2 poems || Joel Chace

from Initials

B.K.

Here is the photo, black and white, of a black movie

camera shooting an actual scene.  Buster, The Human

Mop.  In some films, actors pretend to take still photos.

The father sewed a suitcase handle into the back

of his son’s small costume.  Once, things were things, and facts

were facts.  Empty Yankee Stadium:  he hits

a homer with an invisible bat.  The Boy Who Can’t

Be Damaged.  No begging.  Old railroad ties blocking the tracks

are things, and they are facts.  The scheme was to photograph

directly into the lens of the camera filming

itself being photographed.  That night he shattered every

bookcase pane he used a heavy, visible bat.

In Syracuse, his father hurled him into the audience,

breaking the precious nose of a Yalie heckler.

Anesthesia of the heart; all going to hell.


L.M.A.

“He was so old, he was older than his birthday.”  Justice

is the charity of the wise.   Loretta Mary Aiken.

“He was so ugly he hurt my feelings.”  Then mind is rightly

called beauty because she does the works which we recognize

and speak of as the beautiful.  Both babies of rape

given away.  ''Ain't nothin' an old man can do for me

but bring me a message from a young man.''  God is an

extended thing.  Maybe not the brothers but the Smothers

Brothers brought her forward?  “Eat your majesty’s grapefruit and all

that stuff.”  The volunteer fire engine exploded

her father into so many chunks.   The genii, however

marvellous, are always accompanied by bodies

worthy of them.  “Sometimes I wish I was a dog and he was

a tree.”  Rebop in clown, and first at the Apollo.