Ed Friedman
SNAKING BORN HOLLOW
Here’s a recent zoom-in on my face.
Nose near briny lake, eyes just a minute past
sun-browned foothills. Who is to say about my flimsy motives?
They arrive near you in Culver City with rare notions
about owls, kelp life, a line of cement bungalows.
As parents, we can tell when ideal love fails
in favor of dabbing ointment on a scraped arm or chin.
Say “uhn-uhn” (no) several times to what’s not our story.
Can we do that? Observe which tan lines
come from space-born sunlight, not lotion-born dye or
ultraviolet lamps. Better still, don’t bother, go for a swim.
Yes, a lovely one. Take in a film together, Snaking Born Hollow:
two city buses exchange passionate letters
about rush hour traffic but never touch each other
’cause they would be condemned for reckless collision.
SOCKED IN WATERY PALES
When we sleep, money printed in Aramaic
stretches like melodies and latex sheets around the world,
then smacks back, gathering in bouncy piles. Promise me
we are well-shaped to guide, bear down, do more than talk.
Watch as two ice-cold test proctors indicate “time’s up!”
Their red electric laser beams prompt leveling changes that
I’m troubled to see. Tenements, from their gray basements
to the six-story skyline, nod, mutter: “We rose as firm ones,
out of cement sidewalk only not sure why, meaning to learn.”
Do persistent varooms arouse more confidence than patient idling?
It’s a lift we take, actions along the border, blues for a reason.
My stable pontoon boat on a sea of mixed lemonade
is as resistant to citric acid as lime-green vintage Nash Ramblers,
two of them, parked side-by-side in morning shade.
TURN YELLOW SIDEWAYS
The noise god (nose guard?) loves to swim
over the lake’s natural bottom. Baloney-and-cream-
cheese-rolls there guarantee her body wet insides. Science,
always a surprise, surrounds the Great-Inventor Figurine Mugs
that my brother collects in exchange for chewing gum wrappers.
Two especially spry mugs are Hedy Lamarr and Alice Ball,
whose bare soaked feet are on daybreak supply runs.
When we dry off, get in bed hungry, squirm against each other,
and wink away any blurring, what ancestors reveal through us
is Dave’s (on the corner of Canal and Broadway)
secret egg-cream recipe. Where knowledge—
a fine spray, really—spills, it accumulates, rounds off
our rockery’s ice-blue star juniper.
AREN’T PROPELLANTS ADORABLE
Why make up names for products: “Slipper-Flo”
for an old hand-painted city gardener’s truck or
“Here-Among-Melons” for Fresno’s fabled outskirts?
Look down the sidewalk. In a single file are
50 assured laborers waiting patiently to be hired,
hardly patient compared to green mountains among proven revolutionary methods.
Long ago, legged life forms crawled out of night-blackened waters.
Sharp corners required record amounts of chipping and sanding.
Once you could buy them—like predicting noon—life maintained a presumed shape.
Now cross the main drag. Point to yourself. Motion me towards you.
We start minding the valley’s chill
and observe incisive slogans (hand-lettered, fussed over)
on strike and parade placards, and especially on pictorial orange-
crate labels:“
B-O-N-N-I-E-’S B-E-S-T.” “J-U-A-N-’S W-O-N-D-E-R-L-A-N-D.”
“D-A-R-I-N-G- M-A-N-D-A-R-I-N-S.”
Ed Friedman is the author of eleven books of poetry, prose, and collaborations with visual artists, including: The Telephone Book (Telephone Books/Power Mad Press); Mao & Matisse (Hanging Loose Press); Drive Through the Blue Cylinders (Hanging Loose Press); Two Towns (Hanging Loose Press); The New York Hat Line (with Robert Kushner and Katherine Landman, Bozeaux of London); and Ideal Boy (with Kim MacConnel, Helpful Book). Ed’s poems have appeared recently in New American Writing, Posit, 3Fold, Nu, and Julebord. He served for sixteen years as Artistic Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City.
