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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781945588051 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Four Way Books |
| Publication date: | 03/06/2018 |
| Series: | Stahlecker Selections |
| Pages: | 74 |
| Sales rank: | 717,376 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
TODAY IS WORK
I'm searching for the right verb for a dead frog. I want one large but not so full it floods my eyes. The verb should stand on its own without support from viewers like you & you really are a viewer, it's just I'm concealed by a series of tall buildings & significant life events. If I reach you, call it lifting a finger & driving into your skull. I like surgery to be light. I like a cradle overflowing with baby gifts &
SELF-PORTRAIT AS INFINITE SMALLNESS
every inch of me is microbes but I'm growing okay with this, they remind me
who's the boss, who's the sum of whose parts & on my block earlier
there was a sudden side impact, a two-door smashed open & one
witness kept recounting who ran the light,
for each wrecking the other, clapping them so the sound tore through
the streets & the city's still a grid, everyone agrees on this, even the ocean
now is nodding never once being asked
IF I SHUT MY EYES, WHAT OTHER DOORS IN ME FLY OPEN
I'd like to meet my bones.
beach blanket near the water —
my rib cage. Isn't this love: to marry a plush background? I'd unthread
Minnie's face, stitch it into places I've lived: each hole in the wall,
each rough winter I've held against my lips. I remember snow
like it was yesterday, sticking into the night. But memory is lost
on bones. Flesh, on the other hand,
like the sea takes the shore,
THE PAST IS THE PRESENT ONLY COLDER
At night, everything feels. Even a river feels its way through the woods, mumbling.
Slight edge in its voice. Enough to pry the sky open a crack, then light through
the haze. The earth covers its face with brush. Flagstones elbow each other
inside a mile-long fence. I can divide the world into two types of people:
one blankets my streets; the other paves them right over. I once saw a comedy
where the tuba in a marching band trips & his fellow instruments
go on trampling him. With each step,
a note. The joke is, nothing changes.
You & I could trade places
would be level. Someday I'll lock myself away, then flatten my breath
against the glass. I'll leave a smiley in the fog. All movies end in tragedy,
names leaping off the screen.
NATURAL INTELLIGENCE
The plural of anything is bound to be sharper:
THE LAKE IS A MIND WITH A SHOPPING CART IN IT
See that? A heart on the flap of your Cheerios box? A bee with white teeth? Don't faint, or you'll cause a sharp rise in blackouts around here.
THE PAST SUFFERS TOO
The bumper sticker says Live In The Moment! on a Jeep that cuts me off. I'm working to forget it, to let go
of everything but the wheel in my hands,
to touch. When I drive by something, does it sway toward me or away? Does it slip into the past
or dance nervously in place? The past suffers from anxiety too. It goes underground, emerging
once in a blue moon to hiss. I hear the grass never saying a word. I hear it spreading its arms across
each grave & barely catch a name. My dying wish is scattering now before every planet. I want places to
look forward to. Listen: the earth is a thin voice in a headset. It's whispering breathe ... breathe ...
but who believes in going back?
TIMES THE WHOLE WORLD BY ZERO
Two mirrors stare into each other
game to settle down? You know me:
I'll stuff my face, then string it above the mantle: another X-mas
light fizzling, blinking out the day.
I have a message to deliver from the future while bursting
into flame. Will my skylight beg to melt down? Will my TV
crawl on all fours, the remote in its mouth? How long until that pair
grows distant again? The sun remains the last place I can go
for warmth. I'll work a little bomb into this page.
NEARLY A BILLION WINGS
Each Super Bowl, the US consumes nearly a billion alone: each wing like half of a couple
ignoring the other. Picture them in a living room, their flat-screen TV
screwed into the wall which assumes a light strain. Their wings, atomic: spicy as hell.
Let's assume that a bird without wings has a span of ten seconds left. Then the game
unravels, another Hail Mary fluttering out of bounds. Fiery, a fan might snap:
Hit the open man in his goddamn hands —
DISASSOCIATED SELF-PORTRAIT FROM TEN THOUSAND FEET
I could scatter like a lot full of school buses picking up small kids & from up here roads cut everything into squares, each perfect serving of field, soybeans corn maybe cotton
FOR THE LOVE OF ENDINGS
The blank page always wins. Not because of its blank stare but because it speaks! It makes sense: letters, commas left out in the cold. It skips happily over the mind, heads right for the throat. Let me start there.
I enjoy weeping in convenience stores. At least I'm being recorded on black-&-white film. I'll loop over myself for hours. I'll shoplift simply to nail down my dominant hand. Junk food on the shelf sometimes cries out to me. El Diablo Doritos are screaming my name.
I passed a billboard today that got under my skin. It hurt to drive my car, seeing ads for sleeker cars. What am I, a bad husband? A future pair of wandering eyes? In my dreams, the whole world falls for each other.
I hope the afterlife is one giant pretzel with milk. I'm not talking about forever. I'm killing time with snow angels as I sprinkle salt on my drive. Sad little ghosts. If God exists, God exists to disappear.
Spoiler alert: here's my ending. I'm confined to a bed while my mind drifts in & out, like another overworked nurse on her phone. Nurse! I shout, but she's already gone. Someone fills in, someone with her same face. Please, I say, give me the truth. She keeps dancing around it.
Should I bury my face in this book? I have a tired obsession with death — not real death, just the moment when my lover loses steam, crashing beautifully on the couch. Her eyes are closed, so I close mine, to be closer to her.
If a cartoon coyote blows up the bridge on which he stands, his dreams go up in smoke. All animated characters are basically homeless, in search of a body. They run around in circles in two dimensions. They fall off cliffs because that's all they have.
The TV reminds me of sunlight. It's nice being burned in the comfort of my own skin. I'll whiten my teeth until they soar through the sky, until they sink themselves suddenly into the moon. Why else go outside? The rain's stuck again in the rain.
In any standing ovation, the cheering fans rise to their feet because, sadly, they block their own view. I can learn from this as a writer: whatever looks like praise is an obstruction of something else.
People are drowning in breaking news. The whole world is watching the world just watching. Even planets are falling in stature, their hearts too slack. Tell me: what song could lift them? How would it go?
I'll name my child Gloom because I'd like her to be happy. I want Gloom running free in tall grass, the sun licking the blades at her waist. I want the other children to jump rope with Gloom, maybe braid Gloom's hair. When I was little, I knew a Faith. She never went far.
I like my poems to look me in the eye. They should know their father, know where to stick the knife. When I'm gone, the thing I'll miss is missing, is describing the world I miss. So much depends upon you, reader. Look how these words lean on you, not even knowing your name.
DEAR EX
I'm hardly alone —
at anything to avoid looking inward. Like how a stream
reflects what surrounds but never the face of
itself. I mean force, I mean —
into a pond: a still surface standing forever without
a break. Let's freeze at the tipping point when you
leave me, here in the heart of this song. At least
metaphors have my back;
my window sound into each other. I hope they fly
so far south, they don't remember a thing.
LIKE AN ANIMAL CUT ROUGHLY IN HALF
When person A splits from B, silence walks into the room.
Clock hands inch toward, then away from the sky.
Even the mind holds weight, a center of gravity:
Until mounds of red earth spring up.
Soon a fresh city emerges, a system of pipes, a boatload of sex shops, people starting over.
They swipe onto trains. They flood parks with kids.
PASSING THOUGHTS IN A COUPLE
Beauty, books say, is symmetry.
ONLINE MATCH
Hello, you're now being viewed. Q: How many floors does your body have? A: I fall hard for the perimeter of a girl. Drag your mouse over the picture to show depth. Deflect the age question with a swift turn. Bury the ex in run-on sentences. Say you'd like more little ones than you'd like. Then sprinkle white lies over coffee. Lock arms around an iceberg wedge with light dressing. If you grow apart, be the bigger person by an inch.
IN HOTELS, SEX FLINGS ITSELF OPEN
the king bed pours out its frame to the dark
its pillows like a surprise rock jetty & this time
let's leave the TV on to watch us yes
let's feel its eyes burning up your back
first then mine &
all directions so nothing can escape not even
our minds reaching up & up for the ceiling
where hot air lightly presses its face
RUNNING INTO THE EX
I wasn't expecting you says a tree to the cloud
THE WORDS I FAILED TO BE
I'll rip off this Coke label to reveal my love life: the ones I like enough, the ones I adore but can't ever close. I'm drawn again to the frozen-food aisle: is this where I meet my new self,
TATTOO OF A BUTTERFLY ON A BUTTERFLY
the TV's so loud I start squinting I start at the corner of each eye bringing it shut just barely enough to ruffle a bed sheet the TV cries
MIRROR I DON'T KNOW
I'm far from the dead center of things.
Each afternoon spent in four coordinates:
on whose mirror I don't know. But look,
My street frozen in spring. My roof, its slanted dish.
a waiting rectangle. Though it's hard to pick out between pear blossoms & telephone wire.
Dearest pin on my screen, I'll drag & drop you.
To exit this window, I claw my way out.
SETTING BEAR TRAPS FOR MYSELF
A wound is merely a matter of time; a woman is where two roads merge before my eyes. Heading home, a salmon swims so violently it leaps out from its skin. I crave love like this.
SALIVATING OVER NOTHING
the mind is so easily had, it's easily
the first picked-
from a herd, the one they all guessed
would go first but never
said anything & they let the mind be
ravaged, this way they might
stand a chance
freeing to look on with no mind!
the thing swallowed in
seconds, already a far-away
thought but when the herd left to
roam they fell frozen, their
mouths oh-so-
RUNNING INTO THE EX AGAIN
sword toothpicks in Swiss cubes & the holes are what we don't say to each other but still swallow while shaking hands in fact we hardly shake the glass in our off hands we won't spill the red no way aren't we simply having a ball aren't we surrounded by our dearest walls our hearts always buried in one chest or another
MORE MORE
I sometimes want more than I've got hands for
a point-&-shoot or smartphone with a no-
this puddle for shadows now I settle on a frame a cattail sticking its neck through the tracks
says something about life says no trains say hi anymore & if this bridge won't give
it'll break off into tangents see the people across talk funny they lose more nouns
to the river each year & what can a city sorry what kind of city releases its people
to the air without kite strings & sorry what
of a push drill? a chorus line of clouds I can't see to the end of? because my eyes are watery
nearly all water in fact if I look down the little I own might pour out
ESCAPE PLANS
One day, night dawns on you.
in sight. You see existence for what it is. You see the gap between the world & how
people paint it: dark, distant, there for the taking. So take. Moonlight hitting water, water hitting back.
You leave for a second
When dividing, please show all your work.
have a gold star. Set it on your tongue.
an arcade, think of Whac-A-Mole:
outnumber your heart. Hear them huddle around her like wolves.
& you should exit whatever dark place you're in:
Everyone you love,
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "For the Love of Endings"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Ben Purkert.
Excerpted by permission of Four Way Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
•
Today Is Work 3
Self-Portrait As Infinite Smallness 4
If I Shut My Eyes, What Other Doors in Me Fly Open 6
The Past Is the Present Only Colder 7
Natural Intelligence 9
The Lake Is a Mind With a Shopping Cart in It 10
The Past Suffers Too 11
Times the Whole World by Zero 12
Nearly a Billion Wings 14
Disassociated Self-Portrait From Ten Thousand Feet 15
For the Love of Endings 16
•
Dear Ex 31
Like an Animal Cut Roughly in Half 33
Passing Thoughts in a Couple 34
Online Match 36
In Hotels, Sex Flings Itself Open 37
Running into the Ex 38
The Worlds I Failed to Be 40
Tattoo of a Butterfly on a Butterfly 41
Mirror I Don't Know 42
Setting Bear Traps for Myself 43
Salivating Over Nothing 44
Running into the Ex Again 46
More More 47
•
Excape Plans 51
Humility 56
Blame Game 58
Dark Planets We Could Realistically Flee To 59
Driving a U-Haul in the Dream of Arrows 61
Too Much 63
Ideal World 64
No Small Thing 65
Before I Go 66
How to Talk to the Moon 67
No Other Way 69
Remaining on Point 70
Then 72
In Zero Gravity 73
What People are Saying About This
“If human life becomes extinct on our planet, I want this book to float out into the cosmos to reach future and existing forms of intelligence— to let them know there was at least one beautiful/difficult, dark/brilliant side to us earthlings.”
“In his striking and inventive debut, Ben Purkert writes lyrical riffs about twenty-first century loneliness. His language is always striking sparks, alighting on both the poignant and the haunting: ‘When our minds wander, they go alone.’ In these poems consolation is in the distance, but their linguistic pleasures are skin-close. For the Love of Endings is a tremendous beginning. It marks the arrival of a singular voice.”
“For the Love of Endings is an arresting debut. Purkert is unembarrassed by the minor key, the mindbending yet subtle shift. A swift, funny, tender scenemaker (‘sword toothpicks in Swiss / cubes’), Purkert invokes his ex, maps his mind, and in the title sequence offers a mini ars poetica. These are compact yet aerated poems, studded by the detritus of the contemporary—Coke labels, microwaves, computer screens, billboards— yet grounded in the breakable heart. This is a poetry that makes a place for the tangential, the trace, the touch, a tomorrow.”
“…For the Love of Endings…marks the arrival of a singular voice.”