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    City BirdSelected Poems

    (1991 - 2009)

    by Millie Nissedited by Martha Deed

    [books]

    Buffalo, New York

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    City Bird: Selected Poems (1991 - 2009)Copyright 2010 by Martha DeedPublished by BlazeVOX [books]

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

    the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.Printed in the United States of America

    Book design by Martha DeedCover Photo Oxford Bicycles by Millie Niss

    First EditionISBN: 978-1-60964-008-8Library of Congress Control Number 2010934402

    BlazeVOX [books]303 Bedford Ave

    Buffalo, NY 14216

    [email protected]

    \

    BlazeVOX [ books ]blazevox.org

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    Outline of a Novel

    by the Storyteller Laureate of Hazlahan

    I can feel the axe on my neck as they read me my contract

    before the fatal swing:

    The Storyteller Laureate of Hazlahan must produce one major literary work a year

    and a story or poem each monthor else face execution

    I thought it was a great honor to be appointed to the position

    I had written a book a year for six years

    that no one had actually read

    (small presses dont market very well, you know)

    The Storyteller Laureate publishes under the Imperial seal of Hazlahan

    and his works are read in all the Universities

    and papers are assigned to schoolchildren about each and every minor little poem

    and it is extremely rare to get rejected

    because the Storyteller Laureate is the head rejecter of all of Hazlahanhe is the ultimate arbiter

    if someone wants to ght a rejection slip

    they can request an audience with the Storyteller Laureate

    to have justice done

    but if it is dreck

    the Storyteller Laureate

    can recommend execution of the author in severe cases

    or a total ban on submissions and publications

    if the offense to good taste is less egregious

    it is a dangerous thing to appeal to the Storyteller Laureatebut the Storyteller Laureate rarely rejects himself

    and as the Emperor of Hazlahan is illiterate

    he does not often exercise his Imperial Veto power on the Storytellers publications

    oh what a nice thing to be Storyteller Laureate

    but I have violated my contract

    it is the end of December and by January rst I must produce a major work

    I am prohibited from working on any holidays and December 19th is the Emperors Birthday

    traditionally the work is presented to him then

    all bound and covered with positive blurbsfrom various Imperial ofcials

    and ofcial literary lights

    Its not that I dont feel a novel coming on

    I can feel it coming out of me fully formed

    jam-packed with action and pungency

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    but every time I try to write it down it sneaks back inside

    in out in out in out in out

    it hurts to strain so much

    it strikes me that if the novel could be made less solid

    more uid, more stream of consciousness and ghostly in its narration

    less intense

    it might slide out of me more easily

    the last Storyteller Laureate was blessed with the gift of logorrhea

    he had only to sit down

    and novels and plays and poetry collections

    came shooting out of him

    in a spray of mediocrity with tiny lumps of quality mixed in

    when they appointed me they wanted somebody a bit more controlled

    more regular

    less diarrhoic in my prose

    and for several years I t the bill nicelybut now I have constipation of the imagination

    it could be because my last book was too visionary

    and when I was interviewed about the wonderful symbolism in it

    I said, what symbolism?

    there really is a purple two-headed weasel living inside each and every person

    feeding on intestinal content

    and directing our souls.

    My weasel talks to me all the time,

    and so I know how to behave so as to be saved in the nal Apocalypse

    the key to life is learning to hear the weasel withinseeing the weasel is yet another step towards salvation

    if you are fully mindful

    you will see the weasel whenever you look in the mirror

    and summon it

    your skin will become transparent

    and you will see the outline of your intestines

    with the two-headed weasel swimming inside

    that is the goal of life

    after thismy daily orange juice started tasting funny

    and I was no longer certain about the existence of the weasel within

    I spied around the palace one day and discovered

    that the Court Physician had ordered a philtre of Haldol

    to be added to my breakfast

    each day

    and I couldnt protest

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    because disobeying the Court Physician

    is grounds for execution

    as is poking into the Physicians activities

    he is allowed to operate totally without the patients knowledge

    to avoid false cures caused by false hopes

    or reactions of a sick mind against the Physic which will make it better

    however I had heard

    that Haldol slows down the movements

    of the mind as of the intestine

    killing the weasel

    and my novel

    in one fell swoop

    it could be that this was deliberate

    as I have heard rumors

    that the Court Physician would like to become Storyteller Laureateand my execution would serve his nefarious purposes

    so each morning

    I poured my orange juice down the gullet of the Court Cat

    and watched it get stiff and sluggish

    as my novel wrote itself down

    as quickly as I could type

    saved. . .

    and my intestines alsohave begun to produce

    ne output

    for the Imperial Compost Pile

    for which I get paid extra

    by the bushel basket

    isnt life sweet!

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    Minutes from the New Zealand Flat-Earth Society

    Between the picture and the picturesque

    There lies the real take for example sheep:

    Theyre picturesque when grazing on the front

    Of a pamphlet from the New Zealand Tourist Board,

    But when you meet them on the mountainside,Theyre greasy, dirty, and not really white

    And have an annoying tendency to stay put

    When several thousand of them are blocking your way.

    Of course if this is New Zealand, the situation is complicated

    By the fact that you and the sheep are both upside-down,

    Or so my illustrious uncle was convinced

    Despite all attempts to teach him the contrary.

    He was grateful to the end of his days

    (Which ended very late at 92)

    That he had the good fortune to be bornOn the unique spot New York where things

    Are the right way up.

    Perhaps it is we who are upside-down

    That would explain why change keeps falling out

    Of pockets into gutters and other oozy places

    Where you wouldnt want to reach in to get it.

    Being inverted may have an effect

    Upon the intellect, excusing us

    From all the stupid things we do and say.We will have to convene a committee of experts

    To determine which way the earth should tilt

    Meanwhile, donations from schoolchildren are amassing

    For a campaign to twist the earth our way.

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    Lapland

    Someday Ill go to Lapland,

    Said the father whenever he was miffed.

    Ill commune with the seals.

    Nancy inopportunely laughed, imagining

    Her husband among the pinnipeds.How he would try to make them say, Thank you

    Each time he threw them a sh.

    Hed be home in a week, she knew

    But somehow it never came to that.

    There are Laplanders in Lapland,

    Piped up 11-year old Sally

    Because in Social Studies

    They had done a three-week unit

    On places colder than Buffalo.

    They dress in furs and have sleds.I could avoid them, said the father.

    Surely there arent that many.

    And the father returned to his mashed potatoes

    Clearly inhabiting a world consisting only of

    Himself, his fork, and the potatoes.

    For all the help he was to her,

    He might as well have been in Lapland, thought Nancy.

    Can I go to Lapland, too? said Billy

    Trying to get out of clearing the table.

    His fathers musings had convinced himThat in Lapland when you grill sh

    Over an open re

    There are no dishes to think about.

    This seemed a big advantage.

    We are in BUFFALO, NOT LAPLAND,

    Intoned Nancy, and in Buffalo, people do chores.

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    Chitchat at the Chancellors Tea

    seventeen tarantulas

    however?

    Bicentennial bash

    bordersheretofore

    squeamishly,

    Wouldnt you?

    hereditary green

    part-time arachnophobia

    visits Sweden

    chortling slowly

    yesterday

    I can kangaroo, too

    slowly quoth he

    charmingly,

    in arpeggios.

    logging circumscribed

    chartreuse philosophically

    in absentia

    summarily squats

    have another ghost

    minces Marcella

    although clam etiquette bursts,

    I intuit instead potatoes,

    purchase impresarios on the dole,

    of course convincingly

    underhanded among

    byzantine grapes

    blue leave-taking

    with supposedly

    cement

    Wunderbar!

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    The Carmelites

    sell souvenirs

    near the entrance

    of Auschwitz slowly

    or faster if they choose

    an apple tree

    creates a shadow

    and the crosses

    are like lenses

    focusing the light

    conveying immanence

    losing consciousness

    between sleep and waking

    keeping silence

    cinematically

    not as in a Chinese garden

    random apples

    pose hard questions

    about the light

    long since dissolved

    into space

    the trees are a ceiling

    holding silence

    and the blossoms

    hide memories

    of distant cries

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    The Roachs Tale

    a very educated roach

    on the Upper West Side

    was crawling up a bus shelter

    reading the signs advertising rooms to rent

    because he had just been evictedthat happens to roaches a lot

    and they dont even get 30 days notice

    this roach was way too smart for Roach Motels

    and he wouldnt go near any kind of bait

    but the lady had sprayed his home

    which was a cozy little place with his extended family

    underneath the fridge

    it had a homey vibration

    and just the right temperature and humidity

    and the roach never came out during the day to bother the womanhe minded his own business

    and he even ate her garbage for her!

    she should have been happy

    but she was prejudiced, a real racist

    and she went around claiming to be a liberal

    she didnt give a damn about his personality

    or their common interests

    he even read her Village Voice after she was done with it!

    and you cant imagine what a laborious task reading a newspaper is for an insect

    that is only about the size of the word thebut anyway, this roach was homeless, and it was January

    and he was looking for a new apartment

    the Columbia students usually have good garbage

    he was partial to Chinese food containers left on the oor for three days

    that way they acquire a special tang that humans dont seem to like for some reason

    so he was reading the signs on the bus stop at 116th street

    and his little roachy heart stopped when he saw an announcement

    for a weekly Roach Colloquium

    in the Department of Entomology

    he decided to goand it turned out to be full of the weirdest looking humans hed ever seen

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    they gathered in the department lounge before the talk

    and discussed the roaches they had seen in their travels

    to the Amazon and the favelas of Brazil and the bayous of Louisiana

    and some of them even carried

    small containers which the roach soon realized were insect carrying cases

    he smelled strange pheromones

    they called to himhe had never been in love

    though he had at last calculation 27,247,566 children

    most of whom of course would not survive pupacy

    when the presentation began he saw the source of the love vibes he had been sensing

    they came from the star of the show, an enormous, bright yellow, Peruvian

    stink-bug

    at least 500 times his size

    he wondered how to declare his love

    would she be interested in a mere . . . roach

    roaches in her native land were huge, majestic, reptilianscapable of shaking the earth with their footfalls

    or so it seemed to a common New York City pinky-ngernail-sized housepest

    he vowed to write her a sonnet declaring his suit

    or perhaps a ghazal?

    or maybe something modern in the style of Lorca or Neruda given her nationality

    would she be into magical realism?

    then the presentation started

    it began with some obviously loving (on the part of the researcher) descriptions

    of the stink bugs rarity and beauty

    but then the lecturer saidof course it is among the dumbest animals known to man

    according to some measures, for instance certain tests of harm avoidance

    the single celled amoeba

    is brighter

    the roach blanched (at least metaphorically)

    he wasnt interested in dating a bozo

    even a very pretty one

    sadly, he left his rare but stupid cousins and went off to nd a plain

    but street smart New York cockroachmaiden

    to marry and haveseveral million children with

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    Its a Whitman Morning!

    The homeless woman on the corner calls out in a language she alone speaks.

    Her words bounce off the curb, fall into the Hudson, and penetrate the oceanic depths.

    Their saltiness is my saltiness. . . the words that come ashore on the jagged rocks of Marazion

    have the salt of my sweat in them.

    You, too, are a part of the anthem Do you recognize your voice?

    Whimsical, awkward, arrogant, coy. . . America tests its newly deepened voice:

    The clack-boink of basketballs in the courtyard of my building is a part of it.

    The tinkling of an ice-cream truck pulling the desires of youth through the city streets

    like an unmatching thread used to mend the pocket of a beloved coat

    The crash of a orists iron curtain sealing off dahlias and daylilies from the lustful night

    The salsa music owing from the foot of Samuel Tildens statue

    The creak of windows exhaling essence of bacon fat and coffee into the morning air

    The boom of a door slamming on a former lover;

    He will never shave here again.The whine of an ambulance carrying an expectant mother of twins

    The braying of the Staten Island Ferry as it disgorges its load of commuters on a hot August

    evening

    All these are a part of the song but they are not the song.

    No scholars glosses, no learned lexicons can amplify this melody.

    I bathe in it and embrace the limpid swell.

    I draw it close to me and with a lovers soothing words appease the waves.