Peter Jay Shippy: Three Poems

Peter Jay Shippy

Peter Jay Shippy is the author of three books: Thieves’ Latin (Univ. of Iowa Press), Alphaville (BlazeVOX Books) and a novella-in-verse, How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic (Rose Metal Press). He was born in Niagara Falls and raised on his family’s apple farm on the shore of Lake Ontario. Shippy was educated at Northwestern University, Emerson College and the University of Iowa. His poems, plays and essays are widely published, including: The American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Jacket and Ploughshares. Shippy is the recipient of the Iowa Poetry Prize, a Gertrude Stein Award, two artist grants in creative from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches literature and creative writing at Emerson College. He lives in Boston (the American one) with his wife and twin daughters, Beatrix & Stella=Stellatrix! For more work: www.peterjayshippy.com

The American Flag

At my office I notice
The new receptionist.
And I notice
The new receptionist
Has hung a Jasper Johns print
(Or is it a serigraph?)
(Or is it hanged)
Upside-down
(Downsize-up?):
The international signal
For dumbass.
I am the vice-president
In charge of in-charge-ofs.
I notice one of my young
Colleagues
One of my young charges
Is wearing a paisley shirt
With a plaid tie
And I sigh, audibly.
And wonder, aloudly,
“Is it that time of the decade, already?”
Somewhere the next Bob Dylan
Downloads the next Bob Dylan.
And then I notice
That the new receptionist
(At my office)
Has filled the bonbonnire
With Valrhona cocoa nibs
And all is forgiven.
All is forgotten.
(Is there a difference?)
(Or is it a screenprint?)
(Is there a difference?)

Me I Disconnect From You

I’m alone in the dining room of an elegant hotel.
Breakfast for two costs 300 Euros.
Freshly shaved monks lamb down banana pancakes.
They are pleasing to the nose.
My table is made from 200-year old fiddleback maple
         salvaged from the bottom of Lake Superior.
Charley, don’t want another beer.
My waiter wears orange plastic clogs.
He is pleasing to the ear.
A Swedish string quartet renders a baroque edition
         of Atom Heart Mother.
Siddhartha was a prince who owned three palaces
and six tiger rooms.
Do my wraparound Ray-Bans make me appear
         an ideologist?
An urologist?
I’m kithless? Solus cum solo?
Es ist mir Wurst.
My upside-down noodle kugel is bang on.
It’s pleasing to the tongue.
My Galilee breakfast salad reminds me
         of Nana’s knot garden.
The cellist’s chest is Hokusai’s The Great Wave.
This begs the question: “Why Swedes? Why now?”
Theories abound.
Tomorrow I’ll take the train to see the Magritte
         at the casino in Knokke.
It’s a port on the Belgian coast where Jacques Brel
         first sang Mathilde.
Tomorrow I’ll fly.
Tomorrow I’ll swallow a fly.
With breakfast, one should not be in a dash.
Solus cum sola.
Next month my doctors will induce nano planktons
         to boot-up between my ears to abet my eyes.
Am I a venial sin?
With God’s grace I am humanly reparable?
Charley, champagne right away.
The violinist’s cheeks are vanilla pudding.
Hera’s garden was shaped like a target
         with cattails dead center.
Magritte was haunted by the memory of a door
         opening to a forest fire.
The Farfisaist untangles her rat’s nest of effects.
Does my kohl make me appear a pataphysician?
I’m a monostich in the dining room of an elegiac hotel.
Breakfast for two costs 300 Baht.
On the table’s inlaid screen a video artist recites Rilke
         to a white tiger.
The table’s figuring produces the illusion of waves.
Tiger-striped waves.
The cellist’s chest.
Subsidized municipal music schools?
Theories abound.
She is pleasing to my eye.
I grow young, I grow young,
         I shall wear my cock-ring in my tongue.
Scrutinize: overlook: to give the evil eye.
So I may scrutinize like a fighter jock,
         like Slim Pickens humping Little Boy.
Like Munchausen riding a cannonball.
The white tiger is cross-eyed and toothless and special:
         bred by incest.
Modern botany cannot account for the figuring of the species.
For the drooling in the species;
         so pleasing to my taste.

Awaiting My Translation into Paradise

So one night Dino and I were talkee-
Talkee in Du Mars, the coffee shop
At Laurel Canyon and Ventura.
“Guess where Miss Sofia Coppola
Shoots-the-chute when she’s in Paris?”
The adobe ceiling was terra cotta
And striated like the Burgundy Room’s
Beef tartare. Dean, who happened to be
A card-carrying character actor
Embossed his left eyebrow and hissed:
“There isn’t a knife in sight.” I held my fists
Between the neon chandelier
And the elephant’s breath wallpaper
Making hand shadows, forming
The Mandarin character for: I shit you not.
At the counter, two surgeons
From St. Jude’s spread cinnamon goo,
Crossing their steaming Bangkok
Buns. This was when the evening
Grew a beard, when Los Angeles spoke
Only on commission of anonymity,
When this dude walked in wearing
Black Levi’s, quartz-capped Doc Martens,
A white cowboy hat and a Nudie suit
Boasting rhinestone marijuana leaves
And Benzedrine capsules stippled on rose
Of Sharon with the legend “Sin City”
Stitched into the lapels. Dino looked
Green looked lit by borrowed light.
I drew my blue thumbnail over his upper
Smooch and flicked away a tealeaf.
The hipster fed a dollar to the jukebox
And punched G-7, Serge Gainsbourg’s,
“Folie ˆ Deux.” He parked
At the counter and ordered a salmon Reuben
To go-go. “My juices register a “1”
On the pH scale — chaste acid,” he said.
Without looking up, one med
Replied, “Seething bile is a necessity
For a critter that subsists on moon-
Bleached bones.” This whet my hearing aid.
The other cutter passed the lone wolf
A Tiffany’s box. He paid his bill
And made to walk out the door until
He caught Dean’s gawk and boothed with us.
He opened the little blue, fished out
A syringe and infused the thunderclouds
Under his eyes. “Fetal foreskin cells.
They come with pristine provenance.
One, two, three beats for me to measure
Your countenance. You pass. I’ve been
Aweather. Out in the desert near
Joshua Tree digging for muktuk
And potatoes — if you get my drift —
When I was set upon by an apsaras.
A visitant? A swan maiden? Femme
Mescal? An insinuation? A voice-
Over artist? She carried a bow made
Of yucca strung with a line of killer
Bees. She struck a match, lit her tits
And chanted thirteen times, ‘Let’s burn,
Motherfucker.’ So poof — I disappear
And find myself here as a wham-bam-
Thank-you-man-with-a-plan: I must cook
My looks and make myself worthy
Of alliteration of translation
Into paradise. Believe me, gentlemen,
I’m not the stooge who goes out for a pack
Of smoke and never comes back.”
We exchanged cards. Later, walking south
On Zuma Beach towards Drainpipes,
Watching bikini-stripping swells, Dean begged:
“So where does Miss Sofia Coppola
Shoot-the-chute when she’s in Paris?”
I cuffed my chinos and ran into the sea.