Benjamin Paloff
2UP
You can have it both ways, mystical
and real, like the loving kindness
of a dirty cop or what your kin do
when the way is not theirs.
You know what I’m talking about.
Whatever you marry into, quiet
or cold, the beeswax used
to threaten your saints-in-law:
for my part, I prefer
my Nazis in uniform.
And even the dietitians agree
that radicals are only dangerous
when free. And even the Klan
kindly encourages us to conserve
the breath it would take
to specify. Cue violins,
blare of car horns, Wilhelm
screams, to welcome
our mouths to one another
or tell us not to enter
from stage right.
It works, like red tape
on a broken taillight,
like a big hunk of rock
tortured to look
like an angel crying.
I’ve seen you stooping on your stoop,
bottle sweating at your side,
face filled with God’s own snack.
There should really be an easier way
of starting a letter
after a very long silence.
2UP
You can have it both ways, mystical
and real, like the loving kindness
of a dirty cop or what your kin do
when the way is not theirs.
You know what I’m talking about.
Whatever you marry into, quiet
or cold, the beeswax used
to threaten your saints-in-law:
for my part, I prefer
my Nazis in uniform.
And even the dietitians agree
that radicals are only dangerous
when free. And even the Klan
kindly encourages us to conserve
the breath it would take
to specify. Cue violins,
blare of car horns, Wilhelm
screams, to welcome
our mouths to one another
or tell us not to enter
from stage right.
It works, like red tape
on a broken taillight,
like a big hunk of rock
tortured to look
like an angel crying.
I’ve seen you stooping on your stoop,
bottle sweating at your side,
face filled with God’s own snack.
There should really be an easier way
of starting a letter
after a very long silence.
Dianetics
I know it’s funny, but I want everyone
to be able to hear my heart and simultaneously
for me not to be in a situation where anything
is listening to my heart,
i.e., I want the epistemological equivalent
of Eurovision, PCP, or mourning porn—you
take your pick. A digital analogue,
if you will. If you’re going to look at it that way,
then, yes, I’m the happiest man in the world.
Right before I left the only town left
with a right side of the tracks, “right”
in the moral sense of what it means
to be a polis, Ethiopia before the advent
of Big Roibos, etc., I determined
that when I see all the roaches running
in the same direction, I’m going to run, too,
I don’t care how bright it is.
What else is there to do in the face
of the liar’s dilemma? John of Patmos comes to me
in a dream and tells me not to listen to a word he says.
I know it’s funny, but I want everyone
to be able to hear my heart and simultaneously
for me not to be in a situation where anything
is listening to my heart,
i.e., I want the epistemological equivalent
of Eurovision, PCP, or mourning porn—you
take your pick. A digital analogue,
if you will. If you’re going to look at it that way,
then, yes, I’m the happiest man in the world.
Right before I left the only town left
with a right side of the tracks, “right”
in the moral sense of what it means
to be a polis, Ethiopia before the advent
of Big Roibos, etc., I determined
that when I see all the roaches running
in the same direction, I’m going to run, too,
I don’t care how bright it is.
What else is there to do in the face
of the liar’s dilemma? John of Patmos comes to me
in a dream and tells me not to listen to a word he says.
Benjamin Paloff is the author of the poetry collections And His Orchestra (2014) and The Politics (2011), both from Carnegie Mellon University Press, and the translator of several books, including Lodgings: Selected Poems of Andrzej Sosnowski (Open Letter, 2011). He teaches literature and theory at the University of Michigan.
