by Chris Hosea
PUT YOUR HANDS IN
WINNER OF THE WALT WHITMAN AWARD FOR 2013
Sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, the Walt Whitman Award is given annually to the winner of an open competition among American poets who have not yet published a book of poems.
Judge for 2013: John Ashbery
CHRIS HOSEA
POEMS
PUT YOUR HANDS IN
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE
Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright © 2014 by Chris Hosea
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
LSU Press Paperback Original
First printing
Designer: Barbara Neely Bourgoyne
Typefaces: Veneer and Trade Gothic, display; Adobe Caslon Pro, text
Printer and binder: Maple Press
The author wishes to thank the editors of the following magazines, where some of the poems in this book were first published, sometimes in different form.
6x6: “Songs for a Country Drive”; Alice Blue Review: “Of Me to Love”; Boston Review: “Dark, Understated Romantic Comedies”; The Destroyer: “The Matinee I Took Chicken In”; EOAGH: “The Barn Party,” “Gonna Dig Up Ozu,” and “Hard Drive Scrub”; Hose Less Review: “Granddaddy Old Grand Dad,” “Wife Wellbutrin,” “Father Work,” “Choirboy Skittles,” and “Cousin Pot”; ’Pider: “Lithe Brunette, Twenty-Five Years of Age”; Prelude: “Across the Boss’s Desk”; Swerve: “Everything Is Going To”; Web Conjunctions: “Brother Oxycontin,” “Friend’s Girlfriend Kools,” “Grandmother Snuff,” “Mistress Damage,” “Mother Old Fashioned,” and “Sister Chablis.”
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hosea, Chris, 1973–
[Poems. Selections]
Put Your Hands In : poems / Chris Hosea.
pages cm
“LSU Press Paperback Original.”
ISBN 978-0-8071-5585-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8071-5586-8 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-8071-5587-5 (epub) — ISBN 978-0-8071-5588-2 (mobi)
I. Title.
PS3608.O779A6 2014
811′.6—dc23
2013028460
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
To A. B.
The dirty window gives me back my face
—PAUL BLACKBURN
CONTENTS
Lithe Brunette, Twenty-Five Years of Age
Dark, Understated Romantic Comedies
Of Me to Love
Choose Stutter Brie
I Too Am Gay
The Matinee I Took Chicken In
Occupy Street
One of these Girls
Everything Is Going To
Grandmother Snuff
Granddaddy Old Grand Dad
Wife Wellbutrin
Father Work
Mistress Damage
Choirboy Skittles
Cousin Pot
Friend’s Girlfriend Kools
Sister Chablis
Mother Old Fashioned
Brother Oxycontin
New Oil Today’s Men
Stop Me Before
Fichte
Porcupine Fever Is Gonna Get You
Faggot Said the Guy in the Truck
Wished for Hater Sequel
Lotto Blues
I Will Not Be Expressed
Welcome Music
If There Be a Season
Big Red Booster
All You Can
Forever Backpacker
The Great-Uncle Dead
No Key to This One, No Tune
How to Get to April Blue
Roof Garden Heritage Site
Auto-Brightness
Buffalo Nickel, Toothbrush, Crude
New Make
Hopscotch Smudges
Game Show Theme Mix
Words by Karl Marx, Tuxedo by Riot
The Barn Party
Gonna Dig Up Ozu
Bars and Lounges on Yelp
Hard Drive Scrub
Across the Boss’s Desk
Purple Snow Purple Snow
Black Steel
Songs for a Country Drive
PUT YOUR HANDS IN
LITHE BRUNETTE, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE
In my hand walks Kansas called
bodies mostly cloudy, white in flash.
Powders blurs skins what was once
a comfy couch. Spectacles not brittle
not funny, we’re in agreement to
radiate the cell of you and me.
Crowded moving emotions on film
so the crowd nods or doesn’t go, and
each bit player makes mordant comment.
What is today that was eleven hours since
horror and the blank page became
an ironic pose a thrill sportif graffiti.
Oh you know, everyone, just all of them
that weren’t us. She learns to drift
the testament toward shoppers and ice.
You could be embarrassed pouring milk
in a mixed drink under a bridge,
but such is your vocation. Right on her
dancing dress you never touched too
just drown the mighty wedges, a way
to get away, drop fingertips in selected woods.
DARK, UNDERSTATED ROMANTIC COMEDIES
the limbs of another
touching them climbing
a ladder splayed
soft rungs give
under fingers
stopping on one knee
to tap your forehead
an invisible hat
there you lift a hood
there the air keeps clanging
but softly
smashing
so silently
lights that aren’t really there
you roll over torn posters
the slope steep
seems like forever
another dash klieg light
struck by these things
it’s always moving legs
breasts cast shade
that’s warm there
above the floor’s tremor
you sleep somewhere else
tonight and tomorrow
long enough
to find a mirror
and see if you
read pain in it
OF ME TO LOVE
Stumble upon me
I am lying all ready
particleboard shag rug foam
as flesh the system breaks
loud punch they give us
free they gave you bare walls
bricks call it a
loft plane for wonder
and shame smoke between
friendly eyes lean into my
belly words spat on that mic
can’t amplify rattle rain
I saw you spreading
legs lies taut as you spoke
right in the patron’s dark
lids so whisper to my pants
a way I will not hear
CHOOSE STUTTER BRIE
Slack troopers at Matchless
ashamed of their pride
a rise at The Boat Bar
a few cultured girls (not many, it’s true)
swirled cocktails with red swizzles
careful not to look so hard
as the few figures at Diamond
made listless by the clanging air
what is this weather
an almost human thwack of shuffle-
board ping of guilt The Richardson
with Lou’s mout
h
tasted of old-fashioneds and Kools
the iPhone buzzed my thigh
dancing in The Library
leaning into an art student
a hand down her pants-front
autistic tongues coding Tompkins after
midnight a chestnut tree
once was a chestnut
I TOO AM GAY
In college I loved a boy
he was so beautiful
some scion in a Gainsborough
some hero out of Fournier
sixteen blond hair blue irises might
as well have been a girl
he blushed so hard when
he didn’t understand
in case he’d been slighted
or found out in some way
we couldn’t guess
I started beating off thinking
of him and me
going at it a lovely Brazilian
snug between us
I imagined it was okay
Bruna was in the fantasy I wasn’t gay
I felt lucky Philip was my friend
my heart hurt when he left
for a western cowboy college all guys
one summer we met in Baltimore
drank a lot took bong rips
I got excited and anxious
finally I would kiss a boy’s tongue a boy’s lips
and what could that mean
but I held back and he
certainly wasn’t the type to lead
later when at last he started snoring
I tiptoed to the bath
locked the door
to beat off fast
THE MATINEE I TOOK CHICKEN IN
I want to hold your hand just hell of it
a hundred and one famous shells a field of male space
a projection of outside rinsed with breeze
that there is no escaping from the now here
so I should feel famous you are telling me because a celebrity
scores so many creative types in New York City
eavesdropping on a reaffirming bankruptcy
you are just covered in pearls from head to weary baby
earned exhaustion as social rod your weary smile
hit me all the way from Roebuck
I descend into a hole of coal-black
wherein I dig a spanking fool’s gold
hotel suite of memory I display my confidence various
put in letters to you double you triple too
what kind music caring scientifically molds your mood
I have brushed so mint me make me limited too
you can dance that is when tempos alter light
and ships land the buildings being cleaned they are aglow
you have drunk you have smashed every last plate glass it was a false fire
OCCUPY STREET
no worse than making fakes
apples redder fall
with plump would-be pimps
unstable at their posts remarking
neighborhood characters in pitch
blue to shape a chart of distant streaks
riffs coast out of two bars
and collide throwing night upon the floor
where a bit of glow goes to say
you are known on Facebook, elsewhere in
a laptop on a laptop you don’t own
your staggering compulsory dance fits
to a beat of growing grass leaves
strong enough to crease asphalt
near dank stations alert
on a watchlist to which preservationists beat
their drums their tambourines afire
an asterisk so glaring sunny
no one reads the fine print
whipping past at the rump
of an on-demand wind-down
so you can toss another couple
into the dusty goldfish bowl of earbuds I am
wanting a miasma of nostalgia I am
wanting to touch I am
wanting to both touch and look
so very sorry for myself and you too
know this is my name
spend fewer words on your shirt
I call a muster of passersby getting away
from myself almost free whiskey
neat and brown as my wife’s hair
ONE OF THESE GIRLS
one of these girls called after a state
prospectors stripped bare
to lots of cans concrete shops like dice
you pick up or she picked another one
to lift a cool glass slab
no voice meets your ear you hear
serial digital numbers kiss like
again a sampler hit like horse
prophylactic bonbons see her sack hum
now glow where one of these girls
knows her state song her bird her stone
flower pale this warming weather
wind forlorn bachelor sixty-one was it
sixty-seven I’m not him
here to hear this chorale or
she is not here for you this night
she ate night its gaps her dirt pie
will you fertility stumble
the team make a stake miss salty
cake asleep in type foundry
downy cheek to tapestry spread
you grasped at a pull tab
as if that were some kind
arrowhead they splashed
lead there too
so clean it out wash it off
that curb or this curb or stop
tulips fly apart in noon
and something is decomposed to fly
invisibly you study how
to slot your fingers in airports
precipitate of lemonade ash
tried on boys pants and fits those belts
you count yourself in or no
to dance with five four partners to platters
flame aristocracy’s last pretense slash
worried new smile back from Berlin come
sooner consumer put down your cart
America’s atonal dissident talents
heavy no nodding to drone guitar
just there on your belly
never nicer you little miner
pass the salt
some of these girls draw
on more than one account
that she was there monsoon purple
or blank as a temp beneath fluorescent stars
spank in nervous puddle
public do I still do I
figure as a fugue in your life when moons
break in your loft
reminding dandy professors of Shakespeare
who knew one of these girls
not a spider or minor
she is of a set to be
a victory faster
EVERYTHING IS GOING TO
As we unlocked it
there was nothing
in the safe
I wanted
to embrace
someone there
so intent to record
all we saw
paying attention meant
forgetting
everyone
but you
sexy
at that age or later on
a kind of stage
your solitude
a fictive situation
parceled among the crowd
multiplying your every gesture
in outline
unto degradation
I wanted to stop
defending comfort
and touch you to
begin undoing
the rigmarole
of our passing
union
GRANDMOTHER SNUFF
Born to be. Under amplified sermons cliffs erode. All this they wrote
out and folded before leaving. Out at collar, they arrive bringing collars.
To collar. If I knew who they were, I would let on. Give fort
h. Sunrooms
awaken the home. Summer afternoons grant a lemony pucker we share
evenings. Care, careless one. We do care and they do. Paradox nurses
workers. Then the others they were. Clean tools, sharp now, in orderly
files. All this sad on ice, when in a cooler. Unopened, Hank lies sober.
Uneasy to read his flat lip, or just leave it. Forever and now. See a snake
pass across the trail. Trace mottoes scratched in clay. Inky. A bright gang
here. Freedom lights fuses. These my embarrassed words, embroidered.
Fly outward, menacing satellites so fragile. A strong headwind awakes
your familiar, the tattooed actor. What washes and rusts in the ocean,
you ask him, livid with unspent blame. Anger drips on the barbecue.
Meaning beefs. Calm as cows, you are so skittish with strangers, all right,
okay mystery. To own up to livestock. Your generation born in wards.
GRANDDADDY OLD GRAND DAD
In a pickle jar. Designed to grow molds. Green swims. Plastic kettles of
brine. On wheels without wheels within them. Small commands, so as
to drive through curtains. Stopped in traffic, what was bought behind, in
pocket a penciled envelope. To be lost in. Why all horns seem major, stuck
in a row. Just in key, in time. Make a citizen’s arrest. Write a letter to the
editor. Themes close to the actor’s heart. Kindly a greeter stopped me on
entry. Picture us misty where they removed the one-hour photo booth.
True story, or it could be. I will sup with Poseidon, or cry in my own soup.
An entertainment. Airs come in off the sea and pause, huffy, a whiling
time. Breezes such as fall to earth, as newsprint, smack in driveways.
We got used to these other days. In the back pages wars go on yet. Cut off.
Commanded forward. Based on projections. Moving fronts. Tendrils furled
in parlors. Inky. Wait for the mood to lift. No, lift it.
WIFE WELLBUTRIN
Out hanging balloons to mark the way, I vary colors, firecracker by
milk, then yellow fire again. At last the night party, no money in that
inkwell, different every yesterday. The picturesque avoided as fenced.
Bridge another arc in dark; cross a real metal bridge. She walks alongside,
before or behind. Sometimes these rushing places. Now she leads.
