Ron Silliman

Ron Silliman has written and edited some 24 books of poetry and criticism. Most recently, the National Poetry Foundation published an edition of his anthology In the American Tree with a new afterword. This fall, Salt will republish his booklength long poem Tjanting. Silliman is a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He lives in Chester County (west of Philadelphia, south of Valley Forge) with his wife and twin boys and is a market analyst in the computer industry.

This is a reprint of a work originally published as a Tuumba chapbook in 1978 and most recently as a limited edition chapbook by the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center/Boog Literature, Spring 2002 (indeed, it was a Pushcart Prize work in '79, listed as fiction in the hardback edition before Ron got them to change it to poetry for the paperback).

Sitting Up, Standing, Taking Steps

High gray sky. A large wood table with only a green bottle of "white" Rhine

wine atop it (empty). An open umbrella upside down in one corner of the

room. Ritz crackers topped with cream cheese and, beside them, crayolas.

Gray plastic bottle of lemon ammonia on its side on the green tile in back

of the toilet. My red-and-black checked CPO jacket atop a guitar in my

rocking chair. Butter on the knife. Dobermans and Danes. The walkin and his

cutout. A callus around the ring. Slice of toast on a saucer on a corner of

the wood table. The low fast foreign car. The girl with green eyes. The

venetian blind. One day of Crash City. Water table. The fatal florist in the

forest. The thickness of my mother's ankles. Poise of the pen. Yellow Buick.

The numbers and kinds of irreducible acts. Cloud shadow on the still bay.

Crips and walkies. Black sock. Extension and the nature of existence. The

transfer point. Red orange. Solidity. Fog. The green felt-top table in the

tavern light. The geometry of cues. His sister. The olive trees of

Sacramento Street. Chipped cup. The submarine on the horizon in the sunset.

State of null karma. Undefined descriptive predicate. Little lobes. Some

handsome hands. Statue of a dog with a fish in its mouth. Something about

cow- boys in bus depots. The real heat. Great sloping grove of clover. The

bell curve. Woman in a pink blouse. Amber, ochre. The action faction or the

praxis axis. Chaps tick. Cheesy smell of a dog stool. Hiss of traffic.

Sunset debris. Jackalope. Pudding cups. Bruise on her thigh. Crab grass.

Eggplant in the shape of a face or dolphin. Blue bench. Prairie apple.

Albino with a beard. Hard edge. Pornographic motherhood. Chess people. World

behavior. Knuckle archives. Sausage. Saucer. Long legged women on platform,

short skirts, streaks of blonde in their hair, lipstick a deep, deep red.

Itch of the coccyx or the cuticle wall. A net of concrete atop the planet,

streets and roads and boulevards. Oily leather skin of the shopping bag

lady. Experimental sheep. Moldy towel. Hair in a shag, with large white

earrings. As tho under a footbridge. A small man in a big brimmed hat. In a

heliport by the sea wall in the fog. A new white pen to write with. The bus

to the suburbs. A store full of reptiles. Rows of white headstones. Toll

bridge. The eyes of the bus driver in the rearview mirror. A small mole on

the female stranger's upper lip. An old Chinese woman with black slacks on

under her dress. Helicopter, harbor, filmy morning light. A green suit, a

white shirt and a loud tie or a gray suit, a blue shirt and a striped, quiet

tie. Three kinds of prose. Color films of dead people. Burned out buses

among backlot dillweed, Military Ocean Terminal. Deer fetus wine of China.

Pigeons in the eaves of a Queen Anne's tower. All toes of identical length.

Odor of stale soap, bus depot john. Abductor muscles. The bitterness of

women. The problem of truth in fiction. Abandoned railroad cars on a siding

by the rock quarry. Advanced life support unit. Geometry of the personal.

Midget in a large felt hat. Fork lift. Abandoned industrial trackside

cafeteria amid dillweed stalks. My droor thing. Corridor of condos.

Post-nasal drip. Hot hamster. Sand in the notebook. A salt-water cave.

Eroded ruins. The bend in the pelican's wing-spread. Algae in a tidepool. An

old windowless house of concrete, its door rusted off, with nothing inside

it but odor and an open safe. Pepper on the eggs. Jaws. One of several small

silver bracelets. A thin layer of sand, a coarse film, in my nose and hair.

Under a willow beside the pile of raked leaves, the lawn mower in the

graveyard. Density or sleep. The Paradise Cafe. A small heap of grey, broken

bird wings. Puka shell necklace. The woman with the shawl or the woman with

the apple. The angle of the pile of unwashed plates. Red goose shoes. A

terrible dirigible incident. Natural gas pipeline. Lubricated prophylactic.

Legend of the Pony Express. Midmorning. Dark stools. Rice paper wafer.

Longer boat under the bridge. The brown boot. Bananas. This way. A

linguistic emulsion. Feedback. Radial tires in the mud. The constant

knocker. The bridge of the nose. A location or condition of the mind.

Prodder. Curlews and herons in the lagoon at low tide, the red sky of night,

sailor's delight, moss on the willow, shoes off, pebbles between toes.

Frigate. Ceramic blue star. Briar patch. Friend or lover. The long pier. A

system, an argot. The window in the windsurfer's sail. Geese of the lagoon.

Long shadows. A field of woven grass. A superficial, professional verbal

exchange. Outdoor basketball courts as a form of . sculpture. Sharp shadows

on the fennel that constitute a description of dawn. Article-starved

predicate. World of ski-boots. Root beer. Big damp grey dog. Panda plant,

ice plant, wandering Jew. Along the coast, on cots, in coats. A warm new

storm. Blue ink on a white page between red lines. Words after words. Chard.

The loose goose. The late dawn of December. Duck soup. A cheeselike

discharge in her vagina. The fat cat's flat hat. . Glass beads, tortoise

shell ring. Legendary bladder, legendary weak bladder. Stable, half-supple

string of terms and relations. Hang glider. Forgotten sentence. Deep blue

dome of sky above still grey plane of water. Between movies, not cinema, not

films, not here, between movies. Condo door awning. A not-fat dalmatian.

Schizo. Things to know versus things to do. Ochre school bus. The objects of

thought, qualities and relations. The chapter on things. Corn row hair

style. Shower or storm. Bozos, yoyos, turkeys, geeks. Slope-shouldered

fuckoff. Henry Africa's. Curlew, sandpiper, tern, gull, godwit. Swizzle

stick. Cuticle. Static electricity. Mauve. Tow- away zone. Blue mailbox.

Cabin cruiser. Itchy balls. Half-eaten apple. Helen Frankenthaler's newer

works. The Jello word for the day. Spurs. A duck that looks just like

Groucho. Banana-flavored taffy. Mirror image. A fire in the oil fields.

Motown. Spewn shrapnel-like remnants of a helicopter. Tripod. Cumshot.

Certain, possible, impossible. During. Herons about a boat hull at low tide.

Pink crayon, blue crayon. Fat black dog. Bloody earlobe. Faucets. A field of

clover over there. The towers of the bridge. The pillars. Odor of paper.

Orange and green quilt. Hair in an Afro-blowout. Golden saxophone. Key of C.

Tail of an afghan. Vapor trail in a light blue sky. Trace of a vapor trail.

Memory and imagination. New page. A park on a hillside. A valley full of

water, a bay. Green and round arid in pain. Toy boat. Kite in the shape of a

moth. Gray day. Slow trombones. Red lines. Gentle smell of dust. Duck pond

by the freeway. Bo Diddley's hat. The damaged guitar. Expository sentence.

More than this. Walnut desk in foodstamp office. Halfhour of videotape.

Boulevards. Studebaker. Blue-grey eyes. Not nouns. A series of ankles. An

investment. Phil Whalen's "platter of little feet." His shaved head, light

colored eye-brows, thin lips, wide ears. The precise odor of pavement. The

fog before dawn. The missing felt-tip pen. The ability. Kidney beans, pinto.

Inherent danger in. Ninth. Lithographers, associates. Spurs, chaps, myth.

The inflamed hangnail. As big as. Red goose shoes. Watermelon tattoo.

Hoosier state. Bean factory. Wart upon nose. Ice tea. Colorless dawn sky.

Sloop. Verb. One mean mastiff. Tugrope. Slide guitar. Man of no fortune.

Worm time. Macro-. Oat Willie's cappuccino. Towards words. Determiner.

Faucet. Tattoo of a watermelon. Light blue summer morning sky. Swordfish.

Seahorse. Recent problems in the general theory of karma. Revisionaries. His

class origin versus his class stand. One rim job. Butch. A lad with an Afro

blowout. A stinger. Number or doobie. Next to the last. Texaco, Arco, Exxon.

Garden Street, Treat Street, Canty Lane, Highland Place. Tarnal, Represa,

Corona, Stormdrawer, Marion, Butner, Steilacoom, Sandstone, Redwing, Starke.

Facials and manicures upstairs. Pronominal anaphor. The staggers, the

shudders, the White House horrors. Alcatraz shade and blind. The hustle, the

bump. Crash City. Neck, bridge, nut, fret. Meat rack. An attitude towards

the verbal. An old man in a straw hat in the shade with a Dr. Pepper. Yellow

mustard dispenser. Hotter, more hot. A deposit of red pepper on a lettuce

leaf. Horny high school students. The politically conscious meter maid.

Charred hill. Dry leaf. Cecil the seasick sea serpent, Rags the tiger.

Neighbor. Burnt eucalyptus. The first poem about Kefir. Capitol of North

Dakota. Turmoil. The sexually-active dental technician's very good friend's

larger but younger Spaniel. A stairway to heaven. Nancy and Sally and Suzy.

Kevin and Kirk. Kevin and Patty. Patty and Andy. Patty and Frank or Darrell.

Tony and Roberta. Frank again and Nora and Eric. Richie and Joan and Carol.

Aaron and a different Carol. Jesse and Sarah. Maxine or Ashleigh. Jeanne and

Peter. Fame as a subject. Fame as an object. Mister tooth decay. Ferry

terminal. Quarry. Hobo camp, the ranch. Population. Fluoride. Peonson's bald

head (pate). Cops or thieves or cops and thieves. The dry dock. Bison,

bison. Blue Capri. Still more pronominal anaphors. Her red fuzzy muff.

Ambivalence, an autobiography. Good buddy. Bachelors together. Hoop, rim,

backboard. Fine white smoke of a grass fire just east of San Quentin on the

first day of July. Forgotten things. The headmaster's daughter. Low in tar.

Mucous. The red scooter. Almond mask. His sock. Each new first time.

Description, an invention. Slice of life pie. Marigolds. White white

jumpsuit. Echoes. Concentration camps by the name of bantustans. Clarinet.

At first. The day before Barbara's birthday, two before Chuck's. Brown or

red brick. Blue toothpaste. On stage. Ferry terminal. Four day week.

Interpol or Cointelpro or Burns. Namibian difficulties. The recent

unpleasantness between Japan and the U.S. List lover. Trailer park.

Underpass. Tuesday, a.m. What, alarm, ceiling, clock, dull light, urine,

toothpaste, blue shirt, jeans, water for coffee, bacon, eggs, soy toast,

phony earth shoes, bus, another bus, typewriter, telephone, co-workers,

salad, iced tea, more co-workers, bus, ambulance on freeway, another bus, a

beer, chicken, rice and squash, today's mail, feces, TV, glass of chablis,

darkness. Rare delta fog. Plywood, fiber- board. Couch, divan, chesterfield,

sofa. String of silver elephants on a chain about her neck. Her inevitably

turned-up Levi cuffs. The moderately successful wage slave. Morning in North

Beach, Sunday in Chinatown. Locked bumpers, a problem in front of Rincon

Annex, inside WPA murals of the working class, back from Ghana at forty. The

tease. Sky blue wall of the racket club. Space cowboy. The cotton rings

around the mountain, bum rhythm, the limp, the gimp. Googoo dada dada. P

soup. For the entire family. 2 Disney smash hits. The All ? Game. Two ponies

in a brick red trailer behind a brown pickup with a bale of hay in the back.

Bush jacket from China. Names of the cross streets. A restful orange. A

restful orange bridge. The water, the haze, the sky, all blue, a line

drawing. Or not blue but grey or gray. All the same. Industrial park.

Heliport. Saliva. Canal at low tide. Pompadour sheriff's yacht by the

curious name of Bijou, a year's wages. Shade over shade over shade. The curl

of the ear. The tongue behind the teeth behind the lips, at the entrance of

the throat. Remainder of a cigar. Calm blue eyes. Bells and chimes and

wooden drums. Straw horse. Off-white piano. High hat. Blue couch. An old

pair of Frye boots. Summer. The sun. High gray sky.

Ron Silliman