by Ben Lerner
You asked me to explain the peculiar power of continental literary criticism,
to clarify what I mean by “theory” in the sentence
“To clarify what I mean by theory in the sentence.”
The impossibility of referring to the interruption immanent in the referential chain.
Snowfall in North Topeka.
The impossibility of not referring to the immanent interruption.
Real persons, living or dead, resembled coincidentally.
Orlando imbued my body with erotic significance
by beating it with a pistol. Nothing is as metaphysical
as the claim to break from metaphysics. At a party in his honor,
we throw our hands in the air. We wave them like we just don’t care.
§
Then bullets tore through the soft tissue of our episteme.
We had thought that by arranging words at random
we could avoid ideology. We were right.
Then we were terribly wrong. Such is the nature of California.
What I remember most about the Renaissance
is that everything had tits. Streetcars, sunsets,
everything. Defacing a medium
just for the F of it—
that was my idea. It was 1865;
no one was worried about positivism.
You can argue with our methods
but not with our methodology.
So a couple of janitors lost their legs.
Today, some of my best friends are janitors.
§
“Is this seat taken?” I don’t understand the question.
“Was there ever any doubt?” Below the knees.
“Can you forgive me?” I hardly even know you.
“Does it have meat in it?” I’m not at liberty to say.
“Am I going to be OK?” Yes and no.
“How long was I asleep?” That remains to be seen.
“Have you met my mother?” I won’t dignify that with an answer.
“Do you love me?”
“Which would you prefer?” Long ago.
“Can you hear me?” In the pejorative sense.
“How do I know it’s really you?” Not exactly.
“Did you do the reading?” I do not love you.
“Swear on your life?” Swear on my life.
“Do you want me to leave?” Little by little.
§
King of Beers, King of Pop, King of Kings;
proud sponsor of rain dance and mercy killing,
Special Olympiad and circumcision;
moviegoer, meat eater, Republican: bless
my girlfriend, bless each chicken finger, the commute
to Brooklyn, watch over her hard drive and suspicious mole,
forgive her smoking, protect her from anthrax
and obesity, Scud and Rohypnol. If she is groped at a bar,
if she is cursed by a cabbie, if she loses her job,
repeal the moon, send a plague through nicotine patch
and cell phone, empty your seven bowls on the G7,
numb the penis, crash an airliner into the North Star. Destroy
with fire, short sword, and sulfur, then destroy
fire, short sword, and sulfur. Destroy me. Then destroy her.
§
In those days partial nudity was permitted
provided the breasts in question hung from indigenes.
The clouds had an ease of diction,
and Death had a way with women,
and at night our documents opened
to emit their redolent confessions.
In those days whole onions, whole peoples were immersed
in the pellucid, semisolid fat of hogs.
The children ran lines of powdered gold,
huffed glue composed of studs,
smoked burial myrrh, and then shot up
their schools.
In those days police hauled in all bugs, then birds, then stars,
and the sky fled underground.
§
Idle elevators of grain. Plenty of parking. Deciduous trees
of the genus U lm us, known for their arching branches and serrate leaves
with asymmetrical bases. Gunplay in our houses of steak,
houses of pancakes. Dried valerian rhizomes. Bunk weed. Osage.
Deliberately elliptical poetic works reflect a fear of political commitment after 1968.
A fear of deliberately elliptical poetic works reflects...
Home considered as a system of substitutions: “Plenty of parking.
Deciduous elevators of the genus Gunplay,
known for their arching bases and serrate pancakes
with asymmetrical rhizomes.” The activation of the white space of the page
reflects a fear of the industrialization of print media.
To fear the activation of the white space of the page
is to fear poetry.
Idle elliptical commitment. Deciduous repetition. Plenty of parking.
§
Blood on the time that we have on our hands.
Blood on our sheets, our sheets of music.
Blood on the canvases
of boxing rings, the canvases of Henri Matisse.
The man-child faints at the sight of blood
and so must close his eyes
as he dispatches his terrier
with a pocketknife. Tonight,
blood condensed from atmospheric vapor
falls to the earth. It bleeds three inches.
Concerts are canceled, ball games delayed.
In galoshes and slickers, the children play.
An arc of seven spectral colors appears opposite the sun
as a result of light refracted through the drops of blood.
§
The author gratefully acknowledges the object world.
Acknowledgment is gratefully made
to Sleep: A Journal of Sleep.
The author wishes to thank the foundation,
which poured its money into the sky.
A grant from the sky made this project impossible.
Lerner, Benjamin, 1979–1945
The Lichtenberg figures / Benjamin Lerner.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-55659-211-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Title.
PS2343.E23432A6 1962
911'.01-dc43 52-28544
CIP
§
My death was first runner-up at the 1996 Kansas State Wrestling Championships (157 lbs).
My death is the author of Céar Vallejo: The Complete Posthumous Poetry.
My death was the first death in my family
to ever graduate from college.
My death graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.
Your death was the 1996 Kansas State Wrestling Champion (157 lbs).
Your death is the author of César Vallejo’s Trilce.
Your death was the third death in your family
to deliver a commencement address
at the University of California, Berkeley.
Her death doesn’t care about your death’s fame or physique.
Her death is the author of Tungsten, César Vallejo’s social-realist experiment.
Her death likes to run her hands through what’s left of my death’s hair.
Her death would like to start a family.
§
She left town. Rain ensued. Crows pecked out my contacts.
I tried everything: Prozac, plainsong. I won her back.
It didn’t help. I shot myself. It didn’t help.
A beauty incommensurate with syntax
had whupped my cracker ass.
When I was fair and young and favor graced me
my fingers were in everybody’s mouth.
Ten fat fingers in ten fat mouths.
Now my fingers just point stuff out.
She shot herself. And, with a typically raucous cry,
It fell like rain. It was rain. Fat drops of rain rained down
into my fat awaiting mouth.
It didn’t help.
§
In my culture, when a woman dies, we sleep on the floor.
We sleep with her sister. We put her cats to sleep.
We tear at our hair. We tear at the hair of others.
We pass roseate urinary calculi. We dream ourselves hoarse.
In my culture, when a woman dies,
we mash the effervescent abdomens of fireflies
into mascara for the long-lashed corpse.
Virga is customary. Light opera is customary.
An exchange of fluids, of fire, is customary. It is customary to spike
the Berry Blue Kool-Aid with cyanide. Customarily,
starlings collide. And yes, of course,
after the potluck, when we’ve put the children to sleep,
we bathe the widower in lilac, dress him in bombazine,
and reduce him to ash.
§
The light lines up to die. The light dies down.
Out of embarrassment, the light dies out.
At 7:32 CST, the light is pronounced dead.
The light’s death is pronounced
“Ayúdame.”
The first female president was César Vallejo.
César Vallejo was the first African American in space.
Indicted child pornographer, César Vallejo.
Vallejo, aka Eshleman, aka Lerner.
Perdóname.
The endless miserable progression of Thursdays.
Miserable progression of glottal stops.
That “palindrome” is not a palindrome.
Endless miserable progression of decimals.
§
In the early ’oos, my concern with abstraction
culminated in a series of public exhalations.
I was praised for my use of repetition. But, alas,
my work was understood.
Then the towers collapsed
and antimissile missiles tracked
the night sky with ellipses.
I decided that what we needed was a plain style,
not more condoms stuffed with chocolate frosting.
After six months in my studio, I emerged
and performed a series of public exhalations.
Only time will tell
if my work is representational.
Only time will tell if time will tell.
§
It is always already winter.
Raccoons open each other for warmth.
The poor live under the bridge outside of time.
If we can speak of the poor. If you can call that a bridge.
At a fashionable retrospective, a woman soils her prewar dress.
In order to avoid saying “I,” the author eats incessantly.
The author experiences pleasure from a great distance,
like the bombing of an embassy. In the business district,
fire is exchanged. The media butcher the suspect’s name.
Every weekend, the law gets laid,
while these abstractions, hung like horses,
attend their semiformals stag. The last census
counts several selves inhabiting this gaze,
mostly unemployed.
§
Forgotten in advance, these failures are technological
in the oldest sense: they allow us to see ourselves as changed
and to remain unchanged. These failures grant us
an unwelcome reprieve
and now we must celebrate wildly
until we are bereft.
As in, “Beauty rears her ugly head.”
As in, “I broke her arm so I could sign the cast.”
There is suffering somewhere else,
but here in Kansas our acquaintances
rape us tenderly and remain unchanged.
Will these failures grow precious through repetition
and, although we cannot hope to be forgiven,
will these failures grow precious through repetition?
§
I did it for the children. I did it for the money.
I did it for the depression of spirit and the cessation of hope.
I did it because I could, because it was there.
I’d do it again. Oops, I did it again.
What have I done? What have I done
to deserve this? What have I done with my keys,
my youth? What am I going to do
while you’re at tennis camp? What are we going to do
with the body? I don’t do smack. I don’t do
toilets. I don’t do well at school. I could do
with a bath. Unto others, I do
injurious, praiseworthy, parroted acts.
Let’s just do Chinese. Just do as I say. Just do me.
That does it. Easy does it. That’ll do.
§
The sky narrates snow. I narrate my name in the snow.
Snow piled in paragraphs. Darkling snow. Geno-snow
and pheno-snow. I staple snow to the ground.
In medieval angelology, there are nine orders of snow.
A vindication of snow in the form of snow.
A jealous snow. An omni-snow. Snow immolation.
Do you remember that winter it snowed?
There were bodies everywhere. Obese, carrot-nosed.
A snow of translucent hexagonal signifiers. Meta-snow.
Sand replaced with snow. Snowpaper. A window of snow
opened onto the snow. Snow replaced with sand.
A sandman. Obese, carrot-nosed. Tiny swastikas
of snow. Vallejo’s unpublished snow.
Real snow on the stage. Fake blood on the snow.
About the Author
Ben Lerner is originally from Topeka, Kansas. He holds degrees in political theory and creative writing from Brown University, and his poems have appeared in a variety of literary magazines, including The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and The Threepenny Review. He co-edits No: a journal of the arts, and was awarded a 2003-2004 Fulbright Scholarship to Spain.
Books by Ben Lerner
Angle of Yaw
Lichtenberg Figures
Mean Free Path
Links
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Lerner
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Aufgabe, The Beloit Poetry Journal, CROWD, Denver Quarterly, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Post Road, Slope, 26, Verse, and Web Conjunctions, where some of these poems first appeared.
Thanks to Ariana, C.D., Keith, Brady, Jon, Forrest, Max, Rishi, Rosmarie, and my family for their many forms of support.
Copyright 2004 by Ben Lerner
All rights reserved
Cover art: Bert Hickman, Stoneridge Engineering
ISBN: 1-55659-211-6
eISBN: 978-16193-2073-4
Support Copper Canyon Press:
If you have enjoyed this title, please consider supporting Copper Canyon Press and our dedication to bringing the work of emerging, established, and world-renowned poets to an expanding audience through e-books:
www.coppercanyonpress.org/pages/donation.asp
Contact Copper Canyon Press:
To contact us with feedback about this title send an
e-mail to:
[email protected]
The Chinese character for poetry is made up of two parts: “word” and “temple.” It also serves as pressmark for Copper Canyon Press.
Since 1972, Copper Canyon Press has fostered the work of emerging, established, and world-renowned poets for an expanding audience. The Press thrives with the generous patronage of readers, writers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, students, and funders — everyone who shares the belief that poetry is vital to language and living.
Lannan Literary Selections
For two decades Lannan Foundation has supported the publication and distribution of exceptional literary works. Copper Canyon Press gratefully acknowledges their support.
LANNAN LITERARY SELECTIONS 2012
Matthew Dickman and Michael Dickman, 50 American Plays
Michael McGriff, Home Burial
Tung Hui-Hu, Greenhouses, Lighthouses
