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Overview
Up-and-coming poet Jamie Sharpe presents a finely tuned second collection
Cut-up Apologetic, Sharpe’s second collection, explores aging in a world where youth is terrible and something we desperately want back. These are poems about failing to leave our mark while marks are left on us — about the collective insatiability of emptying surroundings in an attempt to fill ourselves.
At the same time, Cut-up Apologetic is naïve and playful even when examining fear expressed as discrimination or the ways restlessness transitions into an inertia spelling cultural death. Sharpe finds strange new horizons “extend(ing)/only backward, into memory.”
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781770412309 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 04/14/2015 |
| Pages: | 96 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
Jamie Sharpe is the author of Animal Husbandry Today (ECW, 2012). He lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.
Read an Excerpt
Cut-Up Apologetic
Poems
By Jamie Sharpe
ECW PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Jamie SharpeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77090-713-3
CHAPTER 1
DADA
According to legend, Tristan Tzara randomly stabbed his
penknife into a French-German dictionary to find the ideal
name, striking Dada, meaning hobby horse in French. In
German, Dada additionally connotes a foolish naïveté.
Hobby horses ridden into floorboards:
the head ground. Statute set
of nostalgia brought
past collapse.
Ahead, ground set with statues:
exhausted objects, pillars
of the past collapsing
into novelty.
Exhausted pillars object
to monotonous stability.
Into the novelty
of falling.
A stable of monotone
grey hobby horses,
falling
into disuse as children grow.
Grey hobby horses
childishly carry the hours
till their disuse, as we grow
into exhausted pillars.
COMPOUNDED
There was some element of loneliness involved —
so easy to be loved — so hard to love.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
collapsed against the bar
collapsed against the bartender
tender is the night
is the nightclub's only blonde
club's only blonde broad
broadcasting looks across
casting looks across counters
countersinking loss
inking loss with beer
with beer mugs everywhere
mugs everywhere
WORLD SERIES
for S.N.
you gotta be old already
relaxed
don't worry about the big right com
they were worried about uh ... debate
motorboat a bit later
they'd never been in the fire before
a viacom ending
knowing yeah baby soldiers dot world war
just let the
just let them still jukebox
have to get top five travel up
and thank them down
let go-kart beat you
so many cuba yourself
you know what I will well what I mean
eight states don't push it
don't don't twist your luck so you say
you've got to be patient
you know baby lilac
de got nothing to lose
date datya date just one beat you
just want to show the war
they debate babies or date
antique high-powered wrong
it pushes arcane
and then all the law kisses on their side
in your receipt
but that's not the way to play all of
the baby
you break the value of home
steel we'll bring you home
germany guy you know it yesterday
he said uh ... that blood of someone
but that's the way she bought
indian is not is nothing but
the north sea he comes to play you so
his weight is being lame
he's very danish dangers
you've got a baby
gemini dating
cellmates or
delete the big ground fog that cotton and
the country band
maybe but you know
no hard feelings
activity u_s_a_ many cadillacs
acknowledge the event and I have not
maintained study
and I know what I want
an important strategy
the ocean
good luck
the other side baby we're not
going to get it back
FROSTED
Muffins, far too large for consumption,
whose waste decomposes in wallets.
Women in swimsuits
photographed eating naked
muffins, guaranteed AAA
by the Muffin Derivative Board.
To deny muffins is to deny the future —
to eat them is to denature you.
Sustenance of cupcakes a fable, or the past,
or it's one-and-the-same. Uncle claimed
cupcakes sweet. Father claimed Uncle
socialist: the white icing in his beard
a mark of surrender.
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ONE METRE DIET
Birch leaves are delicious:
add truffle oil.
Your lawn's delicious:
add truffle oil.
Pine needles are delicious
soaked in vodka.
Give thanks: life offers
simple, abundant pleasures.
Take any local green
then fatten with foreign nectar.
Translate me,
Charles Simic.
Transform my
sour, green lines.
YOUR NAME IS DAVID GEFFEN
You collect iconic, American,
abstract-expressionist art.
In 1993 you purchased Jasper Johns'
False Start for an undisclosed amount.
In '96 you bought de Kooning's
Police Gazette for an undisclosed amount.
For unknown amounts you hired
unnamed painters to copy these paintings.
The forgeries, passed as legitimate,
were later sold: Johns' for eighty million,
de Kooning's for sixty-three.
The originals? Police Gazette was burned.
Acrid smoke brought tears to your wallet.
False Start was painted over,
with a jaunty boating scene,
then donated to a thrift store.
The age of originals is over.
There's no first edition Bible. There's not
a novel cell in your body.
David Geffen, you are
the conceptual artist of our day.
SHAMELESS INK
They wouldn't let me shower
before my mug shot: hair greasy,
fingers stained with ink.
Every word incriminates.
Each mark a confession.
Handcuffed, with interrogating
lamps blinding eyes, the words
see only spotlit opportunity.
THREE MILES OUTSIDE PLOTTO
A stranger comes to town
then leaves to seduce
a motel bed.
Finds God only to take
her to the motel, stuffing her
in a bedside drawer.
She was there all along.
Dates the Good Book,
breaks faith, becomes familiar
with a town harlot.
The harlot, after a night
at the motel, tugs on
the bedside drawer.
A romantic comedy.
MUTABLE
When Borges visited
the Sahara he selected
a grain of sand,
carried it a few steps,
then dropped it.
I'm modifying the desert.
A child builds a sandcastle.
Waves upon waves crash
but the castle remains.
We never hear from the ocean again
but it washed
our children away.
DESERTIFICATION
The traditional oasis mirage
of palm trees shading a spring
overshadowed by
the Emirates Golf & Yacht Club.
Believing in the mirage
of private school for his children,
Moussa charges too much to scrub
a nine iron, de-barnacle your boat.
Who cleaned my hotel suite?
There's sand everywhere.
The sand dreams it's everywhere.
Slow of tongue, it sways us
with visions of water.
THE MORE YOU KNOW (MY LADY HELMET)
for A.M.
In youth, perversion and poverty
are romance. No guile, no guilt:
come on the dance floor.
(Reggaeton the mind to sleep.)
My lady helmet,
what can you save me from?
Keep us from tomorrow.
My lady helmet,
protect me from the young
and my memory.
GREENSBOROUGH
This is beginning to feel like home.
Get the latest bargaining tips
from real estate expert, J. Sharpe:
Even as we settle, we plan to leave.
The best way to motivate a seller
is a brick through their window.
We say it's to be closer to family,
One two-dollar brick, on average, knocks
two thousand off the asking price.
but I'm beginning to suspect,
Don't forget to factor in future savings
of a newer, energy efficient window.
we're forever restless.
INTERNAL AFFAIRS
In New Delhi my wife was fleeced:
given directions to people relieving her of
American dollars (the universal currency
of scams). She tracked down the con artists
and had them process refunds — the customer service
of their criminals a higher calibre.
In Whitehorse the back tire was stolen
from her bike, chained to our front steps.
Here there's no recourse
except to buy a gun (the universal currency
of impotency).
LONGING OVER THE MEXICAN RIVIERA
Blind bats against
cracked piñatas.
Then a siesta before
candy showers.
Tempered by endless mud
between targets and desire,
I fondle my gun's
broken safety.
When it rains
the tension's released.
UNWED MOTHERS HATE
FRACKING, NOW
The way you live your life
is a statement against others'
like buying a Haydn record
is a vote for the Green Party.
The timpani rolls in akin
to Southwest tofu scrambles
and vegan food, we know,
excludes minorities.
Tight gas wants out:
destruction's the conduit
(we have only to stimulate
the shallows).
Franz, you're instrumental
to our broken, bastard lives.
STANDARD
Two parakeets, or winged little men,
fought over a mirror. A mirror's skirt
rises over its thigh. Stand up to Mother
for your widow's sake. Could shoplift
love, but not you, a decent woman
of Hungarian descent. Chirped,
women are weird, temperamental,
at my reflection. Birthed robots,
whose metal glint placated
us till first oil jobs. I wanted
back my youth. Hold me, I'm silver.
The birds speak. I cry.
It was a typical marriage;
what can you say?
FUTURE ART PROJECTS
1) 1 1 1
A hand-knit scarf
one metre wide by two stories long
hangs from a loft ceiling.
On one side of the knit
a tape measure (with faded-out numbers)
climbs the wall.
On the other side pencil marks
are made at arbitrary points
in the knit's development.
There are abrupt changes in wool;
could it go on, the same way, forever?
A miniscule flaw threatens
to unravel everything.
Variant:
The scarf's awkward adolescence
is documented on Polaroid: camping
in pup tents; playing catch; blowing out
candles.
2) Sink, Sunk
In a photo: painstakingly realistic
models of an offshore drilling platform
and oil tanker built within a kitchen sink.
Also in frame: an empty beer bottle
and a container of dish soap
(which is turned over, spilling).
Suds threaten to eclipse
platform and tanker.
Dirty dishes — yours — lie in the background.
3)Three Nudes
A macro shot
of an undisclosed swath of skin;
the Hubble Telescope
peering down, presumably
while I shower;
at the in-laws' and
one glass of wine too many.
DECOYS/
INEVITABLE IS IMMORAL
We painted wooden Sundays
like ducks, to shoot the living
in their search for summer.
Our plastic selves painted
like hunters to satisfy a gun's
hunger, or boredom, our fall.
Two birds land
on one branch.
Is it inevitable:
wrong to want more?
THEY'RE NOT ANIMALS THEY'RE NOT EVEN
HUMAN/
OH, THE MARBLING
Now we don't eat veal,
our children or sashimi.
Don't believe in Pascal's Wager
but default to it.
Raise the baby:
pure organic;
free-range.
In the last few weeks
replace breast milk
with Guinness.
TALKING TO MY WIFE ABOUT HAVING A BABY/
THAT CANYON'S MY SON
I feel the two of us are
not enough/enough/too much
take an average and determine I
don't know/will never know/know.
Why keep throwing applesauce
into the canyon?
COUCH IN A FIELD/
There is always a body
being acted upon —
its wants immaterial.
A body in motion remains
in motion. A body at rest
eats Fig Newtons,
watches Home & Garden TV.
Prolonged stasis: its own
reason. A commercial
break revaluates the body's
barren plot. We're breaking
NEWTON'S LAW
POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES FOR KIDS
(YOUR CHILDREN WERE LOVELY)/
A RELATIONSHIP'S HONEST ACCOUNT
our golden age
is always past
we knew less
but felt more
when the moon was too far I wooed another
THE CALLING (THE COMING)/
THE GOING
Blew my knee playing
Red Rover in kindergarten.
Breaking through
was my ticket out.
Having a low tolerance for
is the same as saying
a high sensitivity to. I have
a high sensitivity to life.
POLAR BEAR DIED FROM CLIMATE CHANGE/
AT NO INTERCHANGE
As with medicinal marijuana,
Rohypnol will soon be used
in the treatment of those suffering
from everything, always.
The future is beautiful.
I wrote a good poem, a rare occurrence,
and thought, all's not lost. But good and bad
were indistinguishable. I wrote a theorem.
It was beyond beautiful.
CFO, PREMONI USA CO.
JAMIE "JIMMY" MONTENEGRO
The executive, in love with my grainy
B&W back story, ordered I be stable product-
manager of Notorious Lightning.
"Important rivers are miserable partners.
No trials wait for the makers of magic."
Fired, after working five years
for Unified States' Employment Board,
the next day I found Puerto Rico.
I had been a lot, had mortgaged my face.
In our country's second bedroom
caretakers cut each Notorious Lightning,
extracting all wonderful seven magical processes.
I'd bring America to a fire sale.
I spoke with Henry.
My friends and attorneys all ended in America.
Gathered prime for video operations.
Found they queued for anything.
Set up tables, handed out samples.
Set up Americans for electric selves.
Magic of the times? I think so.
They still say Citadel Place
is somewhere out in California.
OSCAR MAYER PROCESS
High-speed, stainless steel choppers
blend ideas into an emulsion. The legislation
is continuously weighed to ensure a proper
balance of interests, which are pumped
into automatic stuffer machines that create
laws. After a cold shower, individual law-links
are conveyed to news outlets that add
freshness and flavour captured between plastic
programming. Each package contains
an ingredient statement, listing everything
in the product (just decipher what
with variety meats means).
LULULEMON TOQUE
I want poetry to be wonderfully absurd
the way I imagine yoga is.
When was the last time you
Downward-Facing Dog-ed?
If only I could make a ridiculous poem
that stretched the brain,
allowing for a slightly greater range
of potential thought.
BECAUSE IT TIES IN WITH THE THROW PILLOWS
There is a potential for immediacy
in painting not readily found in poetry.
Walk through a museum, viewing
three-hundred-paintings-an-hour:
Which did you like?
Monet's lily pads were glorious.
Won't read three hundred
poems this lifetime.
The prefab art section at Linens N Things
permeates our lives.
I'm jealous; I want my sestina
above your couch.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Cut-Up Apologetic by Jamie Sharpe. Copyright © 2015 Jamie Sharpe. Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
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