Jeff Little (datathin@aol.com) has appeared recently in Exquisite Corpse, and juxta, and has a new chapbook out, _buckshot & sammy davis_ from Undulating Bedsheets Productions.




chin music

baseball, psychoses & duchamp


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outside it's raining stained glass mists back & forth
blown across conrad street opened & glistening
a glazed ham on a plate
w/backhoes jackhammerings moveable feasts
its gas & water lines heaped by the curb. i'm
grabbed a mustachioed cartoon glove 4 fingers by the ear
& thrown into a closet
an otis elevator plummeting rocks tossed
a window concentric circles in a pond i'm carted
off to the Lost Islands of Tongue a horse's ass darkly
wagging & strangely silent
the critical constants coursing the bloodstream
like baseball, chin music & headstones in queues
along the sidestreets rain the drops fracturing oceans
& an old bird in her sunday best daffodils jammed
in her hat barehands a baltimore chop
3rd baseside arms raised to the crowd's
adoration. telephones demand much, they ring.


****


ships i'm beached as ever conrad its inner workings
a wristwatch beaten w/a ball
peen hammer spikes honed meanwhile
& mitts broken in, no need for any shrunken head
elvis-hipped incantations it's astroturf, o ye
cursed & tongue-lashed plastic grass
grant 5 full be beneficent
no glee-clubbed anthems please & howzabout a .400
hitter huh ted williams!join the navy be gob or tar don't
soil your radiant whites on battlefields
even if they are grass & dirt
float on the water like a cork! & if this is a poor
man's last roll of the bones or worse poor
posture then what of it?let it ring! housekeys
turn specific tumblers i'm the skeleton of keys i turn
many locks cesar tovar the 9 positions fielded in 1 game.


****








a triple play
around
the horn turned
by the mariners
the confines the memorial
kublai khan metrodome
they paint
the grass a deep green
it never needs mown
& all the fish there are keepers.

"rain don't cut it, what we put down"--agnes.


****


real life just like life runny eggs the bituminous roadways
of toast bills white bathtubs brimming suds
aren't there enough drownings
isn't baseball enough? the alou bothers
kneejerk retort:

"GIVE ME 9 INNINGS OR GIVE ME DEATH!"

all aboard her majesty's ship the MIMETIC
goddammit which building is yours? ronald reagan
you've become a literature & a celluloid horse
there's 2 on 2 out & a 3-2 count



the wind up the payoff
pitch...& still you've got "ring around the collar."


****


the tidy bowl man he's sinking
his boat's been hit
for god's sake toss him a painting! "oh
the humanity" unwinding twin strands
of spaghetti & improperly cooked
they rise like cobras from a plastic
plate teeming pasta
& speak at length to me
of moderation & the evils of drink
but how often do you pitch a perfect game?


****


water coursing below concrete the other network
the sewers its lamps
like canary suns kept pent in wire cages
drilled into walls for when it backs
up it clots it gathers in pools
rallying itself through
the other neighborhoods beneath ballpark
schuylkill & brine. in the bullpen the stopper
warms sockets trained on his yogi & drying
the aspirin tablet
on his pantleg he whirls into motion
& toilets perhaps thousands in unison flush
the porcelain crescendo it's descending nude
a bicycle wheel mounted & spinning upon a stool.


****






still life w/castanets


i.
an iron lung pedaling a stationary bike
on a box of wheat chex, cayenne

ii.
{i used to know what was what. a door
was open / a door was closed. then
duchamp walked clean through a brick
wall carrying his chemistry set
& afterwards even the sun smelled strange.}

iii.
peppers!& the really big things to say,
like "america", or "ontological", as if
"mint julep" couldn't cover more ground.

iv.
sheet rock & the vestigal errata of a limb.

v.
that night i used an industrial grade
soap on the dishes,
but i was in trouble here, & i knew it.

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the enemy within


a bandolier of escaped presidents classified robberies as radio-controlled fires before seeking the terrified security of sales. then during the morning of the calmly hiding away, the bicycle returned the receptionist's chest to the switchboard of vice. this confirmed only that the pipe and 11 electronics were involved. fortunately, the rare plant pursued san diego like a crowd gathering in a small guard's mind, and later that day the former husband of another desk involved visited the estranged building of the shotgun upstairs.

from nation's business / february 1995 / p. 18


ossuaries & ozone


slow to the flame & the written word. atmosphere it cannot explain away the bone trawlers or this drill press of stone though the ozone smells like a wet coat left to the vitriol of the summer sun. i possess the logic the buttered logic of a scavenger newly arrived on these plastic plains all i demand is a wall or a limestone cave to call my own an infraction against the necessity of time. the wind carries light it carries seed like a bucket of balls & i cannot help but think of you kneeling b/4 a platefull of oranges & your wondering why. to dig w/charcoal for drinking water in a dessicated shelf daily, slow to the flame yes & the written word the therefore of a jawbox an alien jawbox w/out teeth it makes for a fine lampshade or half-remembered ancestor but there's no wisdom in a hen's tooth if you're as dry as a stalk of utah & assured of a lasting death. it's not enough to be simply alone in the corkscrew of your days but to be utterly so that accounts for this my lack of teeth & relative misunderstanding of photosynthesis & the politics of approach. i mark my time questioning blades of grass about their silence fully certain that it's so--i move--as does everything around me, & what i'm left w/to what i trawl through is illegible a piecemeal an unknowable covenant of the cold.

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