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I Immense, august, like some Titanic bloom, The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, And stamened with keen flamelets that illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith’s ebbing sea— For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The cloud of witnesses still testifies. II The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold. A rigid fetich in her robe of gold, The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes, Enthroned beneath her votive canopies, Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold. The rest is solitude; the church, grown old, Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies. Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows To be a part of nature’s self, withdrawn From hot humanity’s impatient woes; The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn, And in the east one giant window shows The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn.

at night you stumble, dreaming cross-eyed of a chase scene three yellow wasps on your chest the city you turned around in a chase that quickly lands into a fight the nagging anxiety of a stain somewhere a tickle at the back of the throat a song’s bridge playing over and over in the head maybe the stain is at the bottom of your lung maybe this white crusting along the edge of the bed I lay an icepack on your head one of the old ones that look like a lazy waterdrop unable to pop, I’m waiting for a more complete courage, a peeled orange, a halogen lamp believe it or not, we’re recreating someone from the 19 th century’s sin, by proceeding mounted on the edge of our bed like a permanent display, matching burdens to caramels the thin plant over the dresser is belonging here you picture yourself with pedals removed and ask why you were not born gracious I do a different dance in the same mirror in the ultra-rendering of these buildings I could snap my fingers and every window would close an accordion we accompany

All the sexually active people in Westport look so clean and certain, I wonder if they’re dead. Their lives are tennis without end, the avocado-green Mercedes waiting calm as you please. Perhaps it is my brain that is unplugged, and these shadow-people don’t know how to drink martinis anymore. They are suddenly and mysteriously not in the least interested in fornicating with strangers. Well, there are a lot of unanswered questions here, and certainly no dinner invitations where a fella could probe Buffy‘s inner- mush, a really complicated adventure, in a 1930ish train station, outlandish bouquets, a poisonous insect found burrowing its way through the walls of the special restaurant and into one of her perfect nostrils—she was reading Meetings with Remarkable Men, needing succor, dreaming of a village near Bosnia, when a clattering of carts broke her thoughts— “Those billy goats and piglets, they are all so ephemeral ...” But now, in Westport Connecticut, a boy, a young man really, looking as if he had just come through a carwash, and dressed for the kind of success that made her girlfriends froth and lather, can be overheard speaking to no one in particular: “That Paris Review crowd, I couldn’t tell if they were bright or just overbred.” Whereupon Buffy swings into action, pinning him to the floor: “I will unglue your very being from this planet, if ever ...” He could appreciate her sincerity, not to mention her spiffy togs. Didymus the Blind has put three dollars on Total Departure, and I am tired of pumping my own gas. I’m Lewis your aluminum man, and we are whirling in a spangled frenzy toward a riddle and a doom—here’s looking up your old address.

My daddy understood the richness of color and shunned my oldest sister’s whitewashed birth. Who the white child belong to? He asked in the delivery ward shaming himself as the source. Shadism colored my siblings’ perception. An ideal hierarchy with light skin the pinnacle after the paper bag test proved me cocoa dark and of less value. Burned biscuit defined what I could not erase. When they tired of sidewalk chalk and strike ’em out their feigned indignation made my smile give and give unsuccessfully, reaching eyes where ducts emptied silently. Turned my cheek on juvenile acceptance and sibling rivalry reminding myself that After all, I’m the real thing and it comforted me.

P. entered a third space from which he could watch time pass instead of walking to the monastery in the middle of the night. His opaque sexuality derived from the absence of a guarantee that his person would remain intact. He recognized this in himself and we stared at the pylons regressing into the lackluster northeastern woods. The monastery was a display before which he claimed sangfroid a picturesque ruin to which he was conveyed as though by boreal fluid. Everyone loved occasional works like this their allusions to complementary and absent events. Weaving around proliferating drywall I despaired over this desire. P. joined the migrant workforce and grew more disconsolate and distant and drunk in our presence. Our presence was only possible because of advances in technology in a dialectical relationship with their debasement: servers in cold rooms and a recursive void of woodblock chat sounds.

1 Some say that Chattanooga is the Old name for Lookout Mountain To others it is an uncouth name Used only by the uncivilised Our a-historical period sees it As merely a town in Tennessee To old timers of the Volunteer State Chattanooga is “The Pittsburgh of The South” According to the Cherokee Chattanooga is a rock that Comes to a point They’re all right Chattanooga is something you Can have anyway you want it The summit of what you are I’ve paid my fare on that Mountain Incline #2, Chattanooga I want my ride up I want Chattanooga 2 Like Nickajack a plucky Blood I’ve escaped my battle near Clover Bottom, braved the Jolly Roger raising pirates Had my near miss at Moccasin Bend To reach your summit so Give into me Chattanooga I’ve dodged the Grey Confederate sharpshooters Escaped my brother’s tomahawks with only Some minor burns Traversed a Chickamauga of my own Making, so You belong to me Chattanooga 3 I take your East Ninth Street to my Heart, pay court on your Market Street of rubboard players and organ Grinders of Haitian colors rioting And old Zip Coon Dancers I want to hear Bessie Smith belt out I’m wild about that thing in Your Ivory Theatre Chattanooga Coca-Cola’s homebase City on my mind 4 My 6th grade teacher asked me to Name the highest mountain in the world I didn’t even hesitate, “Lookout Mountain” I shouted. They laughed Eastern nitpickers, putting on the Ritz laughed at my Chattanooga ways Which means you’re always up to it To get to Chattanooga you must Have your Tennessee “She has as many lives as a cat. As to killing her, even the floods have failed you may knock the breath out of her that’s all. She will re- fill her lungs and draw a longer breath than ever” From a Knoxville editorial— 1870s 5 Chattanooga is a woman to me too I want to run my hands through her Hair of New Jersey tea and redroot Aint no harm in that Be caressed and showered in Her Ruby Falls That’s only natural Heal myself in her Minnehaha Springs 58 degrees F. all year Around. Climb all over her Ridges and hills I wear a sign on my chest “Chattanooga or bust” 6 “ HOLD CHATTANOOGA AT ALL HAZARDS ”—Grant to Thomas When I tasted your big juicy Black berries ignoring the rattle- Snakes they said came to Cameron Hill after the rain, I knew I Had to have you Chattanooga When I swam in Lincoln Park Listening to Fats Domino sing I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill on the loudspeaker I knew you were mine Chattanooga Chattanooga whose Howard Negro School taught my mother Latin Tennyson and Dunbar Whose Miller Bros. Department Store cheated my Uncle out of What was coming to him A pension, he only had 6 Months to go Chattanoooooooooooooooooga Chattanoooooooooooooooooga “ WE WILL HOLD THIS TOWN TILL WE STARVE ”-Thomas to Grant 7 To get to Chattanooga you must Go through your Tennessee I’ve taken all the scotsboros One state can dish out Made Dr. Shockley’s “Monkey Trials” The laughing stock of the Nation Capt. Marvel Dr. Sylvanias shazam Scientists running from light- ning, so Open your borders. Tennessee Hide your TVA DeSota determined, this Serpent handler is coming Through Are you ready Lookout Mountain? “Give all of my Generals what he’s drinking,” Lincoln said, when the Potomac crowd called Grant a lush 8 I’m going to strut all over your Point like Old Sam Grant did My belly full of good Tennessee Whiskey, puffing on A.05 cigar The campaign for Chattanooga Behind me Breathing a spell Ponying up for Appomattox!

When you grow up, what will you do? Please come to my tea party. I’m Chatty Cathy. Who are you? Let’s take a trip to the zoo. Tee-hee, tee-hee, tee-hee. You’re silly! When you grow up, what will you do? One plus one equals two. It’s fun to learn your ABC’s. I’m Chatty Cathy, who are you? Please come help me tie my shoe. Can you come out and play with me? When you grow up, what will you do? The rooster says cock-a-doodle-doo. Please read me a bedtime story. I’m Chatty Cathy. Who are you? Our flag is red, white and blue. Let’s makebelieve you’re Mommy. When you grow up, what will you do? I’m Chatty Cathy. Who are you?

An old man in a lodge within a park; The chamber walls depicted all around With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound, And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, Then writeth in a book like any clerk. He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song; and as I read I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note Of lark and linnet, and from every page Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

For some people the day comes when they have to declare the great Yes or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes ready within him; and saying it, he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction. He who refuses does not repent. Asked again, he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no— drags him down all his life.

The housework, the factory work, the work that takes from the body and does not put back. The white-collar work and the dirt of its profits, the terrible politeness of the office worker, the work that robs the viscera to pay the cool surfaces of the brain. All the work that makes love difficult, brings on sleep, drops the body off at the liquor cabinet. All the work that reaches the intestines and sprawls. And the compulsive work after the work is done, those unfillable spaces of the Calvinist, or certain marriage beds.