Shann Palmer

Shann Palmer is a Texan living in exile in Virginia where she runs poetry readings and tries to maintain 'accent integrity'. She's got kids who are old enough to be a little bit of help but she taught them to love music and words so they're as bad as she is. Her husband works for the power company, which means she has excellent insurance.

You people seriously

overestimate your grip

on reality and religion.

Take the word of daisies

and the kitchen herb garden,

Ya gotta have dither time-

screaming in the bathroom,

extended scat sob solos,

maybe throw something

(nothing that has to be cleaned up-

I said crazy, not stupid)

I was just about to walk away

but there was lousy weather where

I needed to go so I slipped off the arc

and fell into a comma. Losing track,

making hay, maybe a checkered cabriolet

sat lounging on the open veranda

with Miss Dubois and the Nancy boys.

It's jonquils, you asshole- not daffodils,

the tiger not the lily and never ever the lady,

eat the sandwich, note the spread

share milk and cornbread with any

kind of stranger that comes along

I vanish but for my smile.

With an audible 'poof'

this room ceases to be.

So Much for Local Color

-with a nod to Paul Auster

Incredibly blonde more straw than thatch,

more than face the hair dominates impression,

maybe it's the bending in front of me to write

"dill havarti tuna grill-no chips, just a pickle"

but I could not describe any feature beyond

what I see before dawn is darker than you

in the hour of submarines and heroes we

dine behind the wheel of our cars alone

or we die surrounded by our immediates

gathered like they never were at breakfast.

You champion the good lie over cute drinks,

pineapple and cherry on sticks, swirl

indifference to flavor the moment, sigh

sentences like china plates limned gold-

durable as expensive shoes, we last too long.

"You shouldn't have lunch so late," you tell me,

I don't say " I wish we'd never met." out loud

fascinated by the presentation, eye cast down.

The carpet threadbare where waiters walk,

the harpist romanticizes Bach tonight.

Navigating channels

under/over hard flip

heat of the sun stroke

never scene enough

to come to conclusions,

even Batman had help

weighing in the options

with absolute finality

(no encores anymore)

give him a hearty hand

"In seven days" he said

"I can make you."

a misanthrope out of reason

flosses till somebody bleeds.

Under the Sun

Naming something ''cutting edge''

immediately puts a veil of pretense

onto what probably was mundane

to begin with it's faux-futuristic

as meaningful as trimmed crusts,

party hats for grown-ups,

and a DJ that costs as much as a live band.

Wrap me in something really new,

not punk with a new attitude, dude,

please- no more bitter irony, bare-faced

honesty, natural-organic, or space-age.

I was there when the man said ''Plastic.''

wore a Teflon teddy when I blew the President

of the Young Republicans- no strain, no stain-

forty years later he's dead of a heart attack,

I can still remember how he mewled when he came

up with all the reasons why we should vote for Nixon.

You can talk dirty but the shock-market stock plunged-

even my mother called her nurse a cunt before she died-

The nurse or my mother? Both, if you must know,

same disease- different hospitals. Separated twins.

We could use a good see-through body bag.

When Albert Tyler was laid out in the front room,

I lost my fear of death though I had always been

afraid of his aphasia-induced anger and his cane.

Not being Jewish my grandmother sat Shivah

seven years- she was extremely devoted to ritual.

I re-check cold ovens, unplugged toasters, irons-

brush exactly three minutes, wait for water to settle.

Albert waited behind doors to whack my shoulders,

the only power he had left and it stayed with him

for seven years everyday she told me how he loved me.

New is nothing that hasn't been done before,

old is what happens while we sleep walk life,

I'm the age she was then- I rock and weep the same

mourning what I haven't lost but can't seem to find.

A Specific Allison (for Elvis Costello)

The blonde one with dark roots

from New Guinea or Madagascar,

impossible to spell or locate in a hurry.

She swallows vanilla coke in gulps,

burping words the rest of the hour-

convoluted stories ending too easy

to keep track of characters, imagine

skeletons in see-through flesh

walking her around the food court.

In public she acts out Reich or Glass

if they wrote short stories instead of melodies,

but they don't write those so much as poems

in metaphor she's the bus across the street

going somewhere in another direction

not so much a transfer, but a pidgin swap

spread all over the front yard on bedsheets

from your first marriage, still serviceable

but completely out of the question.

Do you love her? Ponder carefully-

weigh your options without shoes, of course

Allison never wears shoes after Rogation Day.

Shann Palmer