Author: Tetman Callis
post-syphilis and pre-aids
long ago and far away, when there was nothing that couldn’t be cured
(gamma-globulin for the bed-bugs, hard liquor for the heartaches)
we would fuck at the drop of a drawer
those were the nights i slid my hard way
into runaround sue of the blue eyes and blonde hair
and the baby girl in the crib
and the cuckolded husband with lieutenant’s bars on his shoulders
cold warrior in a world frozen into the ice
of two great powers with atomic guns held to their heads
there was never a better time for fucking like there would be no tomorrow
now that tomorrow is here and we can see that it makes for no today
worth sliding between the legs of
into a sue so heavy in her middle age that she can scarcely move
her blue eyes crusted and bleared
blonde hair graying and cracked
her baby girl grown and gone, never to write home or even to call on holidays
the lieutenant promoted to captain, then on to colonel
silver eagles perched on his shoulders
before being cashiered when someone’s head had to roll
and his had always been convenient for sacrifice
but i slid my hard way into runaround sue
and i swear it happened on a golden morning, pre-aids and post-syphilis
when the world was ours ours ours and no war could take it from us
no war could distract us even for a moment, not even with the promise or the threat
of all our tomorrows flowing together without form or meaning in this our molten world
where our new diseases keep one step ahead of our latest cures
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“Because I am nothing if not an amazing businesswoman, I researched what kind of content makes for bestselling books. It turns out the answer is ‘one night stands,’ drug addictions, and recipes.” – Tina Fey, Bossypants
copulating on a bar in a nightclub after closing time
those little wet rings of condensation and spillage from drinks
are cold and sticky and stainy sometimes and often smell bad
the bar is hard on the knees and the butt and back
there’s no place to put your heels
no place to dig in your toes
no pillows to be found in the barroom
the bar is slick
narrow
falling bodies hit the barroom floor, sometimes breaking bones
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
she is sweet and vulnerable
sometimes she needs me
i feel strong when i hold her with my arms around her
she is sensitive and intelligent
aware of the world
an artist at heart
she is not overly superstitious
practices yoga and drinks herbal teas
caffeinated coffees, also
sometimes she says, for no apparent reason except that she wants to
i know someone who could use a blow job
then she unfastens my pants
she lets me put my hands all over her
my fingers squeezing inside her to bring her to climax
her breasts are small
they feel good cupped in my hands while she straddles me
she lets me fuck her and even lets me come inside
she says, you make me so wet
we fit together well, asleep and awake
sometimes she cries and says
i love you so much
also, she can cook, and drives an economy car
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“Every philosophical proposition is bad grammar, and the best that we can hope to achieve by philosophical discussion is to lead people to see that philosophical discussion is a mistake.” – Bertrand Russell, “Introduction” to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
in the beginning was the word, and these are the words that came after.
these are the words that came to a man sitting in a chair.
these are the words that came while late summer rain gusted against a kitchen window.
these are the words that came to a woman in bed under a sheet
with two frayed hems and a hole.
these are the words that came from the sound of a pair of shoes being pulled back on.
these are the words that came after. these are the words that tell everything.
these are the words that explain nothing. these are they.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
looking up the word inveterate to see if it might mean
what i thought it might mean
flipping dictionary pages to reach the word
my eyes alighted first on intumescence, then on invaginate
and i considered how lovely those two words are together
and how my love and i are ever turning to each other
inveterates that we are
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise.” – Bertrand Russell, “Introduction” to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
together afterwards in each other’s arms, they slip into sleep
he dreams of spacecraft instrument control panels
trouble in the asteroid belt
possible cataclysm on a botched re-entry
she wakes first, kisses him awake
did you dream? she says
yes
he says
i dreamed we flew away together to the stars
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
her name is kim she has
very dark sloe eyes she doesn’t
need to be doing that to her
hair where she puts
those light streaks in it what do they call
those skunk streaks i think not a
flattering term
she doesn’t need those her
hair is more than just
fine just the way it was before she
did that she makes me wish
i were twenty years
younger i saw her last week in her
white t-shirt and black
jeans i want to come inside her
i came inside another
kim twenty years ago she also
did things to her hair it was
black when i met her and blonde
when we went to bed i came
inside a condom inside her
i think that still counts
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“In proportion as a society organises itself, and rises in the scale, so does a shrinkage enter the private life of each one of its members. Where there is progress, it is the result only of a more and more complete sacrifice of the individual to the general interest. Each one is compelled, first of all, to renounce his vices, which are acts of independence.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee
my nose is turning into a potato
my face is furrowed as a well-plowed field where one might grow such a potato
my teeth are turning into kernels of corn left too long on the cob
my hair is frosted like the teeth-rotting pastries i buy at the bagel place
the girl working the counter there is young and beautiful
(nut-brown hair, clear green eyes)
but i am a field of potatoes and sun-dried corn iced with hoarfrost, not dusted in sugar
and while i cannot deny my eyes (they won’t cease their seeing)
my hearing is not completely shot, and i can hear what time is telling me
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
clusters of galaxies whirl about one another, the larger pulling
the smaller apart, the greater consuming the lesser—here an elliptical
grown fat from swallowing its neighbors, there two spirals pulling the arms
off each other, over there one large irregular galaxy punching
a hole straight through a delicate pinwheel—
but when i try to contemplate these cataclysms in an objective
and scientific way, my mind quickly wanders away from the cosmos,
straight to the singularity of the slender long-haired beauty sharing
my bed, and all the ways in which we might resemble galaxies
when they cluster and merge and collide.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“A legend of menace and peril still clings to the bees. There is the distressful recollection of her sting, which produces a pain so characteristic that one knows not wherewith to compare it; a kind of destroying dryness, a flame of the desert rushing over the wounded limb, as though these daughters of the sun had distilled a dazzling poison from their father’s angry rays, in order more effectively to defend the treasure they gather from his beneficent hours.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee
this? this old thing?
this is my new home,
where i dreamed my lover was feeding me
fresh french fries and hot fish cakes.
these? lined up here on my desk?
these are thimbles full of scabs i pull from off myself
so my wounds will never heal.
(see? the stains are ruining my clothes.)
those? those piles of crumbs on the floor by my chair?
it’s plain to see that those are lies that fall from my mouth
whenever i pretend to speak of truth, beauty, or love.
that? i never sleep in that.
i sit in the corner, my back to the wall
while i listen to the sound that comes
from just outside. my lover has found my bedroom window.
she draws her fingernails down the dirty glass.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
a pocketful of candy bars, melting, and spare change
an envelope of butterscotch, sweet, smooth and hard
candy-coated chocolate peanuts wrapped in tissue and secrets
my fingers with nails gnawed down to blood
my green teeth, dyspepsia, furtive smile and briefcase
taking home my work
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The whole idea of a teacher is to be able to teach the student how to learn on their own so the teacher’s not needed.” – Rick Beato, “Did Dire Straits Create the Coolest Riff Ever? Yep”
this couch is nice and long
she said
even a person as tall as yourself
could sleep on it easily
i looked at her hands
her small and slender fingers
i like your hands
i said
i see myself holding them
in ways that might alarm you
i stood to leave
opened her door
she looked at her cat
stay
she said
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
our first date
wee-hours dining at an all-night place after the bar we met in had closed
she took my hand and turned it palm-up to read
the great love of your life will come to you in middle age
i assumed she meant this would be a happy event
i also assumed she meant it would not be her
she was twenty-five
i was twenty
we spent nearly every one of the following six hundred or so nights together
then one more some time after that
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“You can make a lot of mistakes in just one lifetime.” – Raymond Chandler, “I’ll Be Waiting”
just the other day
i gave up masturbating and smoking pot for the rest of my life
so
this sticky mess and lingering cloud of heavy smoke
must mean i’m dead
the available evidence indicates this level of hell
is filled with orgasm and muddled thought
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
my radio tells me the news, the weather, the sports, same as it tells everyone.
it tells me that today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the resignation
of richard nixon, which reminds me of my standing that resignation day
at the door to my girlfriend’s house, telling her mother it was a shame
to see a good man go down.
my girlfriend’s mother said nothing in response to that. i was sixteen.
young lovers, her daughter and i, our small world still cast in the clarity
of simple blacks and whites, just months before the changes would set in—
the unanticipated child, the long detour through the alleyways and cold-water flats
of this to toke, that to drop, the odd shot in the dark of a junkie’s heart.
i turn the radio off, my mind wandering through the silence to play
a remembering game as i get ready for work, reminding myself of twenty years ago
and my starting downtown a new job at a gay disco, during the days and nights of disco,
tight young pretty boys with fuck to spare and all the money we could steal,
all the liquor we could hold, all the fine, white powder
we could take in the intimate odor of. we were never going to die.
ten years ago, who could say? a man looking much like myself,
a magician who has crawled into a bottle—how did he get himself in there?
isn’t he afraid he may drown?
five years ago, my new lover showing up drunk in the wee hours.
she’d driven three hundred miles to phone me from the hot-sheets down the street.
baby, here i am—send me.
two years ago, losing my sixth job in seven months (the lover long gone).
one year ago, sobbing in the district attorney’s office while i confess to everything,
my crimes too petty for notice, i’m wasting his time.
one minute ago, turning the radio back on just in time to hear
a passing mention of nagasaki day. it’s nagasaki day.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only melioration, is in mutual reverence. God’s grace comes to us unmerited, the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. This is not the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically enough.” – Marilynne Robinson, “What Are We Doing Here?”
while considering the origins of the self-replicating inflationary universe,
the mathematician finds he cannot keep his mind on the geometry of scalar fields
and off the topology of last night’s waitress
in particular, with regard to the way in which she is identical
to his coffee cup, the contents of which he sips while wondering
if “identical with” is perhaps not the more correct form
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
i came home from work one night
and found my girlfriend and my
roommate in bed together
i paused a moment while he rolled over and said
oh jesus
and she lay there pulling the covers up and saying nothing
so i said
let me join you
and kicking off my shoes
climbed in with them
she was her usual, charming and beautiful
but i had my eye on him
(Published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Vol. 2, Issue 2, August 2009; copyright 2009, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“It’s really, really damaging to a person to know secrets that potentially are going to kill people and then not to be able to do anything on it.” – Frances Haugen, Interview, November 22, 2021, Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol
i’m at lunch at my favorite low-price diner,
the one with the waitress with the painted-on pants.
she’s very sweet, or seems to be,
with her high, thin voice, naive look—and those pants!
a peelable girl.
so i’m at lunch and at the booth right next to me
are three guys talking about cowboy coffee.
i’m reading a magazine and not paying too much attention,
when i notice they’re not talking about coffee anymore.
now they’re talking about dogs—
about male poodles who, when they do the do that poodles do,
sometimes get stuck.
and the punchline is, the poodles have to be snipped,
which one of the guys says is probably pretty painful.
they get up to leave.
one of them says something about things dropping out later.
a cook’s assistant brings me the meal i ordered.
the manager strolls by, drops a complementary lottery ticket on my table.
i look around for my sweet, peelable waitress, but i don’t know where she’s gone.
i scratch my lottery ticket.
i’ve won a buck!
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
I.
take a penny.
any penny will do.
it needn’t be a clean penny, shiny and new.
it needn’t be of zinc or copper, nor of wartime steel.
it needn’t be a penny at all, but pennies are useful objects.
take a penny, and a handful more as well, and lay them flat on a flat place.
choose one to be your central penny.
arrange your remaining pennies to circle this chosen center so that
each one touches the central penny’s outer edge and none overlaps.
the greatest number of pennies falling into such a circle
is the kissing number for pennies in two dimensions.
(dimes work, too, and nickels, and quarters, and subway tokens—
or coat buttons or shirt buttons or campaign buttons, all will do—
so long as all your circles are of equal size.)
II.
the kissing number in one dimension is two.
in two, as your pennies demonstrate, the kissing number is six.
it is twelve in three.
in eight dimensions, the kissing number is two hundred and forty.
in twenty-four dimensions, the number is 196,000 and change
(a great deal of kissing in twenty-four dimensions).
in other dimensions, the kissing number is difficult to determine with certainty,
though it is said that in five, the kissing number could well be forty-five.
it is in three dimensions that coping with the kissing number first presents a complex task.
we’re not limited to pennies here, flat in their tidy circlings,
stable in the gravity of their situatings.
here, we have spheres to balance—a central sphere and its twelve bussers
(all twelve kissing in this example),
none of which is permitted to impinge upon any neighboring sphere
except in the most superficial way.
it’s enough to make one wish to possess the skills of a juggler
or a bottle of strong glue to fix the spheres in place.
it’s enough to make one wish for that palmful of pennies laid flat,
or for an existence safely confined to that one dimension
wherein the kissing number is never greater than nor less than two.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“A society is moving toward dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest. How many times has history taught us this?” – Marilynne Robinson, “What Are We Doing Here?”
i know that i am not pretty
my nose is beaky, my mouth is small, my lips are often chapped
my hair is thin, limp and straight
my skin is mottled (the sun is my enemy)
i know all these things
who do you think i see when i look in the mirror?
i know what you see when you look at me
i see it reflected in your eyes and there’s no way you can hide it
you men are all alike, i’m no great scholar
you see the outlines of my breasts, they’re perfect and i know it
i’m quite pleased with them and you would be too
you see my narrow waist and my flat belly and these hips my hands are resting on
you think, what a nice butt (i know you do)
i know you see my wedding ring and the way i smile
i know you see yourself touching me with your hands and mouth
doing things with me and to me, if only you could, if only you could
i know you see me holding you tight, if only i would
you see exactly what i want you to see
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)