Gog of Pennsylvania (Chapter 1)
I’ve decided to post the first chapter of the long poem I’ve been working on of late. This is very provisional; even though Chapter 1 feels more “set” than anything else so far, who knows what will happen in the future. After all the title has changed thrice in a triad of weeks (”replace all” being one of my favorite experimental techniques in a poem). Take it for what you will. I’m only about 30 pages in and Gog, our hero, is only beginning to make an appearance, if that gives you any idea of the arc I’m going for. (Although maybe I’ll move him up a bit).
Chapter 1: The Homecoming
One day the count nailed everything he could think of. He stormed to his study
overlooking the River of Winter. He undid his collar. He wore golden shoes
overlooking the warm floor. He kept track of the red floes and the white floes.
He saw There were tracks in the mist above the water.
There were white deer There were suns opening holes
trying to cross the river. There were men in deer costumes trying to throw
their belongings and support groups across the river. They kept their antlers and And
biding their own business. They were there along the river, along with the front
of the argument and the back of the argument, and the hot bonfire of rats
and the spent bonfire of rats, and the servants’
sons and daughters and the accomplices of his sons and daughters. He saw
The march
was not getting them anywhere.
They kept thinking of what their neighbors were thinking:
fountain click-click, argot gee-gaw
They were all on the other side of the river
which could be viewed from the study
which could not be viewed from inside the river
which inhabited the count’s raptor coronet
I reflected on this and held fast trying to get attention without getting nailed.
Even the nails were getting nailed, joining roofs to walls
and signs to trees. There were In time
the rust affixed to everything. There were
I lost track
As the palace sailed,
I hid under the porch
and ate a green peach, nailed. I read a newspaper in the dirt that said:
(Tears are not supposed to harm small animals.
Did he learn that at least?
And how long are we supposed to wait around again?
If your gray area of love is too small, you may lose this war. What?)
And kept losing track.
Anyway, he kept writing or had others writing for him throughout
the shotgun palaces attached
to the study. The walls kept writing. The ceiling The fan kept writing. The floor kept
writing. The earrings in the mousetrap kept writing. The white moments
kept writing and the off-white moments kept writing and the cuffs kept writing.
The bruised moments kept writing. cuffing, cuffing The fallow fields in the kitchen
kept writing. The darts kept The Quack of Gulls kept writing. The lost face
and the regular old face kept writing. The collect calls inside the
river kept writing. Hello, Everyone was writing and no one was pointing anything
out. But the point of nailing didn’t have any indicators, only ties to be broken,
and armor to be spared, and runaways
who kept trying to call home, but the paws wouldn’t dial the right numbers,
and besides there were only like five payphones all along the
neighboring shores, so what were they going to do.
There was no writing in the newspaper. Moving forward, no one was
backward, no one was pointing
anything out untimely.
No books. No games. Only crawlspaces.
The count smears cold soy over the antlers in the study
while overlooking the headwaters that appear further along,
over the Labor Day weekend. It turned out that ever since the count was born
he had dreamed of pulling out the nails and putting
them back in again. And then it was done.
He licks his lips. The sun His concentration breaks for an instant
by an H.G. Wells novel that has turned into a dog.
The dog is–is on the shelf!
The dog starts eating the nails holding the shelf together. Otherwise the
shelf would fall apart.
The count has no choice
but to burn the dog. This is not Pennsylvania. In fact no one
in the palace has ever heard of such a thing.
This is the Czechoslovakia of smoke
and one day, he says (though everyone is thinking it), this will
be the Ephesus of the branches and not the Rome,
the one point where horses cross the mountains
to graze in the riverly beneath.
Let’s go do something else, he says.
