Monday, September 24, 2012

Two Poems by Jordan Jamison

T.S. Eliot’s Veins

 
The apartment festers like open sores on feet, memories of dope itches and milky spoons of diseased liver brown, Coca-Cola brown, everything is brown.  I continue to think of you, T.S. Eliot; would you write a poem about the apartment, about working-class beaner friends who double as modern day Dantes?  Probably not, but my arms hurt.  My veins are an adorable apple bruise barely oxidized.  I love my veins, always have.  Sometimes when I can't sleep and my nose is running and I can hear the water in the wall and the delicious couples screaming at each other out on the sidewalk, I wonder if you love your veins as much as I love mine.
 
 
 
Phoenix
 
Anne drowned in Gatsby's dirty bathtub-listening to Marge Simpson pubuc hair and A Tribe Called Quest.  Saint Peter rejected her at the gates of Glendale coffee shops, Auschwitz and Wrigley Field.  She sat in her car all morning eating cups of tetanus nails and chasing them with atom bombs, Olde English, and Fentanyl enemas.  The Buddha turned out her formal complaint and Maricopa County Superior Court appeal by sticking a lit cigarette through his bellybutton and she laughed her Zkylon B laugh walking to the psychiatrist on 51st and Thunderbird muttering why why why.  Her sister respected her but didn't understand her and they went to Holocaust Addicts Anonymous meetings in Wall Street church basements also used as shooting galleries by truckers and priests and John Coltrane.  She knew enough was and shot a 20 dollar bag of saline and Gary Sinise's favorite ping pong paddle and walked to Nitrous Row thinking about Otto the Orange and Dutch courage and another hit of hipster typhus and she could cop it quick and easy from any Dominican in Tempe if only she could hustle up the paper.  On the way up to the whippit spot she talked Dali into using her as his model for The Persistence of Memory and he agreed greedily in Gestapo glee and asked for a list of her references and she told him she was Jack's original pick then that bitch Rose showed up but she did a photo shoot at summer camp last year and he told her to call him Salvadore from now on or if she preferred The Bear Jew or Teddy Ballgame.  She left him in the smog and walked over flaccid fool's gold and Prius windshield cow paddies and yen pox opium left out to dry and suckly by Mao and Stalin to give their timed orgies a rush and she breathed out methylenedioxymethamphetamine and she felt the Turkish semen and steak and eggs and pocket cocain from yesterday blurp out on the basketball court of Parkridge Park and she left before Neil Armstrong's neat anal probe could catch up to her because it was not welcome on the Row and Buzz Aldrin was always too sober to walk to Daisy's raves.  She saw Osama's palace and the crematorium pouring out virginity and hope and balloons and empty Reddi Wip cans.  Jesus was on the stoop and he fingered his pet Chia Cheeseburger and his quiet disciple Lee practiced target shots reliving the glory days of November nineteen sixty three bragging that Newt Gingrich was next and he texted Himmler calling him a Jew loving communist and when she walked by they whistled and asked her if she wanted any good Soviet ketamine and she ignored them and made it in the mansion and didn't say hi to anyone and immediately saw Gahndhi across the room blowing Spice smoke down on a stinkbug the he carried around to conquer anorexia and John Travolta jokes and the Pakistani Raj flag and she grabbed his hand from twenty feet away and they went in the bathroom and had a fifty-six day hunger binge and she drowned.
 
 
 
Jordan Jamison is from Phoenix, Arizona.  His poetry has been featured at Hayden's Ferry Review, 32 Poems, Poetry Magazine, and Ploughshares, among others.  He has an MFA from the University of Arizona and is currently working on his first collection of poetry, Dancing With Trains.  He is alive and well.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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