Wormwood Review

the worm oil on view: 31

THE WORMWOOD REVIEW

Volume 8. number 3 Issue number 31

Editor: Marvin Malone; Art Editor: A. Sypher

Suburban Poem

Last week as I drove home from the club my headlights picked up a scarlet duck waddling down the middle of my road. A few nights ago I almost ran over a small blue and white pig waiting for me outside my carport. Last night in the dark I distinctly saw a Negroe laughing and dancing as he played a gold guitar behind my azaleas. What the hell is happening to our neighborhood?

-- Edwin Ochester

Gainesville, Fla.

1 Poem for What We Were

Driving home from Palatka we picked up Radio Havana; they spoke of heroic denial and played samba for us through the rain. This morning the President said we can afford everything plus as many bombs as we want if we are patient in our struggle for liberty against the enemy a twentieth our side. The President fat in his rose gard en. Che in his flowering grave. Jefferson the size of a stamp.

— Edwin Ochester

To the Girl Who Photocopies My Manuscript

You do not read my poems as you copy them. You read my titles. You say, "This Time of Tiger. I say, yes, no to the poems I want copies of.

But they mean nothing to you. They are only words 0 girl, I would that you were less perfunctory. These are my poems. I have labored over them.

I am not as clever as you and your machine. I like your machine. It is a magic machine. Deep in its belly it is making my poems.

That is magic. I have needed years to do that. It must know everything about me to do that. I do not think I could make poems in my belly.

You are nice. You are automatic and shiny. I want to touch you. I say your hair is pretty. You thank me. You do not put your hand on my knee.

I do not think I would put my hand on your knee. I think you would rattle. I think you would hit me. I think you would scramble back into your machine. Mrs. Starbuck Plays the Children's Piano

Mrs. Starbuck plays the children's piano at the toy counter in Kresge's, and no

one listens to her but me. Christmas carols picked out with one forefinger, she unrolls rhythmically down the keys. I watch Mrs. Starbuck from the jewelry counter in this penny world of tiepins and pearls of paste, privy should Mr. Starbuck in his haste discover me watching his skin-Hugging- jean-wearing wife. I am happy hearing

Mrs. Starbuck who will some day beget memoirs of Mr. Starbuck, good poet and teacher of good poets. I will say that one day I heard Mrs. Starbuck play the children's piano in Kresge's. Who'll deny it? Who, in the weathering of this yule- tide season, would cry humbug? Not Mr. Starbuck who, returning, sees the warm blister on his wife's finger. Not Mrs. Starbuck. Leaving, I say, "Hello, Mr. Starbuck," smiling as I leave, and only to hear toy Christmas carols jangling in my ear.

— Harold Bond

Boston, Massachusetts in wales in january in 1905 in wales in january in 1905 a large wolf slavering having torn the throats from a thousand sheep cowering turned into a donkey for the benefit of a watching Welshman wondering no questions were asked of either man or donkey or by them.

3 in Oklahoma in july in 1965 a large lake surging having housed for the summer the bodies of people bathing turned suddenly from blue to green for my benefit i men tion this equally astounding observation coincidental ly

in london in October in 1878 a naturalist walking was followed at his heel by a cubeshaped animal silently crowds of people of all shapes followed him to his home crying such words as best expressed their anger and fear

in Oklahoma in july in 1965 a woman walking was followed and preceded by a twolegged boy loudly who left the ground entirely in the air or became a moving part of a tree at irregular intervals i believe but i had no watch to time them and this morning the earth squeezed out of its rim a yellow egg and the air of the sky that i cannot hold turned into water and a strange black box of a machine makes black marks on paper out of weightless golden questions in my mind.

thursday evening

we all sat around in a circle one said have you heard about the two drowned russian astronauts in Wisconsin that the government refuses to take out of a lake i said what lake in Wisconsin nobody knew another said i read in the readers digest about the two young boys in italy who have built a radar tracking device out of tin cans thats better than any the russian and american scientists have made i said what are their names nobody knew

4 another said i know a man who talked to a fellow who was minding his own business when one day a flying saucer landed beside him and a deep voice said get in he got in there was just a microphone there the spaceship flew him to Washington and back in eleven minutes

i said where is the fellow now nobody knew

thats nothing said another did you know that our scientists have invented antigravity machines that can go to space and back in minutes only theyre just about two or three feet wide not big enough to hold a man

i said have you seen one no he said when we went home i said to my wife arline how much of that stuff do you believe none really she said i said i never heard such a lot of phony stories myself driving carefully through the traffic of angels and unicorns some of whom had been drinking.

Charles fort out of the somewhere a rain of blood dripped for days on the dry earth while indoors with shades drawn sat seven scientists in weighty debate on its impossibility poor peasants watched in wonder the great bird on the moon or else its visible shadow, while in conference sat seventy sages calculating copernican cycles toads and crabs and chunks of ice were released entirely at random from the afterports of the great spaceship while seven hundred savants predicted tomorrows weather

5 looking up and down and even sometimes forward and backward Charles fort with one foot in tomorrow a hand in yesterday went outside.

the only man in the neighborhood

i was going to have a picnic in kennedy national park i buckled the seatbelts and strapped in the basket securely not wanting to lose it on the way

drive carefully arline shouted from the laboratory door back tonight dear i replied

i started the starter threw in the clutch put the old girl in gear while glancing in the rearview mirror and off i went to 1997

i am the only man in the neighborhood with a Chevrolet supersport time machine.

— Norman H. Russell

Storm Lake. Iowa

A Really Sound Project

The suggestion was a good one, but the stone was too heavy. Your red cape trailed in the mud, caught in my heel.

The old men didn’t like it much, spat and swore like nothing we had ever seen or heard before, pointing their guns at us.

A joke or two will calm them, we'll tell them funny stories, I said. I screamed at them, Have you heard this one?

6 But they wouldn't stop, kept pushing. From a window somewhere, someone played a fugue. They tried to dance.

If you'd just take off your cape — I said. The old men laughed and spat and swore and pointed their guns at us.

The idea, as I said, was good, a good idea, but in execution offered difficulties really — it was the cape, the damned red cape and the old men, laughing and spitting, made it very hard to concentrate on what to do. Sirocco — Palermo, July 1965

Out on the terrace a table falls.

The green water in the pool wrinkles.

In here, in the air-conditioned bar, we sip Campari and through the window watch the cat out there stare at the pink awning as it flaps in the blistering wind.

Somebody suggests bridge. No one answers him.

An old party in a red wig looks up from her book.

Ah, she says, her voice trembling as she waves a thin claw towards the sulphur sky,

is this, then, the breath of the wild ass? Triolet in a Badly Lighted Kitchen

I cannot undertake to examine here Dante's double imagery in all its detail, for his light alone could lead us into complexities as rich as life itself. I had almost said richer than life, if by life we mean (as we must mean) what we ourselves are able daily to see, or even what certain writers have seen, with the exception of Shakespeare, and possibly Sophocles and Henry James. -- Allen Tate, "The Symbolic Imagination"

Scene: Hamlet is at the kerosene stove. Oedipus stage-right half in the door. Daisy Miller stage-left half out.)

Hamlet: The egg is done. Come both and eat.

Oedipus: The butter sputters. Is it done?

Daisy: But is it egg, may I repeat?

Hamlet: The egg is done. Come both ...

Daisy: And eat?

Oedipus: I thought an egg had yellow meat.

Daisy: One can't quite be sure, can one?

Hamlet: The egg is done! Come both and eat!

Oedipus: The butter sputters.

Daisy: Is it done?

— Irving Kreutz

Madison, Wisconsin

8 ZOO magic Marianne

Moore legend in your New York Time

Trap The Word

in ANIMAL g a r d e n s OF ELECTRIFYING BLUE...

Black Birthday Dead

Salt-and-Pepper time

— Norbert Blei

Chicago, I11. •Sleeping on a Sealyham

Sleeping on a Sealyham is like sleeping on a dog. Her name, you see. was Margo Sealyham. And one whole season it was terribly funny. Except perhaps to Margo.

It was the year the crowd was playing Typical. In that game there's a Typical: "She's a typical little housewife," And the Antiphon: "Oh. I know — an alcoholic." A Typical: "She's the kind who wears white gloves and pique collars." And the Chorus: "Oh, yes. of course, a call girl." Those are two that I remember.

If one were clever they could build. Some nights we had Triple Typicals and Typicals that turned and bit their tails.

For we are nothing if not clever. neatly segregating camp into its highs and lows. able to define a wine: "a rather pleasant claret imported ... from the Coast;" deflate a pose. certain that the bearded have weak chins. and that the Schweitzer-syndrome. like Gert's rose. is self-explanatory.

"Shall we sit outside." he said. "and watch the astronauts assault Diana?" "Or will this candle-glow, unbusheled here, suffice?" We left the terrace to the insects and the sentimental. Inside, at least, there were no violins, and the tablecloth went mercifully unchecked. We had a rather pleasant claret (imported from the -- Yes .) and ribs as rare as courage in the clergy.

(As-Rare-As is another game we play. The rules are economical and clear. It must be rare, and must alliterate, like talent in a teacher, or monogamy among Americans.)

He raised his glass. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. From one through sixty-nine." I smiled. Laughter would have been excessive. And said, "I think your gonads are showing again."

10 "Ah. yes." he said, "To quote Charcot: 'C'Est toujour la chose genitale, toujour, et cetera. -- But is it love, my love, or merely symbiosis?" (For we have heard of love, are sure that it exists, or lust, or habit ...)

We had coffee (poor) and talked some more. There’s always some new Russian poet, or a painter who’s abandoned his old style, another war. or riot, or new dance step, or the latest thing in Centaurs, half-man-half-motorcycle. . .

And yet, back home there was a couple, I remember, married sixty years. They rocked on their green porch. Years before they’d lost a daughter, someone said, in childbed. And a son in WWII. In May they carried flowers to the graves. They had eaten sixty thousand meals together, lain together twenty thousand nights. Their faces looked like parchment maps of the same territory. Once I caught them holding claws on their green porch. They almost never talked.

We talk. There’s always some new ruling on pornography, and one more "poignant" Broadway play; every day another lion stuffed with newsprint-, and the latest book debunking yesterday's ...

We talk. And our talk, if I may be immodest, is amusing. We are well-informed, of course, and bright. Our management of language at times amounts to brilliance. And as we spar above the clarets and the coffee cups lying empty on an unchecked tablecloth, I am aware that we are very clever, that we are nothing if not clever.

— Phyllis Onstott Arone

Logansport, Indiana

11 the test

This guy walking down the street with his ego on a leash never learned to do without diapers and he sucks his rubber tit for the last drop of sympathy, hunts for a shoulder to hang over while he belches. He is windy with alienation and hates his father-and-mother, my god, at his age he still hates his parents. Oh. he sobs inside as he talks to himself about the big L (you know, life) and feels sorely about gravel inside his shoes which he insists on keeping, look at him, he minces down the sidewalk in a half-assed trot, cuddling little ego in his arms, keeps up a perfectly unintelligible chatter to which no one listens, and hopes to feel lonely enough to have one genuine solid-silver hammered out emotion to talk about — let's hit him in the teeth with a couple of hard facts and see if he runs.

— James Hearst

Cedar Falls, Iowa

Family 11

The youngest uncle was a well adjusted child, neat for rompered photographs collecting bees and dragon flowers till he fell to love that black eyed girl who wouldn't let him and the family said to wait, so he played at selling shoes for thirty years, humping telephone operators on buying trips to the city, playing saxophones off-key then bringing shoe-trees to the governor and always being re-elected, always what he wanted the people said and business staying good enough for anybody single. They didn't know the times he sighed that all the girls he ever took to the inaugural ball had palegrey eyes. The Visit Each time we come there are a few extra stairs.

We want to be tired when we get there and sleep in the dark orchid room.

Insects eat through screens, the closet is full of dead clothes

and David's letters. In the morning we eat as much as we can and talk of wars and parties, the new prints we bought were they expensive?

Will they last? Say something to please or to make people laugh. Don't hurt anyone or explain

But why does my sister stay locked in a strange rage, alone, behind closed doors?

Bad paintings hanging on walls, the wood is being eaten away and those old artificial flowers. Still an apple tree grows outside the apartment window where no tree should, tall and thin with very small green apples.

Later we go to the new shop that was once a First National and throw nails down over the abandoned railroad,

walk past the brick town house and all the clapboard homes where daughters of Episcopal ministers used to live.

Back in the high rooms there are photographs of relatives newly dead. A father, my father I think, pasted on mirrors

from 1938 or 39. And the waterfall rushes, even in July, the creek waters in the orchid room are

13 louder than crying.

We must sort things out, talk about stocks and settlements. the divorce that was stopped by a death.

Night beetles fall upsidedown to the floor near dusty bottles.

Later in the day we leave, put the heavy love at a distance. These images can never be unified

or undone.

— Lyn Lifshin

Albany, New York

this slightly japanese scene

thin pines house — 1925 & oriental oriental looking rug building with wrinkles out front in it red robin )small ancestors trees fireplace branches for go in of cigarette between shocking butts the althea pink )sickly & find taffeta the stable men sit & muslin falling in above the ruffles a red wheels )scent shape of a of 1'origan of shingles truck snowball in the bush patched at window sun Gloria Kenison

Natick, Massachusetts STAR TREK & SUCH

GERALD LOCKLIN akbar if his tutor told him once he told him twice that even in the omforsaken orient it was the age of gutenberg and nobody not even mogul kings were going anywhere without they learned to read and write ... he never mastered palmer method or dynamic reading skills, preferred to ride and box and listen to the old men late at night unleash their duo-worldly word hordes; in spite of which the sages write that at an early age he quite humanely ruled an empire, outfoxed the jesuits, tripped out on acid at his leisure, razed the arrogant with one karate chop and, with his left hand, soothed the anguish of the humble.

the prince

do you like frogs? neither do i. i bet that we have sexual compatibility.

because i don't like ogres either, and i can tell a handsome-prince-girl when i see one.

of course i may not seem an enchanted prince, but you have not yet kissed the place the gray

witch of the northeast cast a spell on. sure, go ahead, whatcha got to lose?

16 # 63 my life began in 1964, when the beatles saw her standing there, yeah yeah yeah ... i was standing in the shower, playing with myself as usual (and comfortably lubricated with an iridescent soap) and then i saw her standing there, impeccably cockney in the boots of innocence and, only seventeen, the rictus of experience ... i knew my long-suffering wife was in the other room, rehearsing for the Christmas pageant, i knew my kids were in the other room, rehearsing a dirge for their father s phallus (they planned to send it, lavishly beribbon- ed. out to sea upon a laurelled barge) and what i wondered was — what am i doing here??? and so i walked quite naked as a cauliflower from the shower and into the london of elizabethan extravagances, wore my heart upon my sleeve and found it taken as the badge of a true beefeater picked up shills in Piccadilly just to pinch my lily ass until the day that i was finally con vinced i was again alive; when once my name was slatternly impugned by liz's premier courtier i ran the upstart through and had his beaver head impaled upon the roy antenna. shortly thereafter i became the queen’s lover, to everyone's amaze i demanded exclusive rights, to which she readily acquiesced.

i served her well in love and war; am best re membered for a sequence of outrageously conceited sonnets.

17 musée des miserables

they say that you can learn from adversity, you can. what i learned is that there is a god, and that he is malignant. i learned it on a trip to the supermarket in my miserable clunker. to drive two miles in that atrocity of withering valves and shameless misalignment is an ever-renewable rite de passage. picture

then my wrath upon arriving there with neither money nor a checkbook, consider my dismay back on the road as steam begins to seep from its benighted

nostrils. make it to the service station just to scald my hand. i curse, of course, and getting in the car i rip my pants my only pair, because the springs are coming through the seat. and god has both forseen and probably ordained the whole of it. ah, about suffering they were never wrong, the old comedians. they knew it happens in a taxi or a bakery or cleaning a chimney. and what is worse they knew it will defeat us: the kingdom lost for a horse: the poem for a bail-point pen; love, for a contraceptive. sunset fats one of my neighbors at the beach has been pestering me for weeks to write a poem about him. his name is joe god's truth but because he's the only guy at the beach with a bigger beergut than mine they call him sunset fats. he wouldn't be a bad guy except for always saying stupid things like telling girls he wants to make that their hair is ratty as a coon's which might work in the mouth of a brando or a cagney but which doesn't get joe anything but shit on.

18 tries to play pool but scratches on the eight to play volleyball and always lands on his gut to woo an ugly rich girl and she marries a queer. so here is my poem: joe you are a bore joe you eat shit joe you are a loser and i don't feel compassion joe when you move next week it will leave absolutely no ellipsis in my life joe the only good thing i can say about you is that you once introduced me to a girl with truly himalayan tits.

Christmas at sunset beach: a sequel starved for seasonal pyrotechnics, the young assassins (who would have preferred to detonate a berkeley or a white house) have blown the oil refinery to kingdom will not come. the sky hangs black above the chanukah bush, a weather satellite caroms in its obscure orbit towards el bethlehem, where, in an aluminum kibbutz, a child is born with one eye. nobody raises an eye from the ed sullivan show, the mormon tabernacle choir is chanting god save the king. and i, i am getting it through my thick skull that jazz is dead with coltrane, religion with pope john, contemplation with the mahareshi, the corrida with arruza, america with malcolm x, and maternity with the mothers of invention. love died last week at a love-in, baseball with mickey mantle, poetry the early morning that i polished up my elegy for coltrane and the girl with braces that i didn't want to bang. my friends and i are clever as devils and write a lot of poems — ornamental, bright, symmetrical as Christmas trees — but poetry is dead.

19 we go through the paces now, hoping it is just a temporary imbalance of the endocrines and that a year from now we'll be embarrassed by these meanderings. meanwhile, it should be a great year for nostalgia, (who, for instance, wrote the lone ranger???...)

Star Trek

She must in early adolescence have had bad skin because her face is slightly scarred. Otherwise she is a flower, a bruised and unforgetting flower, apprehensive

of being plucked, and scared to death of withering on the vine. Tonight she is no flower, she is a bird without a song, a bird whose song civilization has muted.

This afternoon she thought she was a courtesan at Akbar's palace, learned in the arts, esteemed alike by warriors and wives and poets. At any rate

she'd like to be a whore of some degree but vestiges of pedigree have kept her a virgin. Tomorrow morning she will put on blinders and a college sweatshirt.

This once the prudes are right — deflowering will be the death of her, anti-climax of twenty years of preliminary play, a sofa agony, Star Trek on the telly.

# 37

it is the third movement of my second piano concerto (the only one that i have yet begun) and in it acquiesces the fleugelhorns of the ghetto and

a white boy in a sailboat doing no one harm. in development i take the keys to the kingdom, the key to the city, and the ring of the nibelung

- 20 - and melt them down to rather dull molecules. with the vanishing of the applause a single sitar introduces the lament of the ten wise urchins for their

incense. by this time the audience has passed out i wake them with a mauve glissando victory march. cheering follows. a movie screen informs the audience that i am deaf.

Beer — for Ron Koertge It takes a lot to get you there, but it won't kill you either. Kids like it. The foam makes a fine mustache. When they go to sleep they dream of goofy pink dragons and slippery little smiling fish.

To the adolescent it is the first taste of the earth’s bitterness. He has to pretend it gets him high. He is afraid it will give him zits, and maybe it will. He gives it to his girl and thinks it is because of it she gives herself to him.

She doesn't like the taste of it and never will. She doesn't have the thirst for it. She is afraid it will give her a gut, and maybe it will. Eventually she'll be a little insulted when it s offered her. And probably should be.

But the best of friendships are formed over it. It helps men to speak to each other, a difficult thine these days. It lets men sing without embarrassment of auld lang syne and of the sheep that went astray somewhere along the line. it goes excellently with pool and pickled eggs, beef jerky and baseball games. Contrary to popular opinion, it is good for the kidneys, affords them exercise. It is good for all t appetites. We all go beyond it; we always come back to it It is the friend who eases us through our phylog- enous ontogeny. It is the friend we talk to about our women, the one who agrees with us that they are not all that important.

21 restores our courage in the face of cowardly sobrieties. It laughs with us at our most serious sonnets, weeps at our pratfalls. It remembers us; it takes us back.

Finally, this blessed beer, it eases us towards sleep.

A Traveller

He got off the freeway at the nearest ramp. Fumbling in his pocket for change he asked the porcelain attendant, "How much you getting for a gallon these days?" "A dollar-ten a pint," the other replied, never once cracking a smile. "My God!" the man exclaimed, only then remembering that there was no longer any God, or even, for that matter, any California. He drove wildly from the station, the standard man still grinning horribly in the rear-view mirror. Back on the freeway he pressed it to the floor and searched the billboards for a familiar sign. Why had he failed to notice it before — every single phosphorescent square read: "You Are Already There!" except the last which grinned "Ha Ha."

And why were there no other cars on the road? How long had he been on the road? Had he ever been to California? Why was the gas gauge rising to full?

-- Gerald Locklin

Long Beach. California

22 OLLIE

OLLIE WAS DYING, WHEN I MET HIM, OF CANCER IN A HOSPITAL BED. HELL OF A PLACE FOR A MAN LIKE THAT TO DIE. HE CAME UP HERE IN THE EARLY 1900'S. DID A LITTLE GOLD MINING, SOME CONSTRUCTION WORK. WAS A MEAT HUNTER FOR THE WORK CREWS BUILDING THE ALASKA RAILROAD. HE FINALLY SET UP A TRAP LINE UP AT BEAVER WITH HIS PARTNER. HE LIVED HIS LIFE AND LOVED IT. IN HIS WAY, AND IN HIS TIME. BUT THEN IT WAS CANCER AND INCURABLE. HE WANTED TO DIE AS HE LIVED, AND IN HIS OWN CABIN. BUT HIS 'FRIENDS’ KNEW BETTER FOR HIM. BROUGHT HIM DOWN TO FAIRBANKS, TO THE HOSPITAL. KEPT HIM ALIVE FOR FIVE OR SIX EXTRA WEEKS. ALIVE AND BEDRIDDEN. DRUGGED AND FETTERED BY TUBES AND TAPES. MOST OF THE MAN DRAINED AWAY THROUGH PIPES AND BEDPANS, ONLY EIGHTY POUNDS NOW. BUT IN THE END HE FOOLED THEM ALL; ESCAPED INTO HIS DRUGGED DREAMS, BACK TO BEAVER. AND HE HEARD THE WOLVES OUTSIDE, HOWLING. AND ONE BIG GRAY WOLF, EYES FLASHING TEETH SHAPPING, BROKE THROUGH THE WINDOW OF HIS CABIN. AND OLLIE DIED AS HE LOVED AND LIVED. IN HIS WAY, AND IN HIS TIME.

she was drinking freely of a mountain spring and as she sees me, hides her shame for her damp hair and splattered blouse behind a blinding smile

23 scene one maybe -- the party was up on the hill this side of goldstream. damn fine party. i started with champagne, then beer, then rum (hudson's bay 150 proof) and home brew. damn fine party. was twenty below out when i drove rex and richie home. ditched the truck three times in the driveway. damn fine party. woopee. went down the road and around the curves at 45 that are n ’t drivable at 25. ditched it again. got it out tho and got rex and richie home at last. but i swear that the road is 8 feet wider due to my passing through. scene two left rex’s with a cup of coffee under my belt, slow and easy. thought i ’d take the back roads and fake out the cops since they might think i’se drunk. took davis road slow. peg'er a little faster feelin’ pretty good by the time i hit van horn. went through the stop sign. hell. no cars commin'. pair of headlights turned on behind me. i took it slow and easy till the red light started flashin'. stopped the truck. got out and told myself. think sober. damn fine party. was 5 a m and the cop asked me if i was going to work, told him no. commin' home from a concert.

24 told me i'd ran a stop sign and i better sit in the police car while he wrote the ticket. he wrote it out for the stop sign while i sat holdin' my very alcoholic breath. told me how pleasant it was to give a man a ticket without any backtalk from him and i'm still nodding and holding my breath. i made it tho. he told me goodnight and i opened the door and exhaled. damn fine party.

— jim o'neil

Fairbanks, Alaska

The Red Book

Last year, I wrote to the papers urging police action in Rhodesia: they said "Your letter's too long; we're sorry we can't print it."

Last spring, I touched in a lecture on education as part of the class-structure: they said "Do be careful; you might miss that Senior Lectureship."

Last summer, I stopped taking Encounter, because of the C.I.A. affair, and because they only sent me rejection slips. They said "You're throwing your career away."

Last week, I bought a little book, for noting down my L.P. records. It had a red cover ... M.I.5 have been holding me for seven hours now.

Stalin

The night you died, I was at the opera. A young woman, whom I did not know, said 'Poor Stalin — I wonder if he's dead yet?' At that time, I did not find it strange that she should pity you.

25 Later, it would have been difficult to agree with her. Yourself imprisoned by a hard faith You stamped your nation with death and technology. At the end. you lived in one room, which you hardly ever left. We still do not know if it could have been done differently. Something analogous to natural law Has moved on the earth. Awed, we wonder How after this, there can be any human joy.

Only your daughter, whom you disowned, Reminds us that if people are precious, we should pardon you, too.

Three Yoruba Poems

'Death by Drowning'

Don't swim in the river. Don't go swimming. It was the crest lifted — the children were gone.

'Market Seller'

She sells fried plantain: she sells dumplings of bean-flour: on this particular day, she made no sale.

She lives like someone who is subject to a disease.

*The Yoruba originals of these poems are folk verses, common in various parts of Western Nigeria. The Yoruba text of 'Diviners' was first collected by the Nigerian poet Adeboye Babalola, that of 'Market Sell er' by the composer Fela Sowande, who uses its rhythms and tones in the last movement of his 'African Suite.' and that of 'Death by Drowning' by myself in Abeo- kuta. Strictly speaking the English poems are only equivalents rather than translations, for reasons of language difficulty. The Yoruba of 'Death by Drown ing' for instance is only eight words long: Ma lo 'we l'okumo: Oun gbe won lo.

26 'Diviners'

Under the iroko tree the old men are tossing nuts. Three strokes across and two strokes down is for the harmattan wind, is for trouble, sickness, hunger. Who can plan for the future when the experts disagree?

— C. C. Hebron

Birtley. Co. Durham. England

Nightshirts

I shall praise nightshirts whether striped or dotted that shrink in the wash.

But your gift especially — which tickles the hips, rides an erection.

When I slide into bed how cool your sheet is to my bare ass.

Short of Eating Slugs

My three-year-old finds slugs beneath each stone. Fondles them, hugs them, wants to chew them up. Delights in everything that's like a slug. (Even the yellow haddock on his plate is obvious to him in its resemblance.) When he repeats to me that boys like slugs. it seems I've made the statement necessary. Though, short of eating them. I like slugs too.

-- Knute Skinner

Killaspuglonane. Kilshanny. Co. Clare. Ireland

27 Norbert Blei

Chicago, Ill

G E R T T R pills even and PR STOCKING SPARE BIRDSEED BIRDSEED FAKE FINGERNAILS FINGERNAILS FAKE RUBBER BANDS BANDS RUBBER PEANUTS PEANUTS STAMPS STAMPS CHEWING GUM GUM CHEWING LENSES CONTACT ERASER BOBBY PINS PINS BOBBY KEY MAILBOX FALSE EYELASHES EYELASHES FALSE NAILS THUMB TACKS TACKS THUMB CUFF LINKS LINKS CUFF INSTANT COFFEE COFFEE INSTANT BAG TEA PAPER CLIPS CLIPS PAPER SAFETY PINS PINS SAFETY SNUFF SACCHARIN AN HAT RAIN RINGS EARRINGS PERFUME CANDIES NEEDLE AND THREAD AND NEEDLE PR BUTTONS SPARE TOKENS MAD MONEY MONEY MAD TOTEM r o f

R U DE One Damned Log

It won't burn, Sandy said.

I infused the Fire with Paper. Much paper. The fire Blazed. The log slept.

It won’t burn, Sandy said.

I underpinned the Fire with Small. dry sticks. The fire Crackled hotly. The log Seemed to smile.

It won't burn, Sandy said.

It will burn. Sniffed I . And wadded even the Political pages Under the fire. The log Was apolitical. I was glad To see him go. It won’t burn, I snuck to bed, Sandy said. Craven, The family name With flashing eye Enescrowed by And gnashing teeth. One damned log. I poked and stabbed the Fire . At dawn The log The log Rolled over and Was ash. Slept. So, my life. It didn't burn, I start Sandy said. Fire after Fire. But only The empty room Is warmed. My Debt. If all only gave None could give: There would be none To receive. If all only received None could receive: There would be none To give. He who only gives As he only receives Is a parasite. A blight. Morality Is simply The balance of How much of What One gives To How much of What One receives. This symbiosis Between My son and me: Can it be Moral For all its Warmth and Serenity? He asks only Peanut butter And A pig-back ride, Giving Back Galaxies of Joy .

— Robert H. Riffenburgh

San Diego, California

30 At the Tobacconist

First, if I chose to smoke a Salazar perfecto

Or take a good double dip of Rodriquez

Or perchance I'll just have a cork-tipped Garcia

The old candle-lighter winked and took a chaw of plug Rasmussen

God damn those God damn Russ ians

Now how did they ever make it into the tobacco business

Delineation

Among the roots metaphysical a mind brawny as roots

Yes, twisting and turning in the earth sucking up water, breaking rocks

To make a green crown a growing myth a metaphysic that is a mind

Reaching down there in the dung under the earth shaping itself with the shape of brawny roots

31 Sucking up water for a green crown

-- Judson Crews

Wharton, Texas

Roomer

I live in a house with three animals one has four legs and wants to bite me one growl and grimaces from a t .v. chair and one is all day plodding up and down stairs mopping and dusting and cooking things with garlic very anxious to tell me things I don't want to hear and to hear something of me First Day to share with the others Some things like a bone I know already about this place that at least one tomcat lives near the heating vent Having Never Seen Snow in the basement that the t.v. is A fallen leaf right under my bed Arranges her petticoat that they like cabbage Awaiting the next tree that they no not really like negroes coming to the door for me and that the girl across the hall watches the late movie on Tuesdays in her room — Kathryn Quick

West Olive, Michigan This Here Half Cord of Wood, Mister

"This here's that half cord of wood I was talking about the other night. 'S been aging up in my woods about a year and a half. Just about that. Cut from firs and maples. Should burn pretty good. You got kindling? I don't carry none myself, but wouldn't be a bad idea They burn a whole lot better if you got kindling under them.

"Some were too small, just didn't see no sense splitting them. Others, like that one. got knots: just too damn hard to split them.

"Would you hold this clash-light here So's I can see to back up? You want them over there? Dark night ain't it?

"This the old Annie Miller place? Seems I remember it to be so. She was a queer thing. Planted the place with a whole lot of strange flowers Nice chunk of land. Wouldn't mind owning it myself."

This here half cord of wood, mister: Is it four-by-four-by-four; Or two-by-four-by-eight? Or am I all wrong, and it's actually Four-by-two-by-four?

Have patience. I'm new to the woods And have been seasoned only Four and a half months... I know nothing of the woods And their fires: only oilmen and gasmen, And burners and thermostats. And then only a little.

The woods. I understand teach: And I'm a student looking for a master. But the woods, they neither give me Their fire Or welcome me to their shadows.

33 The Moon Children

We carefully avoid each other's memories. Now words are spoken casually With intended rhyme and form And grave cadences.

Is it any wonder that you and I, Having once chanced so calmly The direction of a coin: Tails-left, heads-right ... We who sat on the rocks Watching the tides of the fog, Silent as figures in a Chinese silk screen; Is it any wonder that you and I, Who called to the houses and the hills, To the elephant procession of trees, And marvelled in the genius of photosynthesis, Can not wholly or fully speak?

I look at you and back off, Indrawn, tight, constricted ... We, who sat in an idyllic forest: Listening to two recorders, One autoharp, and a 'cello In the strobe light of the moon through clouds: Do not return so easily to the absurd.

— Barbara Bassett

Hampton, Conn.

The Underground

the place was crowded, the editor told me, "Charley get some chairs from upstairs, there are more chairs upstairs." I brought them down and we opened the beer and the editor said, "we're not getting enough advertising, the boat might go down," so they started talking about how to get advertising. I kept drinking the beer and had to piss and when I got back the girl next to me said,

34 "we ought to evacuate the city, that's what we ought to do." I said, "I'd rather listen to Joseph Haydn." she said, "just think of it, if everybody left the city!"

"they'd only be someplace else stinking it up," I said.

"I don't think you like people," she said. pulling her short skirt down as much as possible.

"just to fuck with," I said. then I went to the bar next door and bought 3 more 6 packs of beer. when I got back they were talking Revolution, so here I was back in 1935 again, only I was old and they were young, I was at least 20 years older than anybody in the room, and I thought, what the hell am I doing here? soon the meeting ended and they went out into the night, those young ones, and I picked up the phone, I got John T., "John, you o.k.? I'm low tonight, suppose I come over and get drunk?" "sure, Charley, w e ’ll be waiting." "Charley," said the editor, "I guess we've got to put the chairs back upstairs." we carried the chairs back upstairs, the revolution was over. — Charles Bukowski

Los Angeles, California

35 The edition of this issue has been limited to 600 numbered copies and this is copy number:

PATRONS

William H. C. Newberry Dr. Marvin Sukov Donald R. Peterson Ellen S. Tifft U . Grant Roman Claudia Winski

Wormwood may be purchased from the following stores:

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The regular subscription rate to Wormwood is $3.50 to individuals and $4.00 to institutions for four issues released at irregular intervals within the period of a year's time. Single copies at $1.00 per will be postpaid anywhere in the world. Patrons' subscriptions are $6.00 for four signed (special yellow-pages section) issues. A limited number of issues #11-29 are still available at a rate of $3.50 per four copies. Special prices can be quoted for issues #1-10 when they can be located. Complete sets of Wormwood currently sell for over $50 on the rare book market, when available.

36 Distinguished in all areas: poems, variety, format, printing qual ity — the output fm John Martin's Black Sparrow Press, P.0. Box 25603, Los Angeles, Calif. 90025: The Champ (Kenward Elmslie, i l l ustrated by Joe Brainard) wpps. $4.50; .At Terror Street and Agony Way (Charles Bukowski) wpps. $4; Finding the Measure (Robt Kelly) wpps. $4.50; sgnd. hardbound $20; Poems From 1952 & 1953 (Kenneth Koch) wpps. & sgnd. $6; Greed, Parts I and II (Diane Wakoski) wpps. i; sgnd. $6; Conversat ions (Jerome Rothenberg) wpps. & sgnd. $6; The Georgics (George E c o nomou) wpps. & sgnd. $6; If Personal (Armand Schwerner) wpps. & sgnd. $6 (Note: if the last 4 are bought as a set The Statement by Robert Kelly is included gratis); Code of Flag Be havior (David Antin) wpps. $5; Air the Trees (Larry Eigner, 11lust. by Bobbie Creeley) wpps. $5; Please, Like Me (David Bromige, illu s t. by Sherril Jaffe) wpps. & sgnd. $a; Sait & Core (Rochelle Owens) wpps. $4.50; Gunslinger, Book I (Edward Dorn) wpps. $4 Great News: The American Literary Anthology — the first annuAl collection of the best from the literary magazines, $6.95 fm. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All financed by a grant fm. the Nat. Endowment for the Arts to stim ulate and spread new talent. It is (indeed) great to encourage such rising unknowns as Auden, Issac Bashevis Singer, John Crowe Ransom, Charles Olson, and Howard Nemerov, to cite but a few. We're putting our hopes on a Mr. Ezra Pound and hope to see more of his work soon, although the work of a certain Louis Zukofsky shows equal promise. The editors scanned over 300 little magazines and 31 were chosen to receive the cash awards for finding new young voices. Of the obscure, struggling journals represented in this collection of new writing, we predict a bright future for the following: Antioch Review, Carleton .Miscellany, Chicago Review, Choice, Evergreen Review, Hudson Review, Massachusetts Review, The New York Review of Books. The Paris Review, Partisan Review, PoetryT~Prairie Schooner. Sewanee Review, Shenan doah> Southwest Review. Transatlantic Review." Tri-Quarterly. Virginia Quarterly Review, Yale Review, etc. God bless George Plimpton! ? Noted As Received: Memory No Servant (Earl Birney) $2 fm. New/Books, R.D. 3, Truman- sburg, New York 14886 I Was I There (Robert Nelson Moore Jr.) fm. Open Skull Press, 1379 Masonic Ave., San Francisco, Calif 94117. Doug Blazek's All Gods Must Learn to Kill is now in press -- $1,50 Seis Poemas (Luis Barrios Cruz) , Constancia del Amor y de la Muerte Jesus Serra), Siete Poetas Canarios (Manuel-Gonzales Sosa) fm. Poesia de Venezuela, Apartado 1114, Caracas, Venezuela The Cockroach Hotel (The W illie) fm. Black Rabbit Press, 1379 Masonic Ave., San Francisco, Calif. 94117 Clair Legat's nous nous sommes trompes de monde fm. author, 87, rue des Freres, Defuisseaux, Paturages, Belgium HarveyTucker's And Where Does the Circle End Beginning $1 fm. Black Sun Press, 70 Pierrepont S t., Brooklyn, N.Y." 11201 — also to issue The New Generation of Poets Anthology at $2 Alex Hand & Alan Turner's Exhumed Writings of Refutation and the Red Prison Nocturne, $.75 fm Iconolatre Pressj 71 Ryehill Gardens, VieJ t Hartlepool, Co. Durham, England Hugh Fox's Soul Catcher Songs and Eye Into Now fm. Ediciones de la Frontera,'i\Q. Box 3013, Hollywood, Calif. 90028 The Quiet Vengeance Words (Antoni Gronowicz) $2.50 fm. author 132 East »2nd St., New York, N.Y. 10028 From Casa de las Americas, G Y Tercera, Vedado, Habana, Cuba come«: Los Niños se Despiden (Pablo Armando Fernandez), Canto Ceremonial Contra Un Oso Hormiguero (Antonio Cisneros), Dos Viejos Panicos (V irgilio Pinera), Condenados de Condado (Norbertd FuentesJ, and Estados Unidos y America Latina, Siglo XIX (Manuel Medina Castro) — all soft bound and weYl printed. The Unicorn Bookshop issues 3 volumes th a t come as near to the ideal for a poetry chapbook format-wise as one can get: Family Life (Sanford M. Dorbin), Deep-Sea Fish (Fred Turner), and Threads (Elizabeth Bartlett) unpriced fm. Unicorn Bkshop, El Paseo, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93101 Recommended: Tales of Ise (Lyrical Episodes from 10th Century Japan), translated with nofps hv"rHoi OD 1 1 ai i rrV» 7 C\ A -Pm Qf o n -fAr*/“? TTn 4 tr gerald locklin — star trek issue the wormwood review: 31

price: one dollar

editor: marvin malone