David Graham

There is humor in my poetry because there is humor in my life. As poet, I like it best when the comic arrives unexpectedly on my own page, because the rehearsed or plotted joke usually falls flat. I'm not the first to say so. Nor am I first to note the many ways in which lyric poems resemble jokes, formally speaking. I'll mention a few, not in praise of my own productions but as indicators of my aims.

A) Economy is everything. A good lyric prepares its ending right from the start: no waste motion.

B) Timing is also everything. As Mark Twain said about synonyms, there's a world of difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

C) Surprise is everything, too. Both jokes and lyrics tend to depend upon some contrast, tension, conflict, or incongruity. "Would you hit a man with a child?" asked the vaudevillian straight man. "No, I'd hit him with a brick," was the reply.

I suppose humor always has an element of the lawless in it, and as such resists both analysis and containment. You never know when or how the brick will hit you.

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BACK

The Look of a Bay Mare

And the look of a bay mare shames silliness out of me
--Whitman

Yes, but what about this goofy possum
waddling myopic across my midnight yard?

Compared to that I'm practically full of gravitas.

And besides, that old bay mare won't give me
the time of day, runs away from
my generous carrot, my sugar cube.

Still, here I am waiting for The Look to banish
all my folly and absurdity--but perhaps I've got
too much for your average horse to handle.

Ever think of that, Walt Whitman?

Maybe it would take a bison at least
to shame the likes of me.

Possibly I'd require all of childhood's blushes
and an entire waning moon to boot.

And what if I like my silliness?

Surely you of all people, Walt, would understand
if I kept a little bit of it in my pocket
like hard candy, to be doled out to children

and the variously wounded. You could have filled
the East River with the smallest portion
of your good gray silliness, after all--

That was at least half your charm.

Well, we all waddle across
the dewy grass sometime,
dragging our ropy tails. Why not tonight?

 

Warning to the Bartenders of Manhattan

--8,000 writers in one hotel

Midtown has seen worse, no doubt, conventions
of rodeo clowns, diplomats, and undertakers
--but watch out, bartenders! The mid-list novelists

and slim poets are on their way in from LaGuardia,
memoirists climbing like tattered Orpheuses
from all the subway stations. They're standing

six blocks off in the wrong direction, gripping maps
they don't glance at, because they're talking,
talking, talking right in the middle of Broadway

as the lights turn, cabbies lay on their horns,
and bike messengers slalom around their tweedy
forms as a river around rocks older than a nation.

The sun's still high over the water tanks
and antennae but the writers are mighty thirsty,
and they're all converging upon a single thought

involving you. They'll yak your ear off, order drinks
two at a time, scarf free peanuts by the bushel,
then wander out in six hours still jabbering,

not leaving even a quarter tip. Here's a tip:
pretend not to speak English very well. At every
quip, stare and look mildly befuddled. Say yes,

but softly. Edge away slowly, as from predators,
wiping down the already clean bar as you go.
If you don't crack a smile at any jokes, if you look

like you couldn't even pronounce Rilke or Sartre
they'll eventually subside. They're harmless,
sure, but don't be surprised if they quote you

in a poem next year, or make you the pivot point
in a scene set in a tacky bar everyone recognizes
as yours, climbing up up the bestseller list

while you just jingle change in your pocket
and shake your head as anyone would. All that time
you could have sworn they weren't noticing a thing.

 

The Percussive Empire

Forget Adam naming the animals.
Every kid's his own dictionary
and some words coined then can last
a lifetime--one grandmother
forever known as Graymatter,
another Ghomie. But that's nothing
compared to the jerry rigged definitions
I concocted for new words
stumbled on in my precocious readings.
Beethoven was in my mind a stove
for heating beets. A carbuncle:
one of those old fashioned ski boots
with straps and buckles. Once started,
it's hard to stop. Noisome, of course,
means loudly obnoxious. Malaria?
An unimaginably lovely woman
from Argentina, with long hair
as black as serendipity, a desert flower
that only blooms under a full moon.
The Italics were a fierce warrior tribe
eventually conquered by the Etruscans
in the eighth century before Christ,
also known as the Messiah,
an obsolete word in Aramaic meaning
Loved By Cats. Austere is a two-seat
sports car made in the 1930s.
A gnome is one of the first signs
of frostbite. Calcium used to border
Belgium, but under Rudolph
the Reckless it was brutally absorbed
into the Percussive Empire.
A pendulum, as every school kid knows,
is a word for words for which there is
no rhyme. It's often confused with parabola,
which is kind of elixir once used
to treat stomach cramps. Parturition,
as we all remember from civics class,
was the treaty that finally ended
the Perseids, the fifty-year war
between the Patellas and the Kerouacs,
who are rumored to be one of the twelve
lost tribes of the Inkwell.

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David Graham has published two full-length books and four chapbooks, most recently Stutter Monk (Flume Press). With Kate Sontag, he also co-edited the essay anthology After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography (Graywolf Press). His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared widely, in print and online. He lives in Ripon, Wisconsin, where he is a professor of English at Ripon College.