A Bernadette Mayer Reader Read online

  on his son’s possession of his wife

  DOOR:

  Catullus, that’s not all they say,

  and not just in Verona,

  but throughout all of Brixia,

  amata mater meae,

  along Chinea’s watchtower

  wherever the river Mella flows

  everybody knows

  she’s done it with

  Postumius and Cornelius

  CATULLUS:

  Now here someone will say, What? Door! How did you know

  all about us without ever leaving the threshold? Without

  hearing people talking in secret away from you? Aren’t

  you just fixed under a small beam to shut and close as

  much as usual and to open and expose what’s going on

  in the domicile?

  DOOR:

  I don’t have to walk

  I can hear her talk in a low vioce

  about all she does to her maids

  She’s not aware I have eyes and ears

  I could mention one gentleman by name but I won’t

  though I can tell you he is tall

  without lifting his red eyebrows

  He was in court lately defending himself

  but the pregnancy was false.

  with Don Yorty

  Two from the Greek Anthology

  You mother

  You’re so fucking pregnant

  But not feeling contrary

  You turn over to have some fun

  I’m rowing you

  Over your great ocean

  This labor’s not small either—

  I throw you overboard when

  I come in your beautiful ass

  I’m giving instructions

  In how men love

  —Dioscorides #54

  You sing and play the lyre and I’m on fire

  I want to strum the whole fucking universe

  you know I want to loosen your strings

  —Anonymous #99

  with Rosemary Mayer

  The Incorporation of

  Sophia’s Cereal

  Two mad men and to mad men what poetry is

  Fine lines written dumbfounded and high

  & equally always the syncretistic goings-on

  because everyone is furnishing everything

  With the body they already have to live in

  Beyond even believing in living, there was

  This morning’s bowl of puffed wheat, the bananas

  Were the teachers, the cereals were the kids

  And I Sophia said was the giant and

  My spoon was my spoon

  Max Carries the One

  Dont look at me, look at your own self

  In the given weather it’s raining harder

  The world is round & falling down, so rocks

  Look out! it’s nice to be exact as she & he

  Fall like rain to a little bit lower than

  Young & watching something without participating

  Where you begin or above like snow flying up

  The curve uncriticized by us, the child

  The dumb drips exist when the sun

  Beyond the stupid rectangles is the ancient flower

  Shines on them? comes out? so what? criss-cross?

  Counting nineteen humans plus eight trees equals

  Twenty-seven living beings and that’s all

  And one is watching this something, you carry the one

  Ode on

  Everyone is dead handwritten

  We keep writing anyway

  There is a sought picture finish

  Parentheses cross out hamlets

  Arma virumque cano

  I feint in imitation of a proven

  You arch art act you do not

  Belog to a particulate selx

  We plan at the lakes & places

  Let’s hark to your ass daddy

  So firm even without dactylls in it

  Then meditate as dumb daughters

  Laughing to be fooling with our

  Female fellows, Father

  If only you could see us

  First turn to me. . . .

  First turn to me after a shower,

  you come inside me sideways as always

  in the morning you ask me to be on top of you,

  then we take a nap, we’re late for school

  you arrive at night inspired and drunk,

  there is no reason for our clothes

  we take a bath and lie down facing each other,

  then later we turn over, finally you come

  we face each other and talk about childhood

  as soon as I touch your penis I wind up coming

  you stop by in the morning to say hello

  we sit on the bed indian fashion not touching

  in the middle of the night you come home

  from a nightclub, we don’t get past the bureau

  next day it’s the table, and after that the chair

  because I want so much to sit you down & suck your cock

  you ask me to hold your wrists, but then when I

  touch your neck with both my hands you come

  it’s early morning and you decide to very quietly

  come on my knee because of the children

  you’ve been away at school for centuries, your girlfriend

  has left you, you come four times before morning

  you tell me you masturbated in the hotel before you came by

  I don’t believe it, I serve the lentil soup naked

  I massage your feet to seduce you, you are reluctant,

  my feet wind up at your neck and ankles

  you try not to come too quickly

  also, you dont want to have a baby

  I stand up from the bath, you say turn around

  and kiss the backs of my legs and my ass

  you suck my cunt for a thousand years, you are weary

  at last I remember my father’s anger and I come

  you have no patience and come right away

  I get revenge and won’t let you sleep all night

  we make out for so long we can’t remember how

  we wound up hitting our heads against the wall

  I lie on my stomach, you put one hand under me

  and one hand over me and that way can love me

  you appear without notice and with flowers

  I fall for it and we become missionaries

  you say you can only fuck me up the ass when you are drunk

  so we try it sober in a room at the farm

  we lie together one night, exhausted couplets

  and don’t make love, does this mean we’ve had enough?

  watching t.v. we wonder if each other wants to

  interrupt the plot; later I beg you to read to me

  like the Chinese we count 81 thrusts

  then 9 more out loud till we both come

  I come three times before you do

  and then it seems you’re mad and never will

  it’s only fair for a woman to come more

  think of all the times they didn’t care

  I Am Told I Must Bomb

  the Tappan Zee Bridge

  There was a sumptuousness that could be shared like

  sexual knowledge with children who’ve never made love,

  once knowing everything it didnt matter that everything

  was so known: I was 35 when she was born, so in 1945

  she’d then be ten.

  It’s in the movies there is knowledge where is the time, he

  said your family is my family, I like love, everything seen

  repeat you’re my family family brief closer to my

  like love everything seen version of scary my lost,

  I am told my lost family now it belongs to you to you

  in the store we know nothing but that occasionally they

  find like love everything bring snakes & lizards to you

  no ki
dding to improve their differences, I like you

  better storeowners than they who so giraffe you, I

  am your multitudinous free family from nowhere, very

  right waters

  scifi lee ann

  you are you are since you love to be

  identifiable things you are the perilous

  chance lover of the splashing blue finder (that is hell)

  you dont wear a hologram or safety pin you are

  I take them one by one both dude & dudette

  you are the peristalsis of all our necklaces

  you are the back & forth & to Mrs confused you

  are backwards the ending is faulty you are funny

  but it is impossible even the early spring moths leap around

  you are the possibles I wait to leap to the floor to see

  that you are ordinary but in the summer of love we get up again

  you are evanescing great but with a language problem you

  are a big earthquake survivors taken under martial law,

  comma, revolution finally, you are in the bathroom again

  you are written there is no wild & just as i say that

  you are wild you are good and beginning I sit on you you

  are ending in details that is the story no one knows

  you are absent as the electronic Hitler you are scifi

  you are yes but betrayed by robots you are roses you are

  vague doctor’s journals you are an alien or two or three

  aliens you are the clothing and the blankets fall with mind control

  you are we put them back, my precognitive computer game, you

  are Arthur C. Clarke, you are the universal ranger you play

  gravity soccer & cosmic ball I dont quite get the rest

  you are I’ll be gone soon you are a book a cure for cancer

  you are cute and this is in order you are poets in the bathtub

  you are levels of weird eternal life via something you are

  picking up girls with awkward language plus you are boyfriend

  you are dilemma but what one you are animals change things

  you are back to school with good writing you are inside a

  video or the computer game you are good at end what is your name?

  you are no one will see a virtuoso there is no story

  you are can you carry the baby elephant around you are living

  under the ocean you are all at once the seventeen & the thirteen

  who might or will convene with prepuce side of who knows what

  Sonnet

  Suck me my virgin

  because we are welcome

  as the casualties of the poor

  move your cock sideways

  & sit your cunt around

  let’s not go to the movie

  it’s too crowded for everybody

  Tiddly Winks, World Map, Clash

  Roger Rabbit, Mouse Trap

  Solarquest, the Ice Cube game

  Past hordes of girls & boys

  Some of them are ours

  Lesbians wake and go out to walk

  All mothers together, the poison hydrangea

  Marie You Must Meet Cristina at

  the Music School Tomorrow and

  Not at Her Home

  for Fanny Howe

  See the way the water chills the glass is not a story

  written as fast as is said you should see the moon standing

  out in front of the animals who just walked in onto the

  ledges of the . . . no

  They sit still as the squirrel paws to its mouth making

  a sound of speaking after coming into the house, some of

  the animals we see do not exist as

  We drink warm water in the living room & a tracing is

  made on our faces of the singing of the low & high notes

  of all the failings of two dimensions like a chair that

  lacks confidence to seat you at a concert of three kinds

  of music summing up the work of the century with big bands

  in the middle

  Of the structure of water we are waiting in the wings in

  & I push you into but you are too big or dead to fall

  & you pick me up & carry me forward like some kinds of

  sex and on my head

  I am wearing my South African map-kerchief & the one

  animal who chooses to move or attack is a wild snake whose

  fangs we disconnect from the flesh of a person & then

  the young women

  Get together to put on the long right-handed glove that

  carries a string for diving so when the descent from the

  church’s stainless steel disc set up as a decimated and

  slanted pool platform is made, the string will still be

  seen as the diver disappears

  Into the part where you can finally see the non-sacred room

  or school as a girl by the side of the underwater cameras.

  It’s good to swim in a church in a partial ellipse of its old

  pool destroyed by what is built to interrupt its floors

  & now we are gone just like many have houses to sleep in

  with doors

  I Want to Talk Now about

  Reason, Riddle

  Meanwhile there is these reasons I keep thinking

  that wheretofore nevertheless despite I’d like

  to know about everything except death’s dumb bite

  without which we can all ride for quite a long while

  I dont think it’s tubular to write not no more

  the only write I like is change the world ridden

  so here’s this riddle:

  Gorbachev has a long one,

  Bush has a very short one, the Pope doesnt need one

  & Madonna doesnt have one at all???

  Answer:

  Therefore there might be some importance in not writing forever

  therefore to say never will I write till this world is changed

  therefore to write till this world is changed without ceasing

  therefore to write unceasing no matter what begin again

  I Wish You Were Up Late, Gerard

  His grandmother’s dead right on the verge of

  My loving him more than’s allowable

  Lucky I pour water over her body & worry

  That hot’s inexact or too late: my children’s grades

  Scattered all over the table despite the threat:

  I didnt pay the last bill; they wouldnt send them

  Amidst the mail

  More threats than ever, I want the cure now

  I wont live without it, Max has never made love

  To get to important love without what, please tell me

  With the knowledge I now have, I dont want to write

  Instead to make magic or to pay

  Better magicians than I for the work without a serious

  Alphabet A to Z 0 to 9 as the forethought of freedom

  Let me know

  The Guild

  On the exhaustive forest’s farm

  where wasted apples knock the fruit

  from the staghorn sumac trees all night

  she dreamed I might be dead

  so she could have him in theory & then she

  stole her sister’s new girlfriend away.

  He goes to bed early to sabotage our privacy

  leaving me alone to talk and play with her.

  (Also Antonio who wears loud flowered pink

  & blue shorts & shirts says he likes her).

  Late that night Joe & Linda’s loud party

  wakes him up but I wont talk to him at first

  —maybe I should really be being mad at her.

  Then he tells me he’s jealous of how she loves me

  And that’s why he suddenly left the room.

  This was the same day I got halfway down

  a new path by the pond and
turned back.

  Now Nicky’s just come home with two sixguns

  from Wild West City which isn’t far from here.

  Death Is a Cambric Fabric

  I’ve had my portion of prison

  Ridden with person, desire’s poison

  Desire’s person is an unruled idiot

  I will wash the glasses now

  The person’s poison is a position

  You dont have to cook to eat the food

  Pay the rent it’s not a portion of the person

  Cant pay the portion of rent—you’re a person in prison

  Plenty of poisons in forms of potions

  Available to all to allay

  Deep emotions, that is, no agility to pay

  The person who put you in the prison position

  Of your city, your house in it

  Your own poison landlord, poison govt

  Poison company country prison on this poison earth

  No portion of which is for each person

  The fun is over it’s getting dark

  In the city & in the park

  To crack the times

  We are opposed in mind

  Unwilling & disinclined

  Too much sex entwines your hair

  I dont know if the dawn is here dear

  I want some grownup shoes

  Like my female children have

  I want the dawn to go back

  To the darker femaler blue

  It was just past sunset so that

  Another isolated night can ensue, we never

  Do anything bad, do we?

  Hi ensuing logic

  Please leave a message after

  The sound of its intention

  If you press the star button

  When you get the machine

  You dont ever have to listen to the message again

  Sonnet

  a little tiny poem

  leaves us all alone

  now that you’re not here

  dont ever come home

  my cruelty only comes

  from death’s elaborate tombs

  i talked to all your friends

  talked to them one by one

  they all agreed you are

  a handsome child of nature

  if so come here

  as quickly as you can

  if not I will unbraid