Joshua Clover Poems

We moved into a house with 6 rooms: the Bedroom,
the Map Room, the Vegas Room, Cities
in the Flood Plains, the West, & the Room Which Contains All
of Mexico.We honeymooned in the Vegas Room where
...

For 8 months he lay in bed over the

difference between "the bell rings" & "he rings
...

They moved across the screen like a computer simulation.
They moved across the screen like complex models & we learned
to call this a nature show.
Animals but set in gray shades for video capture with a lighter area for
...

They basically grow it out of sand.
This is a big help because otherwise it was getting pretty enigmatic.
Welcome to the desert of the real,
I am an ephemeral and not too discontented citizen.
...

In one version you must convince every living thing one by one
to weep until he climbs back into the marriage-house,
that earth about which it is said that bread is the glue of the earth.
Certainly glue is money, the phrase "the tears of things" is money,
...

Now the summer air exerts its syrupy drag on the half-dark
City under the strict surveillance of quotation marks.

The citizens with their cockades and free will drift off
...

They basically grow it out of sand.
This is a big help because otherwise it was getting pretty enigmatic.
Welcome to the desert of the real,
I am an ephemeral and not too discontented citizen.
I do not think the revolution is finished.
So during these years, I lived in a country where I was little known,
With the thunder of the Gods that protect the Icelandic tundra from advertising,
Great red gods, great yellow gods, great green gods, planted at the edges of the speculative tracks along which the mind speeds from one feeling to another, from one idea to its consequence
Past the proud apartment houses, fat as a fat money bag. I wish that I might stay in this pleasant, conventional city,
A placid form, a modest form, but one with a claim to pleasure,
And then vanish in the fogs of hypnoLondon.
All are in their proper place in these optical whispering-galleries,
The swan-winged horses of the skies with summer's music in their manes,
The basic Los Angeles Dingbat,
A housewife in any neighborhood in any city in any part of Mexico on a Saturday night.
Every Sunday is too little Sunday,
A living grave, the true grave of the head.
In one shout desire rises and dies.
Composed while I was asleep on horseback
I drift, mainly I drift.
...

Music: Sexual misery is wearing you out.
Music: Known as the Philosopher's Stair for the world-weariness which climbing it inspires. One gets nowhere with it.
Paris: St-Sulpice in shrouds.
Paris: You're falling into disrepair, Eiffel Tower this means you! Swathed in gold paint, Enguerrand Quarton
...

Now the summer air exerts its syrupy drag on the half-dark
City under the strict surveillance of quotation marks.

The citizens with their cockades and free will drift off
From the magnet of work to the terrible magnet of love.

In the far suburbs crenellated of Cartesian yards and gin
The tribe of mothers calls the tribe of children in

Across the bluing evening. It's the hour things get
To be excellently pointless, like describing the alphabet.

Yikes. It's fine to be here with you watching the great events
Without taking part, clinking our ice as they advance

Yet remain distant. Like the baker always about to understand
Idly sweeping up that he is the recurrence of Napoleon

In a baker's life, always interrupted by the familiar notes
Of a childish song, "no more sleepy dreaming," we float

Casually on the surface of the day, staring at the bottom,
Jotting in our daybooks, how beautiful, the armies of autumn.
...

For 8 months he lay in bed over the

difference between "the bell rings" & "he rings

the bell." Did those 2 "rings" SOUND

DIFFERENT? The invisible disturbance which

is the bell's vibration beating at the air—a

FIELD EFFECT—does it shift with the

ringer's will? This, he thought, was the

smallest difference between things which the

human mind could hold (or almost hold, the

thought-of-it falling away from the thinking,

a penny rolling to the horizon & so to

sleep . . .). He couldn't get up. It became clear

that he was the murderer. Everyone knows. A

man standing at a podium reads from notes.

In the audience people nod in immaculate

suits, women & men. When I am done

someone will transcribe what I say into speech.

It will not resemble my notes. He is just THE

THING between his notes & his speech. This is

only fair, that he be the air. Some of the

women wear hats with feathers in them, wild,

candescent. In the audience is a boy named B,

not the letter, not the note. Another sound,

neither letter nor note—
...