The Narrow Circle

by Nathan Hoks

  Beneath the corkscrew of my libido

  Within the coalition of my slumber

  Between the swagger of my oil tanks

  On the kite string of the image

  Behind the body armor of going on and on

  In the cottage of my spectacles

  In the cabin of my speechlessness

  In the bondage of my voice box

  In the cocktail of my inaccuracy

  In the cocktail of my appetite

  In the cocktail of a steady gaze

  In the cocktail of a steady gaze

  PEOPLE OF THE INTERIOR

  Nathan Hoks is a millipede

  With a thousand eyes, sparkling shards

  Of glass stabbing at our footwear.

  He should be squashed.

  He should be flayed.

  He should be torn from himself

  And made to watch the writhing arms

  Strewn across the concrete floor.

  He should be born before we talk about him like this.

  But Nathan Hoks cannot be killed.

  Nathan Hoks will evaporate in the kettle.

  Nathan Hoks is a vague hunger.

  Nathan Hoks is a 50/50 blend

  Gunpowder and guts. Film comes

  Whirring out of his mouth.

  Rusted screws hold his fingers to his hands.

  Flies hang around his buttocks.

  Shoots and pods are sprouting from his intestines.

  Nathan Hoks is a fork in the egg yolk.

  Nathan Hoks is a penitentiary.

  Nathan Hoks lives inside himself

  Where he is choking on the curtains,

  Coughing clouds of dust into the sky.

  When he looks in the mirror

  He sees brown bile filling a barrel.

  His face is a bubble.

  His face is a mail bomb.

  His handshake is a dragonfly

  Fucking itself to death.

  SPIRAL OF THE INTERIOR

  1

  In the first spiral

  the blueberries roll out of the bag. We spend an afternoon picking them up one by one then wiping purple streaks off the kitchen floor. Outside a robin is looking in.

  In all the subsequent spirals

  my teeth are pulling at the frontal lobe. A lake forms in the middle of my face. Another face forms in the bottom of the lake. Personality sprouts like weeds along the shore. At last Nathan Hoks is becoming a purple streak.

  In some embowered corner

  a seedling springs to life. As I approach it enervations take hold of each limb one at a time. I sink deep into the cushion of sound where I can hear a bullhorn voice whispering messages about water. I’ll need to eat in a few days. I take a towel and a toothbrush. Nothing else.

  2

  In another spiral

  I hear the chapel filling with voices. The dust motes scamper to the windowsills. Another sky slides away revealing that the gears and wires above us have stalled and are starting to sparkle. A neighbor puts his hand on my shoulder. The symptoms begin—I shiver—sleep settles for the foot—etc.

  Thin passageways

  shaped like white diamonds open in every direction but Nathan Hoks is not a multitude and cannot splinter to follow them. I toss an eyelash toward each portal then hang my head around the bandana, listening.

  Zipping the sweater

  to the neck I feel myself burrow straight into the ground, my lips dislodged by mud, my sternum housing a coiled snake, bodies swallowing bodies, the spiral coming for the face, toes confused with worms and pebbles.

  3

  In the only spiral

  I awaken to find the bright room drenched in a cleansing agent. It tastes white, a kind of scintillation that wraps around the tongue. Children play quietly in the yard. They are wearing red sweatshirts and bouncing rubber balls. The sky has turned into a large ball sitting on the porch watching over us.

  But after lunch

  a symptom returns, namely, I feel that I am holding a poker in my left hand and I must go from house to house to find a fire to tend to. I hate ringing the bells

  and I ring the bell.

  The door creaks open but no one is behind it. The odor of grass and dandelions comes from the hallway. I stick my head in and can see that, in the kitchen at the end of the hallway, someone has left the refrigerator open. I close it and go home.

  4

  After the yellow feeling

  fades from my skin I lie on the grass where I want to shake off the necklace of droplets. I need to hold on to a spoon or some object of equal proportion that can simulate the scooping of the cerebral cortex. I will dig out the illness this way and an ocean of electrolytes will wash out my intestines.

  Three or four

  feelings later the spoon wish turns to rain. A ghost finger taps me on the shoulder but I will not disappear with it into the oak’s bear-shaped shadow. I have to watch this sparrow bounce and eat in the grass.

  The wind pops

  the soap bubble, my face disperses with angels of teeth and loam. The snake sheds its skin, the tree of steam leafs its way into the sky.

  5

  The third spiral

  gives way to a beeping dump truck which comes and goes in even waves. I cannot see the construction project. I must imagine the rubble they carry away and the rubble yard they take it to.

  In the rubble yard

  another face is being formed, one with sponges and pimples, one with gaskets and a fedora and a mustache, one that can stomach the sky’s drills and nails, one that needs no medication. Its gravel eyes pierce the sun-cloud and as I lean over to kiss it

  I am transported.

  My sandals are still in the closet. I hate the closet. I hate opening it. I hate closing it. I hate putting coats in it. I hate taking coats from it. I never leave the house.

  6

  “Spiral, believe me,”

  I say to myself, “spiral, come out of the laboratory, out of the knotty tree stub, hold yourself before my eyes, spiral, spin me into the eggshell of oblivion, that bed sinks into the bones.

  I look for you

  in open books, in folded sheets, in closed cupboards, in canceled checks, in locked accounts, in roaring flames, in murmuring streams, in floating foam, in floating water, in rusty canisters and half-opened eyes.

  To find you

  I do nothing. I do not clean the kitchen. I do not empty the cup. My lips remain parched, the face is never built, it recoils from itself. When the stream freezes I walk across. Nothing resides there.”

  7

  In the new spiral

  the water bottle dumps continuously over my head but the water feels like air blowing warm dust over a gas station where the attendant has turned into a water bottle in which I see my face.

  And I see small specks

  of sand and call them the stars. I wrap my hair around my fist and punch at the invisible malady. My pocket is full of petals freshly torn from a lilac.

  Freshly torn

  from a lilac. Freshly torn. A lilac freshly torn. Torn from a town beside a lake. A torn flower from a town by a lake. Fresh lake. Fresh town. From a lilac freshly torn. A petal torn.

  INFINITE INTERIOR

  The pasture you are filled with

  Fills with water, exactly what

  You’ve been waiting for,

  Another mirror to put you

  In your place. And as you become

  What you are waiting for

  What you are waiting for

  Becomes what you always were.

  His handshake is a dragonfly

  Personality sprouts like weeds along the shore

  I am not a multitude and cannot splinter to follow them

  I am
transported

  LILY OF THE INTERIOR

  A lily is sprouting from my head.

  First I love it, then I want it dead.

  FAMILY OF THE INTERIOR

  When my wife comes home from work

  The invisible bird is still hissing near

  Her head. She looks for the mail and wrinkles

  Her nose at a waft of cottage cheese.

  I’m hungry too. I open the fridge

  And the bird disappears. My son

  Plays alone with a tiny tuba beneath

  The unopened window, the one I call

  Luminous plateau, the one he calls

  Atrium, that eruption of peaceful mental

  Functions which halts the heretofore

  Continuous progress of the tuba’s tune.

  I sense a nascent ache in my lower back.

  My mood becomes a kind of verb.

  I reach for my son, I kiss his cheek.

  My wife turns off the sink.

  FILM OF THE INTERIOR

  Last night I watched my favorite movie

  Because I wanted to forget how terrible

  Love is, a gift, a crumbling leaf

  Coughed up. A piece of plaster

  Fell from the ceiling so I placed it

  In a jar and labeled it “You” because I was

  Looking for my friend on the ceiling

  And I was looking for my friend in the night

  And I was looking for my friend in my brain

  And in the library and in the office

  And in the bathroom, all of which

  Held growing blotches of night.

  In the morning my face rose like mist

  Off a lake. Now it is snickering all the time

  Because it loves you, it has this secret

  Of ripped purple paper to show you,

  It thinks of you as this green entity

  Not entirely organic, but prelinguistic

  And miles of fire stretching our visual field.

  INSTITUTION OF THE INTERIOR

  An anonymous institution

  Was controlling my limbs

  And my insides were turning

  To crumbs. They reminded me

  Of an old scone you can’t

  Even hold between your fingers

  But if you could get it

  To your mouth it would be

  Delicious, you’d fill up

  Your stomach and take a nap

  In the noon light shining

  Through the window,

  Your greasy long hair

  A pool of dark light deep

  In the middle of your being.

  And when the delivery truck

  Comes by the building,

  You wake up. You become

  Another institution,

  One with a name that we

  Could ride a bus to, and

  In fact we rode a bus to you,

  We asked about your policies,

  You filed a missing persons

  Report because I kept

  Telling you how much I wept

  Without you on my side.

  Now that you have

  Installed a tracking device

  Somewhere in the ocean

  Of my skin you can find me

  Whenever I am gurgling coffee

  Or riding my bicycle

  Along the lakefront.

  And I can hear the thud

  Of your footsteps and I know

  Now how you know.

  GOD OF THE INTERIOR

  My god is the god of snowdrifts.

  My god is the god of dumb beasts and rocks.

  I beat on the counter,

  I blast a mirror in the sandstorm,

  I’m looking for my god but

  My god is a quickie,

  My god is a Popsicle melting on the pavement

  And I’m happy I have shoes.

  My god is the author of seven books of poems.

  My god treads upon the ground

  But laughs like a ballerina.

  My god yowls in a pillow

  And I yowl in a pillow and together

  We are the choir of angels.

  My god has bad manners, shitty syntax,

  And a rusty shovel heavier than snow.

  Let’s help him out.

  Let’s buy him a snowblower.

  Let’s bring him a care package.

  My god is the emperor of ice cream

  And the prince of hate and the queen of voltage

  And the whore of capitalism.

  My god is a circuit breaker.

  My god was born in the mouth of a slaughtered cow

  And dropped in the sink by an indifferent nurse.

  My god’s heart is an affliction.

  My god’s face is an abrasion.

  My god says nobody is perfect,

  Nobody is holy.

  Nobody can look at my god without

  Feeling a wheel grinding at the ribcage.

  My god is falling through the storm cloud

  And needs a better parachute.

  My god crawls on his belly because

  My god is a saint.

  My god is a suicide because

  My god is a saint.

  I walk around town looking

  For my god in the windows

  And in the bare branches

  And in the bookstores

  And in the dog shit.

  My god lives on a fire escape.

  My god has no tangible benefits to the soul.

  My god is the word “No” stuck in the mouth.

  My god my god every word is my god.

  My god is a cutthroat.

  My god consists of nothing but muscle.

  My god wears too much makeup

  Which blocks his pores so the sweat can’t escape.

  It’s hard to know if I only have one god.

  My god lives in the capital of pain.

  My god is bored with the intellect and drunk by noon.

  My god hates vegetables but eats them in emergencies.

  My god is the shadow on the river.

  My god is a good mother.

  My god doesn’t give a shit.

  FAREWELL, INTERIOR

  1

  The interior holds out its leathery hands.

  It wants to take me to California

  Where technicians will construct my head,

  And where the streetlights are broken yolks

  And small furry things crawl up my legs.

  2

  I decline the offer so the interior flips a switch

  Which makes my teeth cold as though

  I am eating ice cubes in luminous fog.

  I eat the ice cubes and the city evaporates.

  Rain clouds swab my eyebrows with sleep.

  3

  A bee lands between me and the interior

  Where a thicket has sprouted up.

  When I step inside I lose the ability to think

  But my ability to blow suddenly into a thousand pieces

  Separates me from the interior which

  4

  Trembles like a newborn lamb.

  Poor interior, it is only a pink thing

  Puking out breast milk. It is only this

  Persuasive reflex churning in

  The darkening hole of myself.

  5

  O Interior! My wounds are your wounds!

  I drizzle them over your outstretched canvas

  And drill holes so the light will reach us on

  The other side where a canol
a field

  Is waiting to wrap us in its breath.

  6

  Dear Interior, I have no interior!

  I am a shaved head turning into a field of breath,

  This is the final birth and when the wind

  Starts spinning a circle of leaves

  An invisible man leaps out of the center.

  HÔTEL L’INTÉRIEUR

  When I suck on the mint I have

  The sensation that there is a hotel

  In my chest and it is my duty

  To clean the linens and vacuum

  The hallways which are lined

  With Louis Quatorze mirrors.

  The guests wear red tights

  And smoke tobacco from the colonies.

  When they fall asleep they evaporate

  So I am left with these flame-shaped curtains.

  I draw a bath and snuff the candle.

  I am so bored with feeling.

  Oblivion

  The middle of your being

  I’m hungry too

  I am so bored with feeling

  THE

  EXTERIOR

  SANDWICH OF THE EXTERIOR

  Chapter 1

  I woke up to the news I’d be given a free sandwich. I had to wade through the flats and find the knob for the faucet. It sounded horrible, like a leaf blower and a weed whacker waltzing in a stone quarry. But for a free sandwich I was willing to take a risk.

  Chapter 2

  First I took a bath and imagined a waterfall filling the bathroom. But then I became stuck thinking about the water’s origin at the top of a mountain, how it had started as a trickle and plummeted to this furious crashing wall. So I closed my eyes and listened to no-tone. Whimpering grasshoppers, the train-song, pile-driving into the anthill of my brain.

  Chapter 3

  That was an easy solution and I was proud of myself for thinking of it so quickly. Now that I had my shoes on I was hoping to find my sandwich by the docks on the other side of the islet. Some giant milk-squirting nozzle was there, and a man who was eating a hamburger and holding a stick. I asked him, “Is this where the sandwiches are?” He looked at me and chewed.