NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE POEMS KIM ADDONIZIO FOR THE MAKERS Everybody knows the captain lied. —LEONARD COHEN Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together. —ELIZABETH TAYLOR CONTENTS I.NIGHT IN THE CASTLE Night in the Castle Black Hour Blues Fixed and In Flux Animals Comfort of the Resurrection Grace High Desert, New Mexico Signs The Earth Is About Used Up In Bed II.SONGS FOR SAD GIRLS Wolf Song Song for Sad Girls Résumé Telepathy Small Talk Ghosted August Winter Solstice All Hallows AlienMatch.com To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall Ways of Being Lonely Guitar III.CONFESSIONAL POETRY IV.ARCHIVE OF RECENT UNCOMFORTABLE EMOTIONS People You Don’t Know Ex The Truth Archive of Recent Uncomfortable Emotions The Miraculous Arrival in Italy Still Time Happiness Report I Can’t Stop Loving You John Keats Art of Poetry Babies at Paradise Pond Little Old Ladies Death & Memory Stay Acknowledgments I NIGHT IN THE CASTLE NIGHT IN THE CASTLE I’m not sure what to do about that scorpion twitching on the wall Maybe I should slam it with this book of terrible poetry or just read aloud to it until it dies of a histrionic metaphor bleeding out on the ancient stones in a five-octave aria If I get a little drunker I might try to murder it with my sandal I gave up on mercy a while ago That’s what happens when you live in a castle on an artist’s grant You look at the late-afternoon Umbrian light smearing itself over the tomato vines & feel entitled—like an underage duchess whose husband has finally died of gout leaving her free for more secret liaisons with the court musician She might even have poisoned the duke, the lecherous shit It’s hard to remember what life was like before this & I don’t want to, I want to stay here & poison the king next I want to be a feared & beloved queen ordering up fresh linens & beheadings locking up bad poets in their artisanal hair shirts torturing academics with pornographic marionette performances Meanwhile the scorpion is still there twitching slightly reciting something about violence & the prison of ego & I can hear the clashing armies on the wide lawn outside sinking down into history & then standing up again BLACK HOUR BLUES Nothing is the new black’s shit soundtrack. The elk’s black blood leaks from the roof rack. Black the prospects of the destitute sick. Blackberries suppurate in the pie tin. Green cards burnt black in the gas-lit oven. Black mold loitering in the privacy of prison. Black Deepwater Horizon pelican and dolphin. Through Standing Rock a black worm crawls. Black Baltimore Mali Iraq Sudan Cambodia Sinai Selma Uh. The darkling beetle raises its black back and runs through the black Ghost Ship and Grenfell Tower ruins. Black Syria Somalia Ferguson Uh Attica Gaza Yemen Huh. Black heart weighed against an ostrich plume. Blindfolded goddess, long sword drawn nowhere in the Oh come down come down. FIXED AND IN FLUX The cicadas swarm the pines all summer, the males flexing their tymbals to make the horrifying sound that will attract a mate. The new people are fidgeting in strollers, running on little piston legs hard toward the street, toward the breast and then the beer can, and soon the breast again. When one door closes, another floats downriver under the night sky. Nine planets seemingly forever and then suddenly Pluto’s demoted. The king is dead! Long live the king! Existentially, we’re either crawling toward a top-shelf margarita being perfected by adorable six-winged angels, or else getting puréed in a food processor on a decapitated mountain. Meanwhile, a sea worm slithers through a mortgage. 72% of Americans believe in angels, no wonder that parasitic amoeba got elected. Meanwhile, a lake comes to realize it’s now a grenade. ANIMALS I think I could turn and live with animals —WALT WHITMAN O Walt you were wrong, they aren’t placid or self-contained I just watched a spoonbill make carpaccio out of a frog & crocodiles dining on wildebeests trying to cross the Maro River It’s wrong to say O in poetry these days which makes me want to have a loud orgasm right here in an unashamed animal way You must have been looking at some cows on a farm but who wants to live like that standing around in a shed with sore tits, shitting claustrophobically or standing around shitting & being tortured by flies & eating grass I know you like grass but it’s no fun to be a pricey pre-hamburger, ruminating with no TV If you’d had a cable subscription maybe you would have felt differently watching NatGeo Wild & those exhausted herds on the Serengeti Walt, I still love you even if in this instance you might have been a victim of the pastoral tradition Let me tell you about animals: The green anaconda swallowed the young capybara whole O o oh oh oh OHHHH Walt Capybaras are the largest rodents on earth I don’t think I’d survive as an animal for long, even a large one—Look at the elephants Imagine being murdered & becoming a doodad or furniture inlay Walt, I actually like sweating & whining about my condition Hot flashing & bitching in my cream satin sheets, lying awake drunk & weeping in the dark I’d definitely like to own more things An electric knife sharpener for instance would come in handy for carving up the less fortunate on special holidays I want to be lucky as long as I can Walt, Walt, I don’t think death is luckier or leads life forward like you said I don’t think I’m going to grow from the grass you love I’m just going to have one last blackout in a dirty pink lace dress & be eaten by tiny ugly legless larvae COMFORT OF THE RESURRECTION One day everything that’s over or dead will come back, oil painting & God, chivalry & the kings (even the mad old rotters, why not, while the heads of the plotters are removed from their iron spikes & carefully glued on again)—why not believe in the miracle—plaid has already come back so why not the starved & flooded corpses, why not fresh bread from charred toast, aren’t the grubbers in the cupboard constantly churning up from the charnel the old ingredients, holy seed, holy blood, nothing is ever destroyed, but tell that to Marianna whose child lived for three days brainless & blind close by cheap factories on the filthy Rio Grande, tell it to all the ruined & annulled residents of the earth, everything & everyone will
