AND OTHERS, VAGUER

PRESENCES
A BOOK OF ASHBERY ERASURE POEMS

DAVID DODD LEE

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

And Others, Vaguer Presences

by David Dodd Lee
Copyright 2017
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by David Dodd Lee
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-259-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946136
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

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STRANGE CINEMA

I come
here
trembling
The wind is
a felon
We sit
I am afraid
nothing will happen
To go on
as I did
a stranger
undressed
the surf churning
in heaven
We are
a retrofitted
commodity
a sweetness
adjusted

from Your Name Here

15

HUNGRY AGAIN

shout
stars

The rain
appears
to know
this
It has
not come
to take
me
to God
God is
at your house,
a
dark
wind swept
storm
a mind-crystal

from A Worldly Country

16

WHETHER IT EXISTS

Although the
the owl of life
moved in
rind pulp

land tilted
with conviction
a gown.

Later I added
a field
I no longer remember.
Tenderness
pours it
on again.

from Houseboat Days

17

WE HESITATE

To improve
your portrait
of God
make it plain.
Our bodies.

a tree

The new great somber hope,

a giant
tentative
cloud.

from Shadow Train

18

HOMECOMING

Ether drips quietly

through
my diary
What
homecoming?
It's Jean and the kids, waving
in cold
anonymity
crowds sifting to the furthest exits

from Wakefulness

19

DAMAGED HAIR

My
you

report

pimple
closes a window
amazement

Out of respect I should say I

still
have room for
slanted teeth

a bright idea like a bride

forthcoming
on

from page 63 of Flow Chart

20

these
the maid
is
is a
sunbeam caught upside down
postcard

THIS ECONOMY

I am a

pedestrian
my
radish
half-demented,
sour
with all that went before
staggering across
America
naked
a bush in
the sunset
I am still
in America trying to figure out
how to pay to ball

a lonely eye
on a bus
in America
I am
too much

from Quick Question

21

AND UT PICTURA POESIS IS HER NAME

You can say it that way

Beauty you have
come out into the open
and that
would
not be
self-analysis
Now, what to put
in your poem-painting
Her skyrocketsdo they still exist?
They must.
She
is
like foliage
between
breaths,
desire
you desert
for others
so that understanding
may begin

from Houseboat Days

22

VARIANT

A word,
a hand,
a glove,
fraught is
not the word "fraught"

the way

secret valley
some distance
from the
lightly
wooded

from Houseboat Days

23

LAUGHING GRAVY

The crisis
Uh oh
Looking for someone to blame
The last time
I noticed
your ear
all the wolves in the wolf factory paused

from Wakefulness
24

COUSIN SARAH'S KNITTING

You keep asking me that

Trust me
I think
nobody
is
that nice
Pulled from space
after they examined
her
no one
living
understood
Then
it was all
a longing in the loins
I was going
of the

to remind you of the story

overfed

One got off

The other was dazed
By the time
it was summer again
somebody's boy came up
and
wandered over
their reputations
from Wakefulness

25

PALINDROME OF EVENING

In places I

found
buttons,

high
higher
highest
silk communication
No one
escapes
The bear goes down
on the badger
Horrified spectators
can't go back
to the restaurant

from Wakefulness
26

AT THE STATION

I thought I was
just thinking
It was time to go
in the ground
Look,
I bought you a box of
dreams
The grass grows
sideways into
the wind

from Wakefulness

27

EPISODE

Odd
Tried to figure
how to write
fell on a bed
chewed the crevices
the long
flared
parts
There was music
preparing for
the pain
Sure, I was hoping you could articulate
what the lurching moon
had
taught us
Dumb comes back
to being alone
calm under
even unwanted
inspiration
But we cannot
label
the adventures
of the past
and passing days

from Planisphere (pp. 2122)

28

THE GRACIOUS SILHOUETTE OF . . .

WHAT?

The great

document

Gosh it feels so good to

be
someone

Someone said
return us
to our

love
plants and fireman
clam-sized citizens

from Planisphere

29

HAIBUN

I can never
walk through
the space
between us
the interesting objects
waiting to be
the intellectual world
But poverty
shall
surprise us

by
even forced

I must be heightened
instinct
to invent the process
I am first person sexual

born
to inspect
the
collection
as though it were
a point of pain
the
possibility of
pain
to have written
something profitable
in winter
I did walk once, for a
time, in some sort
of frostbitten
world
But I was not abandoned.

from A Wave

30