Dead Letters

by Alan May
llustrations by Tom Wegrzynowski and Alan May

BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York

Dead Letters by Alan May Copyright 2008 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book Design by Geoffrey Gatza llustrations by Tom Wegrzynowski and Alan May Cover image and all images in the sections titled Dead Letters and Reality Is the Horse Tom Wegrzynowski First Edition ISBN: 1-934289-94-9 ISBN 13: 978-1-934289-94-5 Library of Congress Number: 2008938086 BlazeVOX [books] 14 Tremaine Ave Kenmore, NY 14217 Editor@blazevox.org

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INTRODUCTION TO ALAN MAYS DEAD LETTERS

At the heart of this book of experimental poetry is a marvelous regression: An inquisitive Aardvark Approached my Aeroplane and Asked, Have you got any Ants in there? The lines read like a childrens booksomething illustrating the alphabet. (In fact, isnt any book an illustration of the alphabet?) But note the old-fashioned spelling of airplaneas if the lines came from something written in the 1930sand the fact that the author subtitles this section poems for adult accompaniment. Further: the entire collection is called Dead Letters. Such insights bring us into the area of a book in which many contexts come into playand the notions of play and playfulness are important ones in Alan Mays work. Yet the playfulness seems to emerge from a sensibility which is fundamentally religious. There are a number of wild puns in this book (read for red, populous for populace) but perhaps the wildest is in the title of this poem: AXE OF THE APOSTLES We moved the head of The Huge Overlord. We split his sword in half. We parted the Red Sea for old times sake. In lieu of real apostles, we used disciples to guard the axe. They splintered the cross of Christ. We wept the faith. We remembered Thousand. We wrapped the splinters and sold them as toothpicks.

Letters: It is not thousands, as we would expect, but thousand not a typo but a tiny puzzle. Dead Letters is full of stories, and though the poems are linear, the stories are not. There are too many leaps in them, too little explanation. Yet we always get the idea: we see that something horrible (and vastly commercial) has happened to the notion of a piece of the True Cross. The poem is funny in a way, but the beautiful line, We wept the faith tells us where May is coming from. An axe separates us from the acts of the apostlesand in fact May asserts that we no longer have apostles, merely disciples, a word whose connection to the Puritan word discipline may well be relevant here. One of the most beautiful poems in the book has to do with the shadowprobably with full Platonic implications: I play Gary Coopers shadow in High Noon. All I do: stay close follow his lead. I mimic his dead pan on the matinee screen of your TV set. Oh, ye bums drinking into the early afternoon, I fill the hollow of your dread, I add depth to your art. What good are lonely figures without their shadows? Foil by symmetry. On the screen we live forever, as lasting as art or love and as present as the stars we count for each of our distant woes. We are not only figures on a screen, as in Platos metaphor, we are the shadows of the real. The words, as always in Mays poems, are ambiguous, in motion. Gary Cooper was known for the fact that he rarely expressed emotion: he had a dead pan expression on his face. Yet his facehis panis also literally dead; the actor died in 1961. Further: Cooper had a reputation as one of the most adroit cocksmen in Hollywood: he is indeed a dead Pan. Moreover, the movie High Noon was released so long ago that we can no longer see it in a theater, only on a TV set, in front of which we may well be drinking beer (Oh, ye bums / drinking into the early / afternoon). Gary Cooper is no longer real, only an image on a

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screen, but the protagonist doesnt possess even that reality: he is only a shadow of Coopers dead pan image. And yet: What good are lonely figures without their shadows? How would the lonely Cooper exist at all without the shadowy figures who watch his performance? The poem carefully places us at the point of cinematic (and, by analogy, literary) immortality. The immortality is real (On the screen we live / forever) yet problematical. Exactly how lasting is art or, especially, love? (Those who know the film might remember its theme song: Do not forsake me, O my darling.) Look at what happens to the word stars in this poem. There are the stars in heaven (and we count our woes on them) but there are also film stars. But they say that each generation creates its own stars. How many young people remember Gary Cooper? Has he lived forever? The exquisite poems in Dead Letters (along with the delightful illustrations that accompany them) are at their deepest a meditation on being and not being. May constantly offers something akin to a beautifully-crafted rugwhich he immediately pulls out from under us. I dont mean to suggest that these poems arent funny: they are, frequently. But their humor is rooted in the sudden flashes and vanishings of identity. Theyre funny, and (as Wallace Stevens advised that a poem should do) they give pleasure. But the pleasure they give always has a pricea little shudder that makes us think, Oh: I know a girl whos French. Her hair smells like night. New as the dew, lovely as rain, she holds us all in the strangest of spells. La, La, La. (chorus: I.Hate.America)

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I. The New House

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH LOADED WEAPON

I sat in the chair. The chair sank in the soft sod. Behind me stars sank or slid off the edge of blue. Down the hill rabbits pranced with little machete dreams. An angry finch sang a dirge or led a flock of finches in a dirge. The laundry on the line: your white flags. I opened a hole in my throat. A song came forth. Nonplussed you sat there in your inky rags. You sipped your coffee. Turn the page.

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BADLANDS

Adorned in thorns, Ursula from the aria returned. The patron saint sat in silence. He sipped tea from the conch, muted the computer. He sifted through the sand with his computer. He yawned and donned a paper hat. She donned his hat, did a pirouette in the sand. He pulled the bills from her underwear and stuffed them in the computer. Ursula returned from the aria again, balancing an aria on her stemlike nose. She thrust her aria into the air and set it on fire. He bled sand, cried out.

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PAINTING

Shes painting my lips a dull gray and smearing the line where my jaw should be. Cant you find a better subject, says he, while he levitates the sofa and sings a German opera. His tenor is perfect. She smiles lustily as she paints an arm pale and delicate as a doves wing. I want to tell her shes getting it wrong. I think shes falling in love. She must be getting it right.

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WOMAN SINGING

I left you sleeping I was drunk and pungent the church bell rang I took a walk in the woods the sad oaks near dawn I thought I heard a woman singing was it you with your dark hair and small white teeth if I say a word can you hear me if I kissed your arms would your chest swell like wood in water I was passed out and dreaming I dreamed you said something and I woke ready to respond the light was on the window was open in the dark I filled the tub cut the lights and drank from the bottle when I heard you stagger through the hall and turn on the radio I saw you in my minds eye put on your shoes and that dress comb your hair and wish you were gone

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LIGHT COMING THROUGH THE SHAPE OF THE MOON

1. The lantern swung at the end of its rope the blue coat floated on the surface my grandmothers hair in long white strands I was nine this is what I remember spread out like a fan in the blackness around her

2. Her baby in her arms my sister falls again this time down the stairs this could be the solution nip the sickness in the bud but its not that simple have solutions even entered Evas mind my father and I load mother and child into the car the hospital is fifteen miles away the baby bleeds through my coat the cuffs of my shirt
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3. One step and Grandmother flies laughing down the well in this dream I fly too above the strong man lowered down everyone from miles around can see his red shirt and his big red hands empty now reaching as my father his brow suddenly smooth his hair jet black helps him out onto the ground I see the blue fields all around and my grandmother everywhere as she sinks flies runs

4. The squirrels fall furry bundles from their nests my brother staggers stomps one dead sometimes they are rabid sometimes they bite my father hangs way back behind us in the brush Put your gun down Mack I yell Ive got to piss I dont want to turn my back to my brother I dont want to face him either he might as well be shooting in the dark he looks my way says in disbelief Im running out of shells Im out too I lie Go get some he says Go get them yourself I say my father breaks through the brush Mack turns aims has the hammer back Better hurry he says Im getting anxious my father pale as a dove says nothing the barrel six feet from his face I turn my back and wait for the shot to open a hole in my head run all the way home bring my brother back the shells

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5. The angel baby flies his eyes my grandmothers bright as half dollars we could buy the world the angel baby and me the angel baby sired by an average man could be a god he could heal the sick he could say with his gruff bass voice: Move over old man, Im taking the wheel

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