Put Your Hands In Read online

  PUT YOUR HANDS IN

  WINNER OF THE WALT WHITMAN AWARD FOR 2013

  Sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, the Walt Whitman Award is given annually to the winner of an open competition among American poets who have not yet published a book of poems.

  Judge for 2013: John Ashbery

  CHRIS HOSEA

  POEMS

  PUT YOUR HANDS IN

  LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE

  Published by Louisiana State University Press

  Copyright © 2014 by Chris Hosea

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  LSU Press Paperback Original

  First printing

  Designer: Barbara Neely Bourgoyne

  Typefaces: Veneer and Trade Gothic, display; Adobe Caslon Pro, text

  Printer and binder: Maple Press

  The author wishes to thank the editors of the following magazines, where some of the poems in this book were first published, sometimes in different form.

  6x6: “Songs for a Country Drive”; Alice Blue Review: “Of Me to Love”; Boston Review: “Dark, Understated Romantic Comedies”; The Destroyer: “The Matinee I Took Chicken In”; EOAGH: “The Barn Party,” “Gonna Dig Up Ozu,” and “Hard Drive Scrub”; Hose Less Review: “Granddaddy Old Grand Dad,” “Wife Wellbutrin,” “Father Work,” “Choirboy Skittles,” and “Cousin Pot”; ’Pider: “Lithe Brunette, Twenty-Five Years of Age”; Prelude: “Across the Boss’s Desk”; Swerve: “Everything Is Going To”; Web Conjunctions: “Brother Oxycontin,” “Friend’s Girlfriend Kools,” “Grandmother Snuff,” “Mistress Damage,” “Mother Old Fashioned,” and “Sister Chablis.”

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hosea, Chris, 1973–

  [Poems. Selections]

  Put Your Hands In : poems / Chris Hosea.

  pages cm

  “LSU Press Paperback Original.”

  ISBN 978-0-8071-5585-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8071-5586-8 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-8071-5587-5 (epub) — ISBN 978-0-8071-5588-2 (mobi)

  I. Title.

  PS3608.O779A6 2014

  811′.6—dc23

  2013028460

  The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

  To A. B.

  The dirty window gives me back my face

  —PAUL BLACKBURN

  CONTENTS

  Lithe Brunette, Twenty-Five Years of Age

  Dark, Understated Romantic Comedies

  Of Me to Love

  Choose Stutter Brie

  I Too Am Gay

  The Matinee I Took Chicken In

  Occupy Street

  One of these Girls

  Everything Is Going To

  Grandmother Snuff

  Granddaddy Old Grand Dad

  Wife Wellbutrin

  Father Work

  Mistress Damage

  Choirboy Skittles

  Cousin Pot

  Friend’s Girlfriend Kools

  Sister Chablis

  Mother Old Fashioned

  Brother Oxycontin

  New Oil Today’s Men

  Stop Me Before

  Fichte

  Porcupine Fever Is Gonna Get You

  Faggot Said the Guy in the Truck

  Wished for Hater Sequel

  Lotto Blues

  I Will Not Be Expressed

  Welcome Music

  If There Be a Season

  Big Red Booster

  All You Can

  Forever Backpacker

  The Great-Uncle Dead

  No Key to This One, No Tune

  How to Get to April Blue

  Roof Garden Heritage Site

  Auto-Brightness

  Buffalo Nickel, Toothbrush, Crude

  New Make

  Hopscotch Smudges

  Game Show Theme Mix

  Words by Karl Marx, Tuxedo by Riot

  The Barn Party

  Gonna Dig Up Ozu

  Bars and Lounges on Yelp

  Hard Drive Scrub

  Across the Boss’s Desk

  Purple Snow Purple Snow

  Black Steel

  Songs for a Country Drive

  PUT YOUR HANDS IN

  LITHE BRUNETTE, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE

  In my hand walks Kansas called

  bodies mostly cloudy, white in flash.

  Powders blurs skins what was once

  a comfy couch. Spectacles not brittle

  not funny, we’re in agreement to

  radiate the cell of you and me.

  Crowded moving emotions on film

  so the crowd nods or doesn’t go, and

  each bit player makes mordant comment.

  What is today that was eleven hours since

  horror and the blank page became

  an ironic pose a thrill sportif graffiti.

  Oh you know, everyone, just all of them

  that weren’t us. She learns to drift

  the testament toward shoppers and ice.

  You could be embarrassed pouring milk

  in a mixed drink under a bridge,

  but such is your vocation. Right on her

  dancing dress you never touched too

  just drown the mighty wedges, a way

  to get away, drop fingertips in selected woods.

  DARK, UNDERSTATED ROMANTIC COMEDIES

  the limbs of another

  touching them climbing

  a ladder splayed

  soft rungs give

  under fingers

  stopping on one knee

  to tap your forehead

  an invisible hat

  there you lift a hood

  there the air keeps clanging

  but softly

  smashing

  so silently

  lights that aren’t really there

  you roll over torn posters

  the slope steep

  seems like forever

  another dash klieg light

  struck by these things

  it’s always moving legs

  breasts cast shade

  that’s warm there

  above the floor’s tremor

  you sleep somewhere else

  tonight and tomorrow

  long enough

  to find a mirror

  and see if you

  read pain in it

  OF ME TO LOVE

  Stumble upon me

  I am lying all ready

  particleboard shag rug foam

  as flesh the system breaks

  loud punch they give us

  free they gave you bare walls

  bricks call it a

  loft plane for wonder

  and shame smoke between

  friendly eyes lean into my

  belly words spat on that mic

  can’t amplify rattle rain

  I saw you spreading

  legs lies taut as you spoke

  right in the patron’s dark

  lids so whisper to my pants

  a way I will not hear

  CHOOSE STUTTER BRIE

  Slack troopers at Matchless

  ashamed of their pride

  a rise at The Boat Bar

  a few cultured girls (not many, it’s true)

  swirled cocktails with red swizzles

  careful not to look so hard

  as the few figures at Diamond

  made listless by the clanging air

  what is this weather

  an almost human thwack of shuffle-

  board ping of guilt The Richardson

  with Lou’s mout
h

  tasted of old-fashioneds and Kools

  the iPhone buzzed my thigh

  dancing in The Library

  leaning into an art student

  a hand down her pants-front

  autistic tongues coding Tompkins after

  midnight a chestnut tree

  once was a chestnut

  I TOO AM GAY

  In college I loved a boy

  he was so beautiful

  some scion in a Gainsborough

  some hero out of Fournier

  sixteen blond hair blue irises might

  as well have been a girl

  he blushed so hard when

  he didn’t understand

  in case he’d been slighted

  or found out in some way

  we couldn’t guess

  I started beating off thinking

  of him and me

  going at it a lovely Brazilian

  snug between us

  I imagined it was okay

  Bruna was in the fantasy I wasn’t gay

  I felt lucky Philip was my friend

  my heart hurt when he left

  for a western cowboy college all guys

  one summer we met in Baltimore

  drank a lot took bong rips

  I got excited and anxious

  finally I would kiss a boy’s tongue a boy’s lips

  and what could that mean

  but I held back and he

  certainly wasn’t the type to lead

  later when at last he started snoring

  I tiptoed to the bath

  locked the door

  to beat off fast

  THE MATINEE I TOOK CHICKEN IN

  I want to hold your hand just hell of it

  a hundred and one famous shells a field of male space

  a projection of outside rinsed with breeze

  that there is no escaping from the now here

  so I should feel famous you are telling me because a celebrity

  scores so many creative types in New York City

  eavesdropping on a reaffirming bankruptcy

  you are just covered in pearls from head to weary baby

  earned exhaustion as social rod your weary smile

  hit me all the way from Roebuck

  I descend into a hole of coal-black

  wherein I dig a spanking fool’s gold

  hotel suite of memory I display my confidence various

  put in letters to you double you triple too

  what kind music caring scientifically molds your mood

  I have brushed so mint me make me limited too

  you can dance that is when tempos alter light

  and ships land the buildings being cleaned they are aglow

  you have drunk you have smashed every last plate glass it was a false fire

  OCCUPY STREET

  no worse than making fakes

  apples redder fall

  with plump would-be pimps

  unstable at their posts remarking

  neighborhood characters in pitch

  blue to shape a chart of distant streaks

  riffs coast out of two bars

  and collide throwing night upon the floor

  where a bit of glow goes to say

  you are known on Facebook, elsewhere in

  a laptop on a laptop you don’t own

  your staggering compulsory dance fits

  to a beat of growing grass leaves

  strong enough to crease asphalt

  near dank stations alert

  on a watchlist to which preservationists beat

  their drums their tambourines afire

  an asterisk so glaring sunny

  no one reads the fine print

  whipping past at the rump

  of an on-demand wind-down

  so you can toss another couple

  into the dusty goldfish bowl of earbuds I am

  wanting a miasma of nostalgia I am

  wanting to touch I am

  wanting to both touch and look

  so very sorry for myself and you too

  know this is my name

  spend fewer words on your shirt

  I call a muster of passersby getting away

  from myself almost free whiskey

  neat and brown as my wife’s hair

  ONE OF THESE GIRLS

  one of these girls called after a state

  prospectors stripped bare

  to lots of cans concrete shops like dice

  you pick up or she picked another one

  to lift a cool glass slab

  no voice meets your ear you hear

  serial digital numbers kiss like

  again a sampler hit like horse

  prophylactic bonbons see her sack hum

  now glow where one of these girls

  knows her state song her bird her stone

  flower pale this warming weather

  wind forlorn bachelor sixty-one was it

  sixty-seven I’m not him

  here to hear this chorale or

  she is not here for you this night

  she ate night its gaps her dirt pie

  will you fertility stumble

  the team make a stake miss salty

  cake asleep in type foundry

  downy cheek to tapestry spread

  you grasped at a pull tab

  as if that were some kind

  arrowhead they splashed

  lead there too

  so clean it out wash it off

  that curb or this curb or stop

  tulips fly apart in noon

  and something is decomposed to fly

  invisibly you study how

  to slot your fingers in airports

  precipitate of lemonade ash

  tried on boys pants and fits those belts

  you count yourself in or no

  to dance with five four partners to platters

  flame aristocracy’s last pretense slash

  worried new smile back from Berlin come

  sooner consumer put down your cart

  America’s atonal dissident talents

  heavy no nodding to drone guitar

  just there on your belly

  never nicer you little miner

  pass the salt

  some of these girls draw

  on more than one account

  that she was there monsoon purple

  or blank as a temp beneath fluorescent stars

  spank in nervous puddle

  public do I still do I

  figure as a fugue in your life when moons

  break in your loft

  reminding dandy professors of Shakespeare

  who knew one of these girls

  not a spider or minor

  she is of a set to be

  a victory faster

  EVERYTHING IS GOING TO

  As we unlocked it

  there was nothing

  in the safe

  I wanted

  to embrace

  someone there

  so intent to record

  all we saw

  paying attention meant

  forgetting

  everyone

  but you

  sexy

  at that age or later on

  a kind of stage

  your solitude

  a fictive situation

  parceled among the crowd

  multiplying your every gesture

  in outline

  unto degradation

  I wanted to stop

  defending comfort

  and touch you to

  begin undoing

  the rigmarole

  of our passing

  union

  GRANDMOTHER SNUFF

  Born to be. Under amplified sermons cliffs erode. All this they wrote

  out and folded before leaving. Out at collar, they arrive bringing collars.

  To collar. If I knew who they were, I would let on. Give fort
h. Sunrooms

  awaken the home. Summer afternoons grant a lemony pucker we share

  evenings. Care, careless one. We do care and they do. Paradox nurses

  workers. Then the others they were. Clean tools, sharp now, in orderly

  files. All this sad on ice, when in a cooler. Unopened, Hank lies sober.

  Uneasy to read his flat lip, or just leave it. Forever and now. See a snake

  pass across the trail. Trace mottoes scratched in clay. Inky. A bright gang

  here. Freedom lights fuses. These my embarrassed words, embroidered.

  Fly outward, menacing satellites so fragile. A strong headwind awakes

  your familiar, the tattooed actor. What washes and rusts in the ocean,

  you ask him, livid with unspent blame. Anger drips on the barbecue.

  Meaning beefs. Calm as cows, you are so skittish with strangers, all right,

  okay mystery. To own up to livestock. Your generation born in wards.

  GRANDDADDY OLD GRAND DAD

  In a pickle jar. Designed to grow molds. Green swims. Plastic kettles of

  brine. On wheels without wheels within them. Small commands, so as

  to drive through curtains. Stopped in traffic, what was bought behind, in

  pocket a penciled envelope. To be lost in. Why all horns seem major, stuck

  in a row. Just in key, in time. Make a citizen’s arrest. Write a letter to the

  editor. Themes close to the actor’s heart. Kindly a greeter stopped me on

  entry. Picture us misty where they removed the one-hour photo booth.

  True story, or it could be. I will sup with Poseidon, or cry in my own soup.

  An entertainment. Airs come in off the sea and pause, huffy, a whiling

  time. Breezes such as fall to earth, as newsprint, smack in driveways.

  We got used to these other days. In the back pages wars go on yet. Cut off.

  Commanded forward. Based on projections. Moving fronts. Tendrils furled

  in parlors. Inky. Wait for the mood to lift. No, lift it.

  WIFE WELLBUTRIN

  Out hanging balloons to mark the way, I vary colors, firecracker by

  milk, then yellow fire again. At last the night party, no money in that

  inkwell, different every yesterday. The picturesque avoided as fenced.

  Bridge another arc in dark; cross a real metal bridge. She walks alongside,

  before or behind. Sometimes these rushing places. Now she leads.