Amy Lawless
Amy Lawless has been on The Nepotist's radar for only a short while, but The Nepotist likes her very much. She's got spunk and verve and so do her poems. They vacillate between a rhetoric of observant social commentary and a playful style of written speech that seems to derive some of that joy from pairing discordant images. The effect is jarring and partially surreal, like looking at the wobbly air of a mirage. "Gulf of Mexico," for example, begins "There's definitely a lot wrong with right now." Before the poem's end we move through accidental cannabis consumption, badly-behaved birds, sex aids, and finally a litany of possible devastations, the last of which is "The length of your life." It is The Nepotist's pleasure to present these poems to you today.
Thanks, Amy.
***
MY DEAD
The car exploded for some political reason
I saw a monkey falling asleep in the water
a monk meditating and praying
a girl doing laundry
a miniature hat or maybe the Torah on the head of a man
a baby with a cone head looking for his mother
rugging his head against an empty palm
I saw you look right hiding, hiding
I saw bugs in the bed that were just asterisks
An old man staring at the fire
counting the rosary beads
but not praying
and the cancer patient is bald
yet is still hopeful
We put our hands together
and thought of religion
We make billboards with slanty eyes or white yeses
Between two rocks comes the water
Moses can't save you now
Never saved you
I saw the big girl rock
And climbed it
I will bring you the lettuce
my dead
but I will carry it on my head my dead
we've been praying like this for many generations
Architecture is an act of prayer
Let's gather around this statue we made
and create a beautiful energy
I'll put a flower behind my ear, my dead
Let's follow the man without hair
he's happier than the others
but has no teeth
It doesn't matter when energy transfers from matter
and back into energy.
After the aliens blew up a mountain
a volcano was born
with drums inside
The earth has first-degree burns
The smoke is coming
for me
The line in the earth starts smoking upward
the lesson has been taught when it retreats
Look through it when it parts
and see the grand creations
the passage of time
like you're bigger than yourself
***
Look through at the red rocks
and the sun
The Earth made tiki torches first
when it made an octopus
and lizard with the bodies of old men
laying about in the dusk
flapping skin
and dry heat
My body is red too
but I don't look ancient
My spikes have been absorbed back inside my spine
I live inside my apartment
* * *
Eventually man came over to this rock
and drew pictures of himself
A little boy with his hair shaved down close like a monk's
And why do we dance?
Your weird ears
absent necklace
little goosesteping babies
backward breast brown nipple painted tattoo ink
Now that you've prepared, we can speak of the baggy
red diapers
all men wear
* * *
Thank god we're not in the factories any more
Being homeless
is all in your head, man
Homes are man-made
Let's get out of our heads man
You got your towel, you got your watch, what more do you need?
The rhetoric of jammies with footsies
The little midget pan-faced kids
The boy whose face is buried in grammy's lace curtain
trade money for sex and sex for money
The old Japanese art of white face
The newer, hipper Japanese art of underpants riding up during dinner
giant planes
all lined up in the largest airbase you can imagine
Here is the border
This is where they don't listen to world music
Holler back to me when the fire goes out I'm so jammed up
like a cactus that's had the shit kicked out of it
by a match
Hang the lead pipe from your neck because This Means War!
is our heavy ass command rule
Had to put some dirt into the pizza oven
which we'd conveniently forgotten about
to make it smell so we'd have to eat somewhere else
***
I used to be one of those cowboys who wore the specialty glasses
that allowed purview of canaries in tubes
and canaries in mines
This was where the enemy took your photo
Before they burned you to a crisp
This is what it sounds like to be treated like a pit
This is what it means to meditate
This is how healthy I am
and this is a monk ringing a bell
He hits the bell in a special circle
This prayer is a jump
My teeth are white
I keep it that way.
***
Gulf of Mexico
There's definitely a lot wrong with right now.
Electricity globs into my face like getting pied.
I maintain the same facial expression as five minutes before.
Before you disagree and say there's something military coming up
Remember that I saw the open cup—
The two gallons of milk carried by an Olympic
Sized woman.
I accidentally smoked a lot of pot
before I came out here to be a poet
two words atop the other.
Must change the sheets before [name a friend]
sleeps there.
The dome on top of the oil slick doesn't work.
I could have told you that.
Your family comes from Trinidad, you Olympic-sized woman.
I wish my lines looked uniform across the page until
then I noticed no one gives a shit
It had the rabbit. Do you want cinnamon?
The rabbit is the name of my roommate's dildo.
I asked the Olympic-sized woman three current events questions.
1. Why are the birds so badly behaved during work hours?
2. Why are the birds so well behaved before and after business hours?
3. What are the devastating effects of the oil slick?
I decided to ask the badly behaved birds of business hours the same three questions. They evaded until they could speak on man raping his environment.
One of the devastating effects of the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is the fish. One of the devastating effects of the oil slick is air. One of the devastating effects of the oil slick is water. One of the devastating effects of the oil slick is Dubb music. One of the devastating effects of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is cancer. One of the effects is meltdown. One is mushroom cloud. One is a WMD. One effect is shriveled ovaries. One is a black film over all of your food. One is a black film over your water glass. One is the length of your life.
***
Grow a Beard
Such was the lust between the candle
and me—fatuous.
I had to start counting
my drinks. It's ok—I
make my own sandwiches,
bring them to work, don't
drink coke, avoid red meat.
Of law, there was one, fatuous
youth. He kindled a seamstress.
Her fatuous appearance gave us our periods.
Of order, there was none
Certainly not mine.
I simply pointed
out the inaccuracies between
dandelions and lipstick casements.
I'm overheating, watching him pour over and over
like some fatuous hand in the blender—
no pride.
***
About the Poet:
Amy Lawless lives in Brooklyn and is originally from Boston. Her first book, Noctis Licentia, was published by Black Maze Books in 2008. These poems attempt to discuss the serious situation our environment, our country, and the foolishness of ourselves as individuals.
On the identity of The Nepotist:
I have no idea who The Nepotist is. I thought it was Dan Magers or Ben Mirov, two of the hardest working poets in show business. But then i asked each of them and they were all like "No way!" But they're both well known liars. If someone is not my friend, I'm pretty shy, withholding of affection and suspicious of one's motives... but if you are my friend I'm a really loud pain in the ass with a huge ego, so I think The Nepotist is someone who's actually a close friend, otherwise they wouldn't have emailed me. I'm not one of those "well known networkers." Therefore, I would have to say The Nepotist is Ben Mirov.
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