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UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE uglyducklingpresse.org Pacific Standard Time New & Selected Poems Kevin Opstedal Pacific Standard Time New & Selected Poems Pacific Standard Time: New & Selected Poems Copyright © Kevin Opstedal, 2016 Kevin Opstedal ISBN 978-1-937027-80-3 First Edition, First Printing 2016 Ugly Duckling Presse The Old American Can Factory 232 Third Street, E-303 Brooklyn, NY 11215 uglyducklingpresse.org Distributed to the trade by Small Press Distribution www.spdbooks.org Design by K Jaeger and Don’t Look Now! Typeset in Jenson and Verlag by K Jaeger Cover photograph “Bolinas 2003” by Pamela Dewey © 2016 Edited by Noel Black Printed and bound by McNaughton & Gunn, Saline, MI and Julien Poirier Covers printed by Prestige Printing, Brooklyn, NY Ugly Duckling Presse Support for this publication was provided by a generous grant from the Brooklyn, NY National Endowment for the Arts 2016 Table of Contents Kahuna Classics. Melodrama. The Shimmy… | 64 Catholic Poem | 65 In the Wind | 66 Introduction by Noel Black | 10 The flames could be seen for miles | 67 The Cremation of Shelley | 68 I 1000 Ships | 69 Curse of the Surf Zombie | 18 Pacific Bell | 70 The Tender Distortion of Parking Lots Near the Sea | 22 Residuals | 71 Banzai Run | 23 The Lives of the Poets | 25 II Rain | 26 Playa de los Muertos | 74 Send 50 Beers | 27 Reef Dance | 75 A Short History of Surf Music | 28 Fading like a feather of excess acetylene | 76 Albatross Taco | 29 The Complete Collected Postcards | 77 Full Tilt | 30 Over the Edge | 78 Live Acoustic Rust | 32 The Drowning Man Knows His God | 80 Poverty | 33 Jodie Foster at Malibu | 81 Stained Glass | 34 He Wanted to Know the Names | 82 Apollinaire’s Brother-in-Law | 35 Sunset & Noir | 83 Dawn Patrol | 36 Goodbye Kodachrome | 84 Venice | 37 Repeat After Me | 85 Beach Access | 38 Yeah, Maybe | 86 Tracks | 39 The Sinking of the Sushi Boat | 87 White Man, Tomorrow You Die! | 40 Rare Surf, Vol. 2 | 88 Seems Like | 42 With absolute zero reading on the consciousness meter | 89 Los Paranoias | 43 Ripple Effect | 90 Poem for Carmen Miranda | 44 Tiny Bubbles | 92 Earthquake Weather | 45 Turning Left at Jerusalem… | 93 Distance | 46 Some Get Translucent | 94 California Redemption Value | 47 Hollywood | 95 100-Year Flood Zone | 48 For Anselm, Jane & the Shape-Shifters in the Backyard | 96 Needles on the Beach | 49 Underwater Ballet | 97 Bong Water Babies | 50 Mutiny on the Bongos | 99 One More Lilting Adrenalin Riff | 51 Endlessly Rocking | 100 Detour | 52 Poem Near Dusk | 101 Figure the Cumulative Effect as Mileage | 53 Liquid Sky | 102 Standing Water | 54 19th Century Tattoo | 104 Aerosol | 55 Half jagged, half ocean smooth | 106 Tropical Depression | 56 Cadillac to Mexico | 107 Shitty Dance Music | 57 Slow Ride South | 108 90-percent water | 58 The Stumble | 109 Morning Glass | 60 Cut Glass | 110 Concrete Submarines | 61 Cruise Control | 111 Baby Donut | 62 Up Against It | 112 Reckoning | 63 Bird of Passage | 113 UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE Pacific Standard Time by Kevin Opstedal (2016) - Digital Proof Smog Lines | 114 Invasion of the Body Surfers | 162 The Code of the West | 115 Leaning into it | 163 Fadeaway | 116 Return of the Creature | 164 The Morning Report | 117 Float Switch | 167 Exchange Rate | 118 Water & Power | 168 Los Oxidados | 119 Bring Me the Head of Eddie Vedder | 169 The Sound of Glass Breaking | 120 Shipped by Mule from Slovakia | 170 Odysseus on the PCH | 122 Burnt orange & compensatory | 171 Satan Stole My Surfboard | 123 Welcome to Paradise | 172 Turning Silver | 124 Vapor Eyes | 175 Calculated Risk | 125 With No Purpose Other Than to Prevail | 176 Prelude to a Quaalude | 126 Standing on the Nose in a Stylish Manner | 177 Small Change | 127 World Domination On $3 A Day | 180 The Mockingbird is My Nightingale | 128 On the Eve of the Year of the Green Wood Horse | 181 Selling a Kidney on eBay | 129 Love could be another way to say it | 182 Smack Up (a romance) | 130 Seahorses | 183 Seaslug Duckwalk | 131 Drawn Blank | 184 Dancing into the sand | 132 Hart Crane Sleeps with the Fishes | 185 Chinese Algebra | 133 The Shining | 186 Allegory & Ode (Condensed) | 135 Mark It Zero | 187 450 Bus Miles | 136 Sand in the Grooves | 188 Source Code | 137 How the Mayans Invented Television | 189 Salt Water Credentials | 138 The B-side of a once & future flashback | 190 Spanish Word | 192 III Find Me a Golden Street | 193 Stirring up the shadows | 194 Truth as History, or An Ode to Medicine | 142 All Debts Real & Imagined | 195 It melts in your brain not in your hand | 143 A surfboard in every refrigerator | 197 Correspondence | 144 You Don’t Know What Love Is | 199 Street Legal | 145 To Our Lady of Wet Sand… | 200 You Do Not Have to Be Present to Win | 146 February 34th | 201 (I Think I’m) Surfing Japanese | 147 Way Down Below | 202 Narrow Margin | 148 Selling Books for Drugs | 203 Center of the Universe | 149 Primer Gray Tikis in the Mist | 204 From My Chinese Novel | 150 Rust never sleeps | 206 A man walks into a bar carrying an octopus | 151 On the Use of Symbolism… | 207 All the heavy action was underwater | 152 Considering the Heart as a Flotation Device | 208 Water on the Moon | 153 Valvoline | 209 Duane Eddy Mows His Lawn | 154 Guided by Voices | 210 The Bride of Frankenfish | 155 Long Story Short | 211 True Romance | 156 The Wrong Goodbye | 212 Palisades | 157 Hula Doll in a Helium Hat | 213 Paint it Turquoise | 158 Travels in Abyssinia, the Harar & Santa Cruz | 214 Shell Game | 159 This song & dance is dedicated to… | 160 Acknowledgments | 220 Mullosks at the Gate | 161 UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE Pacific Standard Time by Kevin Opstedal (2016) - Digital Proof Bansai Palm Trees, or: And on. Pre-Apocalyptic Romanticism and the Some (many) were self-published on presses he’d invented for Psychogeographic California Landscape the publication of that particular book, or until he got bored Poetry of Kevin Opstedal with the name: Surf Zombie I’m holding in my hands something close to the collected poems Smog Eyes of Kevin Opstedal. Not this book you’re reading now, but the 6 Plywood Press or 7 pounds of staple-bound chapbooks and small-run perfect- Blue Press bound collections that have arrived in my mailbox over the past Pale Music Press Pelican Press 20 years. They always came in little hardboard manila mailers with a white slip of paper on which he’d have neatly scrawled a On the covers: note in an all-caps script worn smooth like sea glass. Palm trees, ocean horizons, a baja bug, more horizons, more NOEL, palm trees, a monkey on surfboard, a monkey carrying a surf board, the Silver Surfer, waves, beach. On the cover of Coastal HEREIN PLEASE FIND Disturbance (Bikini Machine) there’s a photo of Kevin taken by THE SOUND OF ONE his partner, the photographer Pamela Dewey. He’s standing in LEAD BALLOON POPPING front of a heavily graffitied palm tree at Venice Beach where ABOVE ZUMA BEACH he grew up. His uniform: a gray, short-sleeved T-shirt over KEVIN, OCT. 1, ‘09 white, long-sleeved t-shirt, hands stuffed into his jean pockets, Ray-Ban cat-eyes perched on his nose beneath his waves of The titles: Norwegian red hair: Dude, the Obscure. For me and many others who orbited New College of California Minus Tide in San Francisco in the late 1990s, Kevin’s Gas Magazine was a Heavy Water kind of wormhole to the last days of the New York School via Radio Beach Bolinas, Los Angeles and back to the San Francisco scene at Sunset Revisited the time. Eileen Myles, Bernadette Mayer, Ted Berrigan, Ron Variable High Cloudiness Coastal Disturbance (Bikini Machine) Padgett, Charles Bukowski, Joanne Kyger, Alice Notley, Hoa Maybe Ocean Street Nguyen, Harry Mathews—household names in contemporary Rare Surf, Vol. 2: New & Used Poems poetry now—were regulars in the table of contents. I’d never The Poetikal Works of Dude the Obscure have heard of most of them in those pre-internet days but for Beach Blanket Massacre Gas. The Deep End Sand in the Vaseline It would be easy, perhaps, to talk about the general aesthetic/ California Redemption Value philosophical opposition to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E that 10 11 UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE Pacific Standard Time by Kevin Opstedal (2016) - Digital Proof Gas represented at the time. But for most of us it was more Chris Johannson, et. al.—were “Beautiful Losers,” we were just like indifference—a distaste for the ideology, theory, and jobs losers. Losing was the only way in or out. in favor of wit, style, and jokes. Gas was the lifeblood for this You always know what you’ll find when you open one of Kevin’s vein of sexier, admittedly white-trash American poetry that chapbooks in the same way you know what to expect when you was playing out there on the West coast in the wake of The arrive at the beach: the broken hourglass of time between your New American Poetry/Post-Modern American Poetry.