J.J. Blickstein

August 15, 2017

“Geologist Made of Fog in the Congo” by J.J. BlicksteinPosted by

J.J. Blickstein

GEOLOGIST MADE OF FOG IN THE CONGO

we are so young between the portrait of the heart and the warm sea
we are gradual
impatient
cambrian snagged in the soft fetish
red spleen in the native
his sandals become blue dogs hunting the enemy
and why shouldn’t the wound be supernatural?
the whole sky a lung
drinker of blood
there are ropes dangling from the stars
carbon and the secret squeezed from the wood
we re-imagine and destroy ourselves between breath
counting
orgy and drum
hunger and new emotions slice the throat of the goat
nothing dies
we bleed it from its restlessness

he cuts a knife from the world to reshape a world
and we become beautiful

where there are things the world becomes round
the eyes of the fetish are mirrors and teeth—
pound the body with nails and disciples to sweat the soul to the skin
to vomit the sun and amazing images of laughing or killing
fossils of light and we are the future looking back back
wanting to believe like genes that there is strength in numbers
and it takes courage to love the dirty and broken bones
that are villages
we name the stars like our ancestors
who seem to be running away from us
who’s catching up to who weightless and in love?

—from Rattle #11, Summer 1999
Tribute to Editors

__________

J.J. Blickstein: “My mother was an African-American mystic and civil rights activist. My father is a Jewish geochemist from Brooklyn. Both of these extremes signed a peace treaty, realizing that they must live and work together in the geography of the self.” (webpage)

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October 27, 2009

“Western Motel” by J.J. BlicksteinPosted by

J. J. Blickstein

WESTERN MOTEL

—for Edward Hopper

Red chair. The human sacrifice, a perfect desert, outside the window
(window the leash on the decay of the dream) is the entire world.

Woman in a red dress on the edge of the bed ready to go or to stay forever—
suitcase on the floor, same color as the undamaged road, green sedan
at the edge of the window leaves no knowledge but assumption.

Death in the shadows of a room without dusk—everything wreaks of
“just passing through.” The bones in your mind can’t be found anywhere,
thin skin of civilization torn between the open curtains just the way you like it.

You amuse yourself with the idea of the girl as automobile, automobile
as girl but you paint her pensive, and relaxed, cross her legs to maintain the tension—
she falls back from shapes and tones when you question the composition.

Your tongue, the silent tongue, silences the perfect pitch in the colored palette—
Blonde in a red dress, red shoes, green automobile, deep stain on the wall, red
sheets washed a pale carmine by the bent light we can’t call the sun—
Simple lamp is simple math, that’s why you included it, the shape of the headlamp,
color of sand to balance the weight of the room.

Your attention to detail, your will for the stark exposes your creation to the impossibility of
chance, of occasion because your real gift is design—

She’s in a poem that looks and smells like real life (No, it’s not a poem, it’s
poetry with nothing to do, never anything to do …)
It’s important how she looks at you, through you, past you—she still looks for your signal,
lives for you, with you, without you, and you are both still alone. She paints you, makes you a
landscape (in her mind) as a small rebellion and this is why she must despise you, for the
vision (she too has become herself). You know, the dullness, the repression, the squashing
of giddiness, the discipline to stare long enough to see
almost everything and the discipline to pause just before it and you crack and tear.

Her back is to the view because there is nothing more to understand. Yep, she’s smart and
pretty but who wants to surrender expectation and the belief that something’s coming—
(You could show us longing but you don’t have to because she’s already there.)
The road is the thing that’s really American—there’s nothing on it and you can see it right
outside the window, and the funny thing is that we are always looking at it all the time—But,
maybe she is too because everything here and here after all is just an idea.

—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004

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