RECOMMENDED ENGAGEMENTS W/ JON CONLEY

“At Truro,” May Swenson

This poem is haunting me. The days are getting shorter and colder. I too am left remembering the days when I was a sea worm:

…When I was a sea worm

I never saw the sun,

but flowed, a salty germ,

in the bloodstream of the sea…

Like the move from December to January, there is an inevitable turn towards darkness:

As if the sun were blind

again I feel the suck

of the sea’s dark mind.

Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurty

I have been trying to read this book for several years. It is long. I am going to keep trying to read this book. This is largely escapist. Even as I write this I am envisioning my oncoming bouts of exhaustion. I will finish this book. I will never finish this book.

“hooligan,” Baby Keem

“Collected Works,” Lorine Niedecker

Earlier this year I was stuck on Niedecker’s work from 1960-1964. I’m trying to show some growth. Niedecker asks questions. Are they directed towards me? Are they my own questions?

Why can’t I be happy

in my sorrow

my drinking man

today

my quiet

tomorrow

“Hopelessly Devoted To You,” Olivia Newton-John

A few weeks ago I decided that, as an early New Year’s resolution, I would try to listen to songs that popped in my head regardless of what those songs actually are. This is the first song that I listened to. (If you are not from the Midwest: this is the first song to which I listened…)

Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults

The particulars of cults often seem outrageous when removed from context. The actions of the members of Heaven’s Gate are emblematic of this. However, if you take the ideology of Heaven’s Gate and place it alongside accepted and established religious doctrines and mythologies, there is hardly a noticeable difference in the claims it makes.

“Wanda in Worryland,” Wanda Coleman

i get scared sometimes

and have to go look in to the closet to see if his clothes

are still there

i have been known to imagine a situation

and then get involved in it, upset, angry and

cry hot tears

i have gone after people

with guns

once i tried to hang myself and got terribly ashamed

afterwards because i was really faking it

i have gone after people

with rocks

i have cursed out old white lady cart pushers in

supermarkets who block the aisles in slow motion

i have gone after people

with my fists

i have walked out on pavlovian trainers who mistook me

for a dog

i go to sleep and have dreams about falling

and can’t stand the suspense so i sweat it out

and land on my feet

i have gone after people

with poems

i get scared sometimes

and have to go look into the mirror to see if i’m

still here

Originally published in African Sleeping Sickness: Stories and Poems (Black Sparrow Press, 1993)