Gerald Burns
The Meaning of Locality
"effects that are strong within a given region of space fall off outside."
--F. David Peat
"In nature. anything moving quickly is criminal."
--Gaston Bachelard
"the / qualitv as firstly position."
--Jeremy Prynne
"I got the world in a jug, the stopper's in my hand." --Bessie Smith in
1928 or so, hard to mistake where she was. People are objects. William
Sylvester in War and Lechery argues Greek verbs are, are things, and here
in this issue of Poet I read that epigraphs slow down a poem, rude
foyers to editors (banjo and clarinet backing up Bessie) so you gotta
leap right in. But I wanted to think about place, not to praise locale
but its confusingness as in the Long Island Railroad station I was pleased
to think no one knows where I am. I, located, thought that, as an electron
shouldering past thin slits might, or photon, its electronically enhanced trace
physicist's snapshot. Seems they could, or act as if they could, go through both
making interference patterns that are not psychological. I said goodbye
a scant hour ago to Jim Haining, going back to Texas, his foster-pop
met after twenty-five years of hearing about him, a nice man, going
to drive the Ryder truck. I badgered Jim into carrying his cash
in his pocket, not a briefcase as he'd planned. Salt Lick Press accounts
reduced to currency, all those rest stops, diners, no padlock even
on the truck. Told him I didn t know how to say goodbye to him
so damned if I would. Two wheelchairs, to handle his MS, last loaded.
("If muh friend don't got no money . . .") Predictable rhyming of nickel with pickle.
Jim and multiple-bypass Tom, over the Divide maybe, following them
a little in the head no more psychological than what the photon does.
I know where he'll be but not his route. Last month all my letters
to him since '69 fetched two thousand dollars, some in his jeans,
wide because he doesn't get around well, is a fixture unless wheeled
to the bookshop or dollar theater to see Apollo 13, which I didn't like
as much as he did, sixties crewcuts, period quilts on beds, wives sunk
in docile admiration and anxiety. It was never my period. Jim didn't
mind it. So this poem seems (to editors, taxed) about time, but for me it's
how time collapses to become place, Jim either in bed or at his desk,
or on the couch watching X- or Rockford Files, man behind me fingering
(dry rasps) first-edition rarities -- "You know what I hate?" he asks, "interrupting."
Probably a joke. He's a ceramicist, his day job a tile factory, often invited
to Concrete Poetry symposia in Italy (the first time was a mistake, then it built
from there.) Looking of course for samples of what's become his subject,
some of them pamphlets from Jim's basement boxes, where my letters were. He chooses
two (from Jim's stash), adds a Salt Lick pamphlet, my Nations in Public, will
come back tomorrow to dicker. Jim's on his way, to live somewhere, ideally subsidized,
stave off synaptic degeneration best he can, cling to air conditioning -- heat hurts it --
and open the kitchen boxes I packed, with his dishes, silverware, a lidded pot
for soup I paid a dollar for, vintage Wearever (I resprayed the handle black), thick
aluminum omelet pan a man in Austin wirebrushed a gouge from, my third
collander, tongs for frying stuff, a whisk, good paring knives, and a sealed roll
of Ritz crackers, a surprise when he unpacks them where he ends up.
Copyright © 1995 Gerald Burns
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