Steve Dalachinsky


[five poems from] extant fragments & (w)holes

[- 2016 fragments]

yet each respecting the  other’s voice
proud humble tennis player under acknowledged 
incredible singular voiced poet & melville scholar 
motor 21 s(ani)tation locker down show her 
after a while as you get older you have so many pains 
not tomorrow but before they happen 
volt / aire 
listening to him read of his dead child 
reminded me when, as a boy, I lay in bed 
in the d dark 
willing myself to die  

once death got so close to me
it nearly touched my face 
i stopped just in time

BLAH begins snapshot of  _________ 
BPS’s most recent book which ABC puts it is  _____________
BP, no stranger to music has or third two books 
while yodeling vignettes

so James asks Taylor 
(no seriously that’s their names)
are you or a musician
since you know Steve 
you must be one or the other
taylor hesitates   thinks   answers —
little bit of both I guess 
but mostly I’m a listener

use me / superstitious year released  
         “you can hide the shit but you can’t hide the smell”  the luncheonette 
   motherwell dada poets & painters in/form\(ed)
“words were useless to describe the dancers what the dancers have done 
“these words do not mean that something is beginning to happen” (paul auster)
“one should read the real estate as a keeps rising
            but only give them half you’re heart
& keep your eye on the bigger chance “
           / base heart \ loser / film \
bobby helms at the jukebox Jacqueline
the case for brooklyn  – “it’s a nice day for brooklyn” 
yet “i don’t understand the meaning of continuous text” (robert kelly)
“the gap is small...an essay = an attempt…an academic essay = persuasion
                               the difference between telling & knowing”
people trust brands: “cobra teaches you something without teaching you anything” 
counter intuition  too many quotes… it all through the haze…    


     ф


enobshelf (for & thru john wieners 4/6/16)

face torn   going 
drunk at the ballroom filled with music 
falling down    drinking 
roof peaks from atop the mountains
secret roadmaps 
pig boys’ gloves 
put your flesh in the world 
peeks rough self unknowing people  in sorrow
the aural tradition
rifled & debauched in my grave
sweet space
chicanery
hyp-o
the trials
the revenge of others’ lives
when one or more prod 
then shred 
your senses
your language
distributing straitjackets 
confined to our own medicated heads
forgotten spelled milky  civilians 
hung up on our mothers 
but where are our fathers 
as if they were all artificial gates between 
their childhoods & ours
which side is your team on? 
which coffin did your team emerge from? 
interi/orating the holy waters? 
classical labor negligent 
(the carrot grown downward   upward 
               side up down)
not being able to tell the actor from 
the impersonator
our very biologies 
hemmed in 
                        & dismissed.


     ф


stuttering napkins (for paul blackburn)

1.
i sit there in McSorley’s maybe a table away from you & the firemen & cops writing my poems
being “a man” at the ripe old age of late teenager
eating liederkranz cheese crackers & onions
drinking  a mixture of Guinness & light beer
until I am plastered i was always alone with the sawdust 
on my soles & lips
you – i  there
through our histories –
our histories  coinciding 
yet never intertwining

 autumn now
your history in the history books
mine
like the soon falling leaves

we drink together
but apart
you survive as i perish 
in a fine wind

let’s meet later at Max’s
        (the book store not the city)
                       then later
           i’ll play another version of that Rollins tune 
you like so much

where was i while i was there in the middle of all this?
where was i?

it’s autumn
early to mid 1960s
as i exit the station one fallen leaf brown & brittle 
lying on the subway steps – a bit too early.

2. 
tonight i heard paul blackburn’s voice 
his numbers 
my numbers after his numbers
without ever knowing his numbers
i’m paler than my brother’s 
blue impala

i’ve always felt perhaps because 
i’m not a translator myself
that translation brings too much ERA
into one’s own poetry

possibly
a located
unrest
licks
BLACK
uneasy
ram-shackled
nuances 

bloody
lack luster
average
cumulative
kindness

my brother’s impala was a 
convertible.
st marks church / poetry project / for /of / thru paul blackburn – 2016
ф


in the station

here there are these legs 
that show from the knee downward 
expressing what’s next 
she’s eating her candy slowly    chewing slowly 
her mouth closed 
everyone’s mouth is closed 
except for the chattering couple 
it’s friday & closing  in on midnight
she’s dressed for a date that never happened 
i could talk to her about guns or love  
but this is downtown
& the train is moving uptown 
& now all those legs have disappeared 
with its motion 
& more mouths open as we enter the tunnel 
                                 
                                        *
my loneliness is so profound
only the world’s loneliness & the water 
lapping against the pier
could suffice to describe it 

the group speaking in a foreign language
confounds me

he gets more a month from his parents
than most folks make in a lifetime.
 
                                *
ocean  drunk  mass settings
               881
587                   198
               203                     324
  constant accumulation        pravda station
        crossed out  
                                   a child walking on the palms of the air
       
of brood with malaxated hungry grubs
referred to behavior  remarks as a(t)ten(t)sion from 
        capping the larvae hatch
attained its full development elsewhere    –   OFFSPRING  
                                
sometimes she brings me flowers
i bring her the street.                                            
2016 
ф


pierre joris - a brief history 
(joris/auster @ nyu on paul celan  - 2014)

x’s sq. sign
revel on as love is on photos of crowd & writing
poems in English as a kid
pierre decides to come to america after deciding 
not to write poems in mother tongue 
only write phones & mother tongue
toll-free literature poetry naked lunch howl 1961 bard college
translation helped him learn how to write in english
end @ / i found on the road in spanish beached 
moved into shakespeare & company 
didn’t want to write in french or german as a teen first heard 
celan phones (poems)@ age 15
they drove to venue together translating towards english 
celan was first poet to translate into english @ 19/ 20 years old 
translating poems he had to take them apart
 part @ they’re core (cool)  
then learn how to write his own phone (poems)
kelly rothenberg  fisherman/eshelman
homes problems how are need polenz me Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee english english 
english eng right DDD.bye mother tongue hard hard hard hardbard auto dictate is 
like auto didact the review of mine / a redo reader of minds … & Time. 

Poet/collagist Steve Dalachinsky was born in Brooklyn after the last big war and has managed to survive lots of little wars. His book The Final Nite (Ugly Duckling Presse) won the PEN Oakland National Book Award. His most recent books are Fools Gold (2014 feral press), a superintendent's eyes (revised and expanded 2013 - unbearable/ autonomedia) and flying home, a collaboration with German visual artist Sig Bang Schmidt (Paris Lit Up Press 2015). His latest cd is The Fallout of Dreams with Dave Liebman and Richie Beirach (Roguart 2014). His poem “Particle Fever” was nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize. Forthcoming from Overpass Press The Invisible Ray, with artwork by Shalom Neuman.
 
 
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