Author: Tetman Callis
Eight dollars is the cost of admission to Greenwood Beach.
Seven dollars and a quarter is the federal minimum wage
for hourly workers under certain circumstances. The state’s
minimum is eight and a quarter. These are the wages
beneath which it is considered no worker could be justly paid,
unless that worker is a tipped employee dependent upon
the largesse of drinkers and diners sated with food
and beverage. Or unless the worker is an intern—
interns can be had for free—or a migrant farm worker,
shuffled from field to field, sleeping in a shack, drinking
tepid water from a rusty bucket—or an illegal immigrant
shoehorned two dozen to an apartment, never let out except
to be taken to the job, working sixteen hours a day
for room and board, exhausted sleep filled with American dreams.
“As soon as you get away from actual poetic forms, rhyme, meter, etc., there is no line between prose and poetry. From my way of thinking, many poets are simply lazy prose writers. I can take a page of descriptive prose and break it into lines, as I’ve done in Exterminator!, and then you’ve got a poem. Call it a poem.” — William Burroughs (interviewed by Philippe Mikriammos in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Spring 1984, Vol. 4.1)
A slender boy of about twelve
wears a black t-shirt
and black exercise pants with a silver stripe
up each leg like a cavalry trooper’s pants.
He has a stick about as long and curved
as a cutlass. He stands lakeside
at the water’s edge. Waves that reach
to his knees and sometimes up his thighs,
he slashes at them with his cutlass stick
as they come in, wave after wave after
wave after wave, they don’t stop,
he can’t defeat them, can’t drive
them back. With each slash he
gives a high-pitched yelp, but even
these cries don’t stop the lake.
“What we call the ‘novel’ is a highly artificial form, which came in the nineteenth century. It’s quite as arbitrary as the sonnet. And that form had a beginning, a middle, and an end; it has a plot, and it has this chapter structure where you have one chapter, and then you try to leave the person in a state of suspense, and on to the next chapter, and people are wondering what happened to this person, and so forth. That nineteenth-century construction has become stylized as the novel, and anyone who writes anything different from that is accused of being unintelligible.” — William Burroughs (interviewed by Philippe Mikriammos in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Spring 1984, Vol. 4.1)
The gulls circle above the lake,
searching for supper. They eye
the clear waters below, spot
fish, pause, turn, empty the air
from under their wings in a fall
that looks as if their wings
have suddenly broken, hit the
water beak-first, dive to catch
their meal, come back up and beat
their way back into the sky,
shaking the water from their wings
in a quick shudder as they go.
“A human being who strives for something great regards everybody he meets on his way either as a means or as a delay and hindrance—or as a temporary resting-place. The lofty goodness towards his fellow men which is proper to him becomes possible only when he has reached his height and he rules. Impatience and his consciousness that until that time he is condemned to comedy—for even war is a comedy and a concealment, just as every means conceals the end—spoil all his association with others: this kind of man knows solitude and what is most poisonous in it.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Hollingdale; emphasis in original)
It rained last night.
(This is not the weather report.)
Current conditions: the sun is soon
to rise and the cardinals chirp their high,
metallic, scrapy chirp that sounds like an effect
from German techno-pop of a generation
ago (Trans-Europe Express! First In, First Out!)
There is a man who goes every morning
and every evening to the lakeside park.
He has a black fuzzy-furred dog
who goes with him. The dog sniffs around
as dogs will do while the man walks slowly
and pensively, his head down to watch the lawn
he’s walking on, or up from time to time
to look out at the lake and its deceptive
horizon. Is he watching the lawn? When he’s
looking down, is he watching the lawn?
What does he look for out on the lake,
what does he see, is he looking for anything,
or is he looking for nothing, or is he
looking for the sky to open and show
him the way out? There’s no denying
he has about him an air of the sad.
I could ask him.
Hey, mister
mister
hey
Why do you seem so sad?
Did your wife die? I might be sad
if my wife died, at least for
a little while. I’ve never been
anything other than alone, so I suppose
I’d be fine after a while.
Mister
did you lose a child?
Did you lose your fortune?
Did you miss all the best chances?
Is your time running out?
Were you awake when it rained last night?
Do you know why the police cruiser
was stopped at the corner this morning?
(Neither do I, but I saw it and decided
to throw it in here with all this other stuff.)
I could ask him? Could I ask him?
Then what? If he tells me his truth,
is this still my poem?
Hey, mister
mister
I’m going to put you in my pome
you and your dog
right here in my pome
where I can call all your shots
and get them every one
right here with the techno-chirping birds
and the rain and the cops
it’s—oh, and my wife, she’s not dead,
and not all my children are lost,
not all my fortune’s been pissed away,
not every opportunity has been blown—
here is the one place I can call home.
“He shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, the superabundant of will; this shall be called greatness; the ability to be as manifold as whole, as vast as full.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Hollingdale)
The British litmag Litro published my short story, “Lost Things and Missing Persons,” at the end of April this year. I’ve added it to the Previously Published Stories sidebar to the right.
“There comes a point of morbid mellowing and over-tenderness in the history of society at which it takes the side even of him who harms it, the criminal, and does so honestly and wholeheartedly. Punishment: that seems to it somehow unfair—certainly the idea of ‘being punished’ and ‘having to punish’ is unpleasant to it, makes it afraid. ‘Is it not enough to render him harmless? why punish him as well? To administer punishment is itself dreadful’—with this question herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its utmost conclusion.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Hollingdale; emphasis in original)
Fat boys with the breasts
of pubescent girls
take off their shirts
do cannonballs off the dock.
Toddler soils his pants
squeals on the beachfront.
Auntie strips him down
washes him in the lake.
Devil’s darning needles
stitch the fading sky with
random dancing patterns
of appetite and death.
“When the highest and strongest drives, breaking passionately out, carry the individual far above and beyond the average and lowlands of the herd conscience, the self-confidence of the community goes to pieces, its faith in itself, its spine as it were, is broken: consequently it is precisely these drives which are most branded and calumniated. Lofty spiritual independence, the will to stand alone, great intelligence even, are felt to be dangerous; everything that raises the individual above the herd and makes his neighbour quail is henceforth called evil; the fair, modest, obedient, self-effacing disposition, the mean and average in desires, acquires moral names and honours.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Hollingdale; emphasis in original)
I’m Kelly. It’s an Irish name.
I’m black Irish. I’m not from
here. I’m from farther south,
from that part of town where
five people were shot in front
of the church last night. On the steps
of the church, they were just
standing there. Not hurting anyone.
You don’t have a gun, do you?
I don’t, either. People with guns
need to take lessons so they shoot
who they’re aiming at and not just
anyone. (I won’t mention it, but
I want to thank you for not saying
anything about how you can smell
the liquor on my breath. And the
sun’s just barely up.)
I come here and I sit and I look
at the lake and the sky
and the sun and it’s my peace.
It’s how I get my peace.
Are you a therapist? It’s going
to be hot today. My sister
tells me bring a bottle of water
with me when I go out. Ice-cold
water, a bottle. I’m very
religious. I have to start
my day soon. Go home and shower
and get dressed. Clean clothes.
I like the lake. The sky and
the sun. Bright yellow sun.
“‘Thou shalt obey someone and for a long time: otherwise thou shalt perish and lose all respect for thyself’—this seems to me to be nature’s imperative, which is, to be sure, neither ‘categorical’ as old Kant demanded it should be (hence the ‘otherwise’—), nor addressed to the individual (what do individuals matter to nature!), but to peoples, races, ages, classes, and above all to the entire animal ‘man’, to mankind.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Hollingdale; emphasis in original)
He told his wife,
When I scratch my face
I am scratching my face,
not making secret baseball signs.
When I say I’m going to clean the couch,
it’s not because I think
you “did something dirty” on it or to it
(no one says you did), it’s because
the generous people who gave it
to us—religious friends of
your sister’s—gave it to us because
their cats had ruined it by pissing
on it and it stinks. And I am
tired of the stink.
When I set up my stereo it’s to hear
my favorite music, not to spy on whatever
you are not doing—you are not doing
anything but staring out the window—
and certainly not to broadcast sounds
of screaming children. The screaming
children live right next door
and need no amplification by me.
There are other things
he might have told his wife,
but after he had told her these things,
he had had enough.
“A man with genius is unendurable if he does not also possess at least two other things: gratitude and cleanliness.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Hollingdale)
Evanston is a town that sits
on the left shoulder of Chicago, facing up
(right shoulder if you’re facing down).
It is protected by an asphalt moat patrolled
by civilian traffic, a vast cemetary where
fog twists around large monuments to people
barely otherwise remembered, and a train track
fatally electrified and lined by deciduous jungle.
Once the visitor passes the city’s defenses
he (or she if she’s a she) finds himself
in a pretty little city almost as pretty
but not as fragile as the words “pretty
little city,” complete with tall trees,
three-story buildings, squirrels, rabbits,
university professors and students, joggers,
dog-walkers, cyclists, all sweating, some
discussing topics of interest. The cars are
all relatively new and not ostentatious,
though the same cannot be said
for the houses. Construction is underway
in front of shops whose windows hold signs
reading, “We are still open.” Sunday mornings
find the pretty little city very quiet.
“It has never been faith but always freedom from faith, that half-stoical and smiling unconcern with the seriousness of faith, that has enraged slaves in their masters and against their masters. ‘Enlightenment’ enrages: for the slave wants the unconditional, he understands in the domain of morality too only the tyrannical, he loves as he hates, without nuance, into the depths of him, to the point of pain, to the point of sickness—the great hidden suffering he feels is enraged at the noble taste which seems to deny suffering.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Hollingdale; emphasis in original)
There’s a party in the alleyway every night.
It’s August, it’s hot, what’re you going to do?
Sit in your stuffy apartment, puny wall-unit
wheezing a lie of cool, refreshing air?
Watch some fast-food brain shit on the box?
Drink thin beer from cheap cans, scream at the wife
who screams at the boy while the baby
screams at everyone? Fuck that. Get your ass
downstairs and out back to the alleyway. Bring your
30-pack of cheap beer and share it around.
Bring the wife and the boy and the baby,
the neighbors are grilling burgers and dogs
and the cars are idling, their doors open
and their sound systems thumping loud.
“What makes one regard philosophers half mistrustfully and half mockingly is not that one again and again detects how innocent they are—how often and how easily they fall into error and go astray, in short their childishness and childlikeness—but that they display altogether insufficient honesty, while making a mighty and virtuous noise as soon as the problem of truthfulness is even remotely touched on. They pose as having discovered and attained their real opinions through the self-evolution of a cold, pure, divinely unperturbed dialectic (in contrast to the mystics of every rank, who are more honest and more stupid than they—these speak of ‘inspiration’): while what happens at bottom is that a prejudice, a notion, an ‘inspiration’, generally a desire of the heart sifted and made abstract, is defended by them with reasons sought after the event—they are one and all advocates who do not want to be regarded as such, and for the most part no better than cunning pleaders for their prejudices, which they baptize ‘truths’—and very far from possessing the courage of the conscience which admits this fact to itself, very far from possessing the good taste of the courage which publishes this fact, whether to warn a foe or a friend or out of high spirits and in order to mock itself.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Hollingdale; emphasis in original)
You didn’t ask—no one has asked
but this is why I’m afraid of black people:
I’m afraid of black people
because television shows, movies,
newspapers, magazines, and popular songs
have taught me that black people
hate me and want to hurt me
because I’m white and because being white
makes me guilty both of injustices
being committed now and injustices
that hang from our nation’s history
like a stinking dead albatross around
a maddened, decrepit mariner’s neck.
And I’m afraid because
I cannot understand
what it means to be an American
and be black.
“Nothing is so infectious as example, and we never do great good or evil without producing the like.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)
The weeping man lied to God.
He—the weeping man, not God
(who may well be a she,
or an it, or all three, plus…)—
he is in the basement laundry room
pulling the clean, wet clothes
from the washer to put them
into the dryer, where they will
spin around for sixty minutes
and he is weeping, doesn’t matter
what he lied about.
“Does this present not belong to the mob? The mob, however, does not know what is great or small, what is straight and honest: it is innocently crooked, it always lies.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (trans. Hollingdale)
Five dollars’ admission.
All the neighbors (who can pay) are there.
Canvas folding chairs (bring your own)
line the curbside along green parkways.
Dogs crap in those parkways.
The new kids on the block
are in attendance. They are middle-aged
and are me and my wife.
We are shy but determined,
frightened of people but resolved
to make our new beginnings here.
We set our canvas chairs
on the parkway behind some of our neighbors.
Introductions are made. We are all middle-aged
(the younger ones and their children
are down the street, closer to
the inflatable fun castle and the quoits).
There is a line of buffet tables and a
griller grilling meats (burgers, dogs) on a charcoal grill.
Canned and bottled beverages (non-alcoholic)
in an ice-and-water-filled tub.
A P.A. system, a host, a raffle (my wife
wins a bottle of wine), pre-recorded music
(late 60s to early 70s, the pinnacle
of post-war American culchuh).
The music is too loud. Conversation
is difficult. Later there’s a singer
backed by two electrified guitarists.
Early on, I stepped in dog shit.
Three times went down the street
to try and scrape it off my shoe.
Even a little bit of that stuff stinks,
and there was no hiding that this
new kid needed to learn
at least one new thing.
“Man is the cruellest animal. More than anything on earth he enjoys tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions; and when he invented Hell for himself, behold, it was his heaven on earth.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (trans. Hollingdale)
She doesn’t have
her great-grandmother’s childhood book
of stories and verse
her grandmother’s cast-iron skillet
her grandfather’s favorite glazed blue bowl
or even her mother’s hand-knit afghan
collection of imperial stamps and coins
rocks from the Garden of the Gods.
Her father collaborated with the enemy
fled with her mother and older brother
he was a baby
the battle was behind them
to either side in the middle distance
it sparked and spat.
The baby, her older brother (let there be
no confusion) died in the swamp.
Another child came, a sister
born in a refugee camp.
She blames herself for all of this
she knows it’s not her fault
she knows there’s nothing
she could have done, it was all
before her. She sits in her house,
it is quiet now,
just another day to journey
from sleep to sleep.
“Books and reading, I believe, have to be understood and taught as a distinctive, embodied meditative tradition; as a rhetorically constructed deliberative verbal ordering of the world; and as a social practice through which the liberal ideal of a mutual human accountability was formulated and partially enacted. Reading as an embodied rhetorical verbal interchange and as a deliberative tradition has to be cultivated apart from the passive cognitive reception of administered entertainments and the sensationalist, discontinuous, permanent immediacy of consumer culture. The presence created by reading within book culture’s tradition of literacy must be distinguished from the immediacy created by reading that is controlled by the contemporary cyber-logic of the electronic image. The presence of reading must be distinguished formally from the immediacy of the electronic image. Print literacy as an embodied rhetorical form of cognitive and deliberative agency has to be enacted apart from a consumerist reception of information, opinion, sensation, and stimulation.” — Peter Dimock, “The Presence of Reading, Part II”
Boys gone wilding in the night
have torn these branches down.
Beat each other bloody with the splintered ends.
Beat their girls, their lovers and their children.
Broken bones, bruises, contusions, lacerations, punctures,
abrasions. Branches litter the breakwater.
Leaves surf the waves. The lake is churning
this morning, waters muddy.
“When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves with the idea we have left them.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)