Alexander Long












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is the author of Light Here, Light There, published by CRpress. He is also author of Vigil, published by New Issues. Long is an assistant professor at John Jay College, C.U.N.Y.
 
 
 
Side note: CRpress was founded by Ryan G. Van Cleaves, which if you've been reading Big Toe Review for a while you already know that's a sacred name around these parts. Please check out all their wonderful titles at www.crpress.org
 
 

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Still Life with Sisyphus Smiling

 

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

                                                                                  —Camus

 

 

And later, Camus writes that we must imagine Sisyphus

Happy.  The emphasis is mine

                                                     and is, most likely,

 

All wrong.  Maybe Camus felt

                                                       the stress

                                                                         falling

 

On happy, a trochee

                                   uprooting a myth, shifting

 

A degree or two my conscience, my tolerance

                                                                                 for a poem

 

And the abyss I seem to always slide inside it….

 

The same abyss Celan claimed was meridional, absolute,

 

And nonexistent,

                                a vain internalization

Of immortality, he says. 

 

 

Beautiful.

 

 

But if we were to witness Camus and Celan shake hands,

                                                                                                      how awkward

 

Would it be, and just what would they say to each other?

 

Would Sisyphus and his rock ever come

                                                                         up? 

 

Which of them would say

 

For once let’s have him be all at the top, singing

To the hard land and the strong sea, not

                                                                at the bottom muttering

 

Fuck.  For once, let’s have him overlooking Oran,

 

Morocco to his left, Sicily to his right, the Mediterranean

                                                                                           widening

 

Behind his squinted, sun-flushed eyes,

                                                             the way a memory

 

Of childhood does…. 

 

Which of them would say Amen, Brother?

 

Neither, of course, but this is a poem that overlooks the abyss

For once, perhaps, where almost anything is possible,

 

Where myth shifts and Sisyphus stands

                                                                       on Venice Beach at sunrise

 

While the strung-out hooker asks if she can shoot

                                                                                        up first,                   

              

You know, a little bit of ecstasy before the next

Shared little fix, which shames neither.

 

But maybe the abyss is here, in California,

                                                                           2 p.m., November 17, 2005,

 

Where Sisyphus for once feels the rush of that hour

And groans

                     Oh fuck,

                                   and is astonished

                                                                   by that ecstasy

                                                                                             of falling

And the pleasure it brings,

 

As she walks away, counting

                                                     her cash.     


 
 
 

Still Life without History

 

 

I offer this because I can. 

 

I’m American. 

 

But why can’t I make out a single word of what this it is,

 

Why do I feel more lost than a t-shirt

Of Ernesto Guevara I saw hanging

 

In a boutique off Aldstadter Ring, where Kafka

Snuck a smoke before Hitler and Stalin

 

Tried to erase the names of the streets?

 

Praha loosely translates into threshold,

 

And those who were there are here now

In something I can’t compose, whose motif

 

Is what they’ve lost,

 

This it I’m not permitted touch,

But want.

 

Some sing to the star that burns

The first snow no one can mark. 

 

Others listen a long time

 

For a deeper translation that knits itself

Into the stubborn weeds along a riverbank

 

Where an elderly couple gathers water

As snow fills the space of the long yield

 

Still others call hope,

 

Until History appears on its chestnut mare,

Dressed in the state-issued drab-green coat and hat,

 

Chewing an unlit cigar, filing its report:

 

What they hear is History itself, a joke that no one gets—

Even the teller, the one who cries with laughter.

 

He tells the joke over and over and over

 

Until those listening catch on that the joke is

There is no joke, but only moments

 

Of stars shining, brief flickers to sing to.

 

Until the joke, in fact, becomes a song the state accommodates,

Something as forgettable as water music,

 

As water.  This water I can’t touch. 

 

What does it feel like to sing air fissioned

By an accident called History? 

 

I’m American.  

 

How do you compose water

Sliding through your hands, fire sung to,

 

A body here, a song there,

 

There, in the mouth of a schoolgirl

In a city once called Pripyat, a village once called Raduga:

 

It’s December, 1989, and she taps her foot on the cracked asphalt,

Bored with singing to herself.

 

She waits for the sign to hoist the flag, 

 

Only there’s no one to give the sign,

Nor was there ever a flag agreed upon.

 

And though her feet are numb and her nose runs,

 

She doesn’t know when to give up,

When to raise the flag that doesn’t exist

 

Yet.  And all I see in this moment

Is that there’s no one to call her back

 

To the chores of pickling cucumbers, no one to punish

Her for skipping the piano lesson

 

Her father saved and saved for;

No cucumbers, no piano, no teacher, no music.

 

How is that?  That can’t be, can it?

 

I mean, I hear something.


 
 
 
 

Still Life with a Grain of Rice

 

 

I used to like the way things went together:

 

Chopin and Auden; apocalypse and abyss;

Given and give in; disgust

 

And discussed.  Chopin’s

 

“No. 3 in B major”, at the end,

For instance, how he reaches

 

As far as he can across the piano

With both arms—as if hearing himself

 

For the first time—

 

Like Icarus, maybe.

 

I used to think I’d love

To plunge like that

 

And be done with it.

 

There must be something

In me that refuses

 

To die, I pray.

 

But, Auden’s Icarus stares down

At the indifferent ploughman and all

 

His shares he needs to live on,

Which make his lord richer

 

Forever.

 

If I were there, in that Brueghel,

I’d turn away, too, from something

 

Amazing—a boy falling

Out of the sky—because I did,

 

In fact, do it. 

 

Early September, 2001,

And I had nowhere to get to.

 

I wasn’t in New York.

 

A gorgeous day:

The sun shone

 

On the television,

Through the high windows

 

Of my bedroom where

I confessed an important failure

 

To no one:

 

Don’t look, don’t care.

 

I was eating a bowl of rice

With teriyaki steak

 

For breakfast.

 

I licked the white fork clean

And wanted more

 

While someone fell out of the sky

For real. 

 

And then another. 

 

I turned up Chopin and licked

A grain of rice I’ll never

 

Write a poem on

 

Now.

 

All I’ve wanted since is to sail

Calmly on.

 

And I do,

 

Letting the dead down.

 
















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