Joe Elliot
BE THE EJECTA
If you spend your life pursuing something
for its own sake, for its inherent value,
the good being intrinsically good because it is good,
and not for any extrinsic reason,
when you live in a world saturated by materialism,
by transactionalism, by the idea that the only
value something can have is the price that it will fetch
on the open market, if you are not buying
or selling anything, then it follows you will be
ignored as not relevant, in fact there will not even be
a moment of notification of this judgment
which automatically passes. Yes, you would be
rejected if the system knew it was rejecting you. As it is,
you are merely ejected,
have become one of the ejecta,
free-floating, unneeded, with nothing, worth nothing.
CONTORTIONIST
The visionary company of love
becomes a missing man formation
Across the Universe The Beatles
try to chant their way out of as if
grief were kept in a kind of box
you could escape if only you still
had music in your life, as if it weren’t
permeant and permanent. It’s not
something you get over. The thing
about things not working out
evenly is that there’s always
a remainder, something left over,
something you put in the refrigerator
for later, and thus never starve.
I know the bar’s low, which merely means
you perform contortionist feats
to manage a way under and still
keep the beat and get back in line.
But let’s get back to that missing man
and not forget he was only reported
as such and so how all of us,
fanned out with flashlights, may
well be looking for nothing.
COOLER
Temperatures dropped last night.
Fog’s been drifting up the hill
over the lawn and into the woods
this morning. The air’s cooler
than the lake. When I take my glasses off
(so I can read the small print of
today’s reflection) and set them
on the cold enamel tabletop,
and then put them back on to resume
taking notes a few moments later,
they’ve fogged too. I have to wipe them
with the corner of my T-shirt,
which is also cold. My hands are cold,
my feet are cold, but the warmth
of my face must’ve been keeping them
from collecting condensation.
FOR NANCY HUME
When you don’t know someone
but you see them all the time
on the street or in your neighborhood,
emerging from the subway or
carrying bags of groceries home
from the store or cleaning up
after their dog or raking leaves
in the front yard and then suddenly
you don’t see them anymore,
it’s a mystery that recalls and walls
off that period of time when you
always did see them, and you’re
filled with that recognizable ache
of life’s irrevocable fleetingness,
and even slightly chastised the way
seeing a falling leaf in November
can slightly chastise you, as if
a hole opened up before you and you
stopped at its lip and looked down
into the infinite for a moment
before it closed up again and then
you walked on a little wiser and more aware
of what Nancy Hume used to call
the tragedy and beauty of life.
But when you do know them well
and see them all the time and then all
of a sudden they’re not there anymore,
the bottomless hole that opens up
is shaped like them,
and can only be filled by them,
and so will never close,
and there is no tragedy or beauty,
there is only staring
and staring into it
until someone grabs you by the shoulder
and leads you away.
Joe Elliot is the author of If It Rained Here, a collaboration with Julie Harrison (Granary Books, 2004), Opposable Thumb (subpress, 2006), Homework (Lunar Chandelier, 2010), Idea for a B Movie (Free Scholars Press, 2016), and An Everything (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024). Other publications include If It Rained Here (a collaboration with artist Julie Harrison, Granary Books), 101 Designs for the World Trade Center (Faux Press, 2003), as well as several chapbooks. For many years, Joe helped run the weekly reading series at Biblios Bookstore and at the Zinc Bar in New York City. Presently, he co-hosts, Overhear, at the Lofty Pigeon Bookstore in Brooklyn. He teaches English at Edward R. Murrow High School, and lives in Brooklyn.
