Terrance Hayes calls his poem "Do Not Put Your Head Under Your Arm" (from "So To Speak", 2023) "an analogue PechaKucha", a Japanese presentation form that involves making twenty-second statements about twenty slides. In my Contemporary Poetry seminar, we discussed the proper names in Hayes's poem: Kafka, Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, Matisse, Picasso, Hitchcock, and Isamu Noguchi. As none of us had heard of Noguchi before, I gave the students two minutes to prepare a twenty-second statement about what the poem says about him, and then called on students at random to make their statements. Afterwards, we looked him up: Noguchi (1904-1988) was an Usonian artist, furniture designer, and landscape architect. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 October 2024)
[Hayes’s poem is online, but he revised it considerably for book publication, so here’s the poem as it appears in “So To Speak”]
Do Not Put Your Head Under Your Arm
Terrance Hayes, "So To Speak", 33-36
An Analogue PechaKucha, 2020
¯\_('.')_/¯
It appears I will never be remembered
as a great singer nor extravagant eater.
Either I am standing or I am dreaming.
Or I am standing near the mouth of a theater.
¯\_(:-|)_/¯
One early & deeply progressive symptom
of the Kafka Virus: a stream of movies seeps
into the shell of the infected individual's sleeping.
Dream factors greatly in the disease.
¯\_('-')_/¯
I accept I may never get over the ways my mother
loved me poorly. She is close to god in me.
On a planet without surefire
gods & mythologies, there is family.
¯\_(--)_/¯
Inside the stream of Whitney Houston's
voice, Dionne Warwick warns,
"You're gonna need me one
day. You're gonna want me back in your arms."
¯\_(:-|)_/¯
There are no ugly people, only expressions
of uglinessm when the mouth is set
this way or that. It's best to think of time
the way a miser thinks of money.
¯\_(' ')_/¯
Matisse liked to have the nude near to see her,
but Picasso liked to close his eyes upon her.
What I remember of 1987, is mostly what I remember
of '88 except with different deaths & births.
¯\_(:-|)_/¯
If you watch Hitchcock's Vertigo
the other way round, you may notice
inside the movie is a whole other movie
told from the point of view of the young lady.
¯\_(--)_/¯
Each new pair of glasses assures things
never look the same, but several glasses
of liquor can create the same feeling.
Balance the morass & the molasses of jackasses.
¯\_('-')_/¯
Even where I doubt the presence of God
I am awed by the scale of creation.
Any science suggesting all that happens
is coincidence, is nonsense.
\_('.')_/¯
"Intrepidation." "Misfortunate." "Ya-licious."
"Holy smoked turkey." "Attack of the third dimension."
I continue to half believe a fourth s
resides somewhere inside the word obsession.
¯\_(:-|)_/¯
Clap for a low back country road
like a tree talking below a constellation.
A low back river talking twilight
with the leaves clapping below a constellation.
¯\_('.')_/¯
Often right after taking a photo you immediately
crop or color the image so it seems
the doctored thing is the memory.
I'm not saying you have to lie to dream.
¯\_(:-|)_/¯
I stream the sequel to a terrible disaster
movie where the protagonist searches for a lover
with the support of characters who meet catastrophe
helping the main character.
¯\_('-')_/¯
The gun is lowered but then a toe
or two in the boot is shot & when the shoe
comes off, there's a hole a grandchild or two
a generation or two later can put a finger through.
¯\_(:-|)_/¯
Before the sleeping dream,
we are told to keep nickels in the glasses
of wine by our beds. The virus seems
to have some relationship to cash.
¯\_('.')_/¯
Clap for Tetris, the video game
that teaches you the most geometry for life.
Stacks of boxes of books, closets of hangers
and monster angels and historical fabrics.
¯\_('-')_/¯
I was struck by the sky of my South
Carolina. It made my mouth ache.
I was old by the time I heard the prophet
Isaiah used to preach naked.
¯\_(:-|)_/¯
Ghost, the loss that broke you was so
ubiquitous, I failed to see it lingering in the ether
like the misspelled affections that go
undetected by both letter writer & letter reader.
¯\_(--)_/¯
Often I confuse Vivamus, moriendum est,
which means "Let us live, for we must die,"
with Bibamus, moriendum est which means "Let
us drink, for we must die."
¯\_(:-|)_/¯
Isamu Noguchi sculpted the marrow
of a black stone into bamboo & planted husks
of live bamboo shoots to guard it. I know
this ragged clock waits to be clogged with dust.
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