weaner illthrift
weaner illthrift
by halifax
new shoes
rain drop cow plop
metal roof rust proof
dead dust sweet grass dry turf chicken coop hack saw rope swing tall wire dog bark white stump low fence grate gravel
wind blown soft spot septic tank slow down snail trail bam boo frog hop wet bee yucca plant thick vine deep green full grown cedar tree
spider web
mud print cactus scare fast step flat rock. glass bottom crack walk gate house hinge creak flower pot water hose.
wood door cross bars half smile out loud grand mother.
78 one syllable words and 12 two syllable…arranged artfully conjuring invasive thoughts and images sans the convention of sentence structure…hmm. It brings to light the power of words and their position next to one another. Line breaks seem to set apart clusters and give them head room or poetic pecking order of sort. Reminds me of magnetic poetry kit on fridge (which i used to love just hanging out in kitchen and letting my mind create some toxic fun enlightened piece). There is a great allure of the collagist to bring together that which is asunder and make it whole again.
“Carl stumbled, blood dripping down his stiff fingers, into the holy sepulchre of the St. Teresa St. Claire Fitness Center. He had cracked the Da Vinci Code, the Michaelangelo Code, the Donatello Code, all the Ninja Turtles! And now he was eager to finish it, to claim his birthright, to possess the Holy Pail of Untold Secrets. Suddenly Sean Penn lept out of the stagnant shadows: “There will be a Harvey Milk day in California! You can’t stop me Carl!” “I’m lactose intolerant!” quipped Carl, and slung the thespian into a pit of cabbage patch dolls. Carl inched forward to the strobe lit dais and with two outstretched arms lifted the Holy Pail by its little handle. In it he found a small post-it note with a poem scribbled. The poem said:
Ode to Boobs Baby
Oh hark ye ethereal corker,
Oh rugrat of my eye.
I envy your fleshy swadle
And choice of plump 36 double D’s.
Where have you gone, little sucker?
And supermodel mamma who held you by?
Have you slept in the cradle?
Dreaming of the birds and the bees?
Harvey Milk and Richard Cheese each had half this verse tattooed on their right buttock. Sadly they both had the same half. The other half read:
Expl
Solvation and Transport of H3O+ and
Are you great as hydroxide?
Grandmotherly waddle,
Denied a penis
Denitrified, toothless vampire
Grabbed, cut, castrated, cauterized by a mannequin
Rhetorical subversive submissive
Waken every nine minutes and asked “Are you
This other half happened to be found on Beldo’s torso, inside the shallow of his all to shapely hip. It was printed there during his 40th week of pregnancy. It is in print so small that it looks like just a series of thin green lines. Beldo is unaware of the purpose of the tattoo. Ms. Johoney knows about the tattoo having been told of hand by Carl. She also knows by way of a certain psychic named Reginal D. The two poem halves together are a clue to solve the wear-abouts of the hat of mystery. Often confused for a pail, since it is made of galvanized tin and has a wire handle, this hat holds powerful magic. Anywho wear it command vampires to do their bidding and automatically places their bids ahead of time before items are placed up for auction on Ebay.
I love this. It reminds me of being a kid, manic with ADD. But I’ve never been to the desert, and I don’t have ADD. And I’ve never been a kid. So I can’t relate. But I love this nonetheless. And nonethemore. Beautiful riddim.
so, weaner illthrift is sort of a failure to thrive of a food animal after it’s been weaned. nothing else on that.
the first part of this piece made me think back to all my farm moments in my life.
from “wind blown” onward I start thinking of the everglades, but then the cactus disturbs my thinking.
I go back to look at the new shoes and wonder about them. a tickle in my mind feels a connection between the shoes and the spider web, but I never really go there so I never get it.
grand mother anchors me with fine threads and i wonder if the mother was grand or old with children of her child.
that’s all.
I make comparisons with the words but that is not what I intended to emphasize. This piece is mostly an experiment with scale of the thing represented in a word pair and pace of rhythm. When I read this I raise the volume of my voice to match the increase in the scale of the word being used. “Spider web” is spoken with the same level of volume(my normal speaking level) as “new shoes”. The largest change in volume is between “snail trail” and “BAM B0o”.
The source for the words is an early memory of running around my grandmother’s ginormous one acre plot of land in Sacramento. Weaner Illthrift is a condition I remember from a set of kids born on that land. I loved those two little goats. I was there when they were born and over a summer saw them waste away. The mother goat gave up trying but my grandmother never did. After they died I helped feed the cut up remains to the dogs.
My grandmother is gone. Her one acre is about to be mismanaged away by an estranged relative in charge of the estate.
New shoes and spider webs serve their purpose. They stop being new from the first moment they are used. They are replaced as needed. The thing itself is not what is important beyond it’s intended use.