Poets Bernadette Mayer and Philip Good make an occasional practice of collaborating on a generative exercise to mark the changing of the seasons. You’ll see they start with an observation or a riff on a detail from their surroundings, and soon the poem expands to hold weightier considerations. Good writes, “The poem is spring journal meets current events meets the mind of a synesthete. Of course the everyday isn’t the everyday, and we respond with the questions of the virus, isolation, climate change, and what may or may not be happening to our world.”
—Erika Stevens, interim editorial director
Lost in East Nassau
I never intended
that a lake
could be so
much like a teapot
that’s late for lunch
like a plate
I like the black, strong one
who
would want a weak plate, like
a half-built
green house
in the middle of a cheese
bridge over
the flowering fields
over the flowering hellebore fields
they look like avocados
even popovers flying
or are they poppies?
do they fly too like lakes?
’twould be easier to throw
latkes in the air
than a pin-striped demon
whaddayou think?
Hard to answer when no motorized vehicles
warning is posted in the sunroom
where the view faces the field
on the edge of a creek that flies to a river
we could float downstream
and see how many cardinal flowers are blooming
along the way to pass under a bridge
It’s easy to say but the no-motorized-vehicle
sign is in the other room, the messy my-room or
maybe it’s lost and the creek goes the wrong way,
no matter what you say, the wild blue turkeys don’t
hold the key, but we thought the world was
a mess before, but now at least it’s on hold, and if
this virus is trump’s doing, his desiring emergency
powers, emergency’s a big word, the tree’s own shade
facilitates the moss, is the sap yellow?
The shade-grown coffee berries are red then green then brown
once we had color coded the days
now we have a war against a virus
but you can’t shoot a virus or stop it at the border
and the beat goes on
as maple trees drip before blossoms bloom
then many flowers of many colors appear
but not too many people can gather at once to stare
Then many flowers of many colors appear
but not too many people can gather at once to stare
there’s not one person, in fact, who can use the word
blossom, but do we remember what it looks like?
do you remember going to a restaurant? Do
you think the place called Soho can still
be open, and when all this is over, will there be
oysters? I don’t mean Soho the neighborhood in
NYC but Soho the East Greenbush diner, and will
there be a thousand-dollar check for us at last?
And will there still be dust motes?
Show me the money and show me the restaurant named
after a fashion neighborhood
oysters will grow for us in cold ocean water
yes, salty water brings tasty life
again in all fashionable and unfashionable places
and once again dolphins say hello
I have a forsythia blossom
from Pennsylvania in a plastic bag
I want to eat oysters while hearing
the grandmothers of dolphins, the beluga whales, sing
like sirens on top of extinct volcanoes
don’t give drugs to dolphins, OK?
In East Nassau we have bald eagles, hippie ducks,
squirrels, chipmunks, trout, crawfish, and other assortments
of Northeast creatures next to two creeks and few blooms
meanwhile the sap buckets hang idle
between the changing of seasons of the newest decade
that everyone is tired of or as some might say,
beside itself
or beside herself or himself or their-self
some self or other self, self that’s sick
with the virus, hand me the virus and I will
survive it. I buried it under the soft moss
taking over the lawn, trees and outbuilding roof
the virus makes the house shake but only once
Weird, strange isolation, end-of-winter days
as the atlas of the world fell down
there goes the world as we isolate
as spring is supposed to be here
yet the snow fell on the ground again
and all the robins wait by the curb
I don’t think they’re robins
Do you think there were robins in the atlas?
Is there ever a robin in the stove?
Are they waiting for the bus?
Did you see the fat snowflakes fall?
Do you think we should start over like spring?
A lot of questions and only two
experts to answer them and
yes, they were robins that were not in the atlas
and there are no birds in the stove today and
the school bus has been cancelled
and if there’s no one to see the snowflakes
they are as fat as spring will be
I never thought of spring as fat
maybe a creek, maybe a robin,
certainly a squirrel; do you think
the universe is fat? or the earth?
it’s a vital quest I’m on in the fifth line
am I growing as fat as a cumulous cloud?
a world fat with flowers on this
little planet in the big universe
with so many clouds in the sky
throwing shadows on the trees
and lots of chicken fat too
not to forget what blubber
the famous fat of pigs
and flotsam, jetsam, and flimflam men
Hay Fielders of the New Normal
In private you can be maskless
but as the old song goes
you can leave your hat on
I’m being maskless
so we can kiss and I’ll take
my chastity belt off, OK?
Unmask yourself if you dare
we are home alone
and have nothing to fear
Now a box of necessities
like cheese puffs have arrived
and Jay is tedding the hay
Make hay while the sun shines
even in a pandemic
which is like a battle with sea monsters
I dreamt there was a sea
monster at my door but when I
answered it, it was the pandemic personified
What? No deliveries today please
because we have to tend to our peas
and see what’s behind the mask
Please, please, though, don’t bring chocolate bars
we have to watch out for the movie stars
and see what’s behind their diseases
As they snort and sniff and sneeze
as smiling in bleach baths
while defrosting their frozen chickens
The chickens in my freezer
are dancing, singing and doing graffiti
in the empty subways of asparagus
And Doctor Rock-and-Roll goes surfing
among the sea monsters of the North
while local business owners start fires
Under the economy to get it going
over to the houses of the rising
suns or sons of the sons of the field’s hayers
Philip Good’s most recent chapbook, Poets in a Box or Pluto in Motion, can be read online at RealityBeach.org. He currently lives next to the Poetry State Forest. He studied at the School of Visual Arts and Naropa Institute.
Bernadette Mayer is the author of over twenty-seven collections, including, most recently, Memory (2020), available from Siglio Press; Works and Days (2016); Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words: The Early Books of Bernadette Mayer (2015); and The Helens of Troy, New York (2013), as well as countless chapbooks and artist-books. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She is also the recipient of the 2014 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She served as the director of the St. Mark's Poetry Project from 1980 to 1984, and she also founded and edited the journal 0 to 9 and United Artists Books. She has taught at the New School for Social Research, Naropa University, Long Island University, the College of Saint Rose, Miami University, and at University of Pennsylvania as a Kelly Writers House Fellow. Her influence in the contemporary avant-garde is felt widely. To learn more about the poet, visit BernadetteMayer.com.