible substance
(sometimes rhymes with alphabets)

the blue numbers don’t count, they flicker
lament the yellow tower’s upcoming disintegration

O the burned-out shells, the streets

we should play games instead
the stones see the sun
just a single hum
just one noise

& all the rest: so quiet soon so quiet

                        *

the light fading in & out
floral leaves in the snow
crease the sentimental ticklish nose

your task is to be one of the dilated
trudging through falling ice
so many gerunds so little time

did the tree grow & cover the window?
or just in time we anticipated the

stop getting all twisted up
you’ve got some nerve
at a time like this you should confront some “real issues”
but the engine’s running the door’s open

 

PROPOSITION

unlike the leaves lost to the night
those shouts along the sun-speckled canals
the dripping piercing potted wall
— this is important: unlike the raisin-studded afternoon
these side streets polished with horsehair brushes
   — my heart —

the palace of justice blockaded by pacifists
the steep rattling midnight stairway
the headless cough seeping through a sea-green chasm
the ubiquitous mysterious triplet crosses

— the commonsense thing is to say “it’s normal”
just one foot in front of the other like a gazelle —

but they were heard somewhere
these shifts in your breathing
the directionless movement was a sign

 

A SETTLING STORM


Everything is shining tinkling like crystal
or a residue of pianos through the glass
history calls up the old arguments
wasted moments breathing in old air & salt

crumpled faces suddenly assault the ears
arrogant & flashing like those concerns we'd rather
   forget
those pronouncements our higher ideals
drifting away in a mist of necessity

only? everywhere the wrong questions
up above everyone acts the same as usual
their clothes dangling in the wind



KNOWLEDGE WAKES YOU UP:
WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?


the moon drops eerily into the sea-soaked sky
the seagulls are not friendly

it’s relaxing: dry green
cries along shrouded cliffs
the steps end at the crucifixed border

& that structure? a position was a shelter
now a dump made orange by wind
made over by droppings
not unlike our now-fabled moon

                *

— the plane dives toward the sun
its shadow prances among waves

beneath the citrus coverlet
along the sheer cliffs
in the mouth of the soft sea
— teach the kitchen parrot
to say fuck you in 3 languages —
“the reward of that agonizing difference
for all its concretion precision oneness
is desperately difficult to communicate” —

get your face gussied up
& stroll along the strand
the signs bordering our movements

                *

say: snoring through plaster
“this blazing white, unchanging respite”
flanks the gritty closed shutters
held against the double-breasted tide
its salty crustaceous vapors
its echoing footsteps

alongside the azure-bathed dock
the unremembered ideal
Hollywood-style horror picture houses
— yellow ballast black body-suited surfers
empty water bottles —
pale plaster debris escapes
— & just east of the afternoon green
what passes, these days, for the new —

                *

& the “sensuous concrete”
& the rising white birds who’ve stopped feeding on
     nature
now on our turf in our sandbox
collect pretty shells
& use them to ignite dreams

                *

& you’ve come back after so many years
the morning gulls dance above the harbor
the fickle sun visits sails at rest
flickers in your hair your shining grass eyes

— to worry about names or the continuing tale is useless
we’re not sitting among blue verses
your nasal dreams like sea-painted pebbles
& the plain bread of this country —
 

Copyright © Geoffrey Jacques 2007

Geoffrey Jacques teaches in the English Department of Lehman College of the City University of New York (CUNY). His latest book of poems is Just For a Thrill (Wayne State University Press, 2005). His book of criticism, A Change in the Weather: Modernist Imagination, African American Imaginary, is forthcoming from the University of Massachusetts Press. That book explores the catalytic and interactive relationship between literary modernism and African American culture, and the effects of that relationship on modernist poetic language. His previous poetry collections include Hunger and Other Poems (1993) and Suspended Knowledge (1998).

Jacques has published widely on literature, politics and culture. His work has appeared in many periodicals, including Art Forum International, The Black Scholar, Radical Teacher, NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, Black Issues Book Review, Cineaste, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. His most recent publications include essays in several art exhibition catalogues, most notably “Life Forces and Installations: The Art of Lorenzo Pace” (New York: Skylight Gallery, 2002), “Quiet As It’s Kept” (Vienna: Christine König Galerie, 2002), “Galerie Huit: American Artists in Paris, 1950-52” (New York: Studio 18 Gallery, 2002), and “Drippings, Pools, Curtains: Andreas Reiter Raabe” (Vienna: Andreas Reiter Raabe, 2003). His essay, “Blindness, Abstraction, and ‘Double Consciousness’: the Critical Imaginary and the Sources of Modern Art,” appeared in 2004 in Something to Look Forward To: An Exhibition Featuring Abstract Art by 22 Distinguished Americans of African Descent. This catalogue was published by The Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College.

Jacques has taught at several colleges, including the University of Massachusetts Boston, Hunter College, the New York School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, and at Parsons School of Design.