Alan Fox
DOVER
The cliff is white,
perpendicular to the sea,
covered with green
where the slope is kind.
I’m no farmer
but even I know
to not plant a seed
on up and down land.
So hold my hand
at the very edge
where safe becomes,
shall we say, slippery.
The cave is always near
where my monsters hide.
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
Tribute to the Sonnet
Read by Author
Alan Fox
ALL SEASONS
Was it Thomas Becket?
My memory at two in the morning isn’t clear,
But whoever it was I thought him a fool
To sacrifice his life for principal.
You will die soon enough, Thomas.
Why rush the process.
You died too soon, Thomas.
You let the aggressor win.
I can only suppose you were caught
In the cloying web of your own self,
Assured, self-righteous, indignant.
I can only suppose you were caught.
And now you or my own self or both
Have caught me closing the candy jar.
I, too, choose duty over expedience,
Belief over comfort, though not as fiercely as you.
What a gift this life is.
This booby-trapped, dirty-veined gift
Which, like a gift card from some merchant
Comes with conditions
And some uncertain date of expiration.
—from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Alan Fox
THE ONLY THING
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First
Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
Place a wooden board
one foot wide by twelve feet long,
lay it on the ground
and I will briskly walk from one end to the other.
Place a wooden board
one foot wide by twelve feet long
between two ten-story buildings
and I won’t touch the sucker.
As far back as I can remember
I have been afraid of edges,
afraid of falling,
which is why I take no high chances.
I find it strange that many others—
painters, window washers, steel workers—
step on high
without a thought.
But as far back as I remember
I have never been afraid of money—
ten cents for a comic book
or ten million dollars for an investment.
The lesson, long hidden, is clear:
My fear is not out there.
It doesn’t belong to you.
It’s merely inside me.
—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
Alan Fox
A STEWARDESS SMILE
Who does not enjoy the Snow White
glisten of a Stewardess smile.
Or, to be politically correct
a “flight attendant” smile…
but gender differences are real.
A recent study instructed that
a Waitress smile increased her tips
by 28% over less fawning service,
but a grinning waiter
collected nothing more.
In my office for years
I hung a pen sketch of two dogs
tugging at either end of
“The last false smile.”
I wonder where that went.
Perhaps it’s now on my lips
when I stroll into work each day,
pasted on my face so others won’t wonder
how I’m really feeling.
How am I really feeling?
—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
Alan Fox
COUPLING
I am sitting in my stateroom
on a ship in the Caribbean Sea
watching old movies
courtesy of satellite TV.
From time to time I hear
the voices a few seconds after
the lips have moved—Nicole Kidman speaks
through the mouth of Tom Cruise.
Yesterday our ship passed
through the Panama Canal
as I read David McCulloch’s book
Path Between the Seas.
It was published in 1977.
The canal was completed in 1914,
and here I am, reading
and observing, near Easter 2008.
In my mind I hear
voices from a century past
recorded more than thirty years ago
while I viewed old concrete canal walls one day ago.
Now I struggle with movies out of sync
even as today I welcome yesterday
through the mind of a writer—possibly dead—
Need you and I orgasm at the same time?
—from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
from A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MARVIN BELL and ALAN FOX IN PORT TOWNSEND, WASHINGTON AUGUST 11TH, 2007
[…]
FOX: How does getting older affect your writing or your philosophy on life?
BELL: Well, I think I’m a guy who matured pretty late—well, I don’t want to say that; I got older, I didn’t mature. [Fox laughs] Well, the one thing young people don’t know, and will never know, is what it’s like to be old. You look different and so they think you are different. But you just look different! You’re the same, you know, 23, 29, 37, whatever you are, inside you’re the same guy. But you look different. I do think it takes a while for a writer to—well I don’t know about other writers; I know that for me it took a long time to—I don’t even know what to say exactly, I’ve changed from book to book. Almost always each book was considerably different from the previous book. And in part that was just waiting for another form that would express content in a new way, but along the way—once you get old enough, of course, you don’t give a damn what others think, and that’s important. You start out with a lot of nerve, because you feel—I mean, I don’t know about everybody, but I and a lot of the people I knew when I started writing, we felt we were experimental. We certainly wanted to be experimental. Continue reading
Alan Fox
SILK WOMAN
The silk which she loves
flows against her skin,
the white silk spun
from a cocoon of words,
spun and shimmering in her dark eyes
against dark skin
which tells her who she is
and who she is not,
am I the moth inside
her mouth where words
form, silk cocoon dark skin
against the words of need
I did not say love
until which of us can tell
I cannot
who is the spinner
who, the moth
who, the silk.
—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
