The Poet, La Bourgeoisie, and: Revisions
1987; University of Missouri; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mis.1987.0006
ISSN1548-9930
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Poetry
ResumoTHE POET, LA BOURGEOISIE / Lisa Lewis I like that charcoal part of night too late Even for trashpickers and the sounds of their slim industry, The warped wheels of grocery carts jumping curbs, The clink and pale clatter of cans in plastic bags. I like to think I've outlasted them all in the poverty Of insomnia, awake without speech or the smells Of traffic or the broad sun firing select triangles Of live oak leaves in green beyond leaf-green. I like to open the windows to the city And the muddled silence it can muster up, And pour three fingers of schnapps in a wine glass; Then I plug a movie in the VCR, Ci'iy Lights Or Monsieur Verdoux, something I've seen A hundred times; I love the way Chaplin seems Confused and tender, and I want to feel a little Confused and tender. The first thing I do Is push fast-forward, right to the end Of City Lights, where the girl, cured Of blindness, presses a coin into Charlie's palm And folds his fingers closed. Touch tells her. "You?" she asks, knowing, and though now she sees The torn trousers, the face pale from months in prison, He smiles that she can see. I watch it Half a dozen times, until my eyes fill At the first note of the girl's theme music; She's beautiful, hanging a cage of doves And turning her face to the camera. I have to take another drink before I can watch The beginning, because I want to forget it As soon as it's over—saving the best Love for the blind, the broken, the flat broke; And failing. Yesterday I drove on an errand Miles past the city limits, and there beyond shopping malls, I saw, shuffling the roadside, a bum I've found mumbling on my own front step Blocks from the middle of town. He was having trouble Keeping his balance for the clods and cans 260 · The Missouri Review On the shoulder, and he walked with his arms pinned To his sides, his rubber legs wide, waddling. Lisa Lewis THE MISSOURI REVIEW · 262 REVISIONS / Lisa Lewis One sponge of Spanish moss droops, Dabbing the classroom window. And the turn Of pages, the erasures, are sponges squeezed Into scrub-buckets, so teacher will never know. But she will notice the paper Roughened, a word revised, a phrase, And think he was probably right the first time. No one will ever know, least of all the young man Who writes with his nose an inch from the paper, fast, The better to forget. He is so right, she thinks, To get rid of words, if only because they can be Changed, and lost . . . Sometimes she and a man Go to movies, for darkness and the big screen; Once, after a film beleaguered with symbols Of fecundity, they talked of the large genitals Of farm animals, of humans, mammals, having nothing To do but fuck, relentless, Dutiful, probably not even knowing why, The mare standing hobbled to be mounted, The pornographic movie star trying to keep it up Under lights, the camera's whirr like a rattlesnake— He told her. She has not forgotten. She has taken to loving the talk He loves, of anger, of childhood, of having To find, firsthand, irrevocable Proof that nothing can be said well. In bed she talks, and is angry, and becomes Childlike, with a need to know, and the lover Grows hard and harder, and mistakes Are rubbed, as with pumice, rubbed out . . . As under friction a desktop squeals, some thought Worn through; next the chirrup of a pencil-point Loading the emptied line with words, like a rat Lining its nest with paper and curly bits of moss. It has been done over so many times, all wrong If teacher saw, who likes the class to pretend to believe 262 · The Missouri Review The crisp infallibility of her critical eye. They pretend for the sake of watching her talk; She believes they are dreaming of sex, trying not to. They are weak with naive sleep and desire; Relaxed, their legs fall open. To her It...
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