Wormwood Review
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the worm oil on view: 31 THE WORMWOOD REVIEW Volume 8. number 3 Issue number 31 Editor: Marvin Malone; Art Editor: A. Sypher Copyright © 1968, The Wormwood Review Editorial and subscription offices: P. 0. Boxes 101 and 111, Storrs, Connecticut, 06268, U. S. A. 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.