Author: 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.)
i scraped and shuffled and pawed my way through my desk
finding sheets of canceled airmail stamps
i cut them into airplane shapes with my exacting knife
building paper planes again
kneeling beside my bed i lifted the spread’s hemmed edge
sure i heard the ghost of my lover’s soft sobbing, or some sort of coughing
coming from the gap between the slats and floor
there was nothing there but my imagination and clumps of dust
i crawled beneath the bed to join them, gather them, dreams and dirt together
press them between my palms until they were one and they were dead
night came down
i slept
morning woke me with its light in through my window
the dead remained as they always are, dream-filled and as ghosts
i opened the window, called my lover’s name, let fly a paper plane
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“By June 21 [1915], the eight JN–2 airplanes, eight sets of spares, and twelve engines had arrived at San Diego. The new airplanes were quaint by today’s standards; but compared to the awkward-looking pushers and clumsy early tractors, they were beauties characterized by low rakish lines, staggered equal-span wings, and a long, narrow fuselage. Their appearance, however, hid serious defects. ‘They looked like airplanes,’ [Captain Benjamin D.] Foulois later wrote. ‘But we were to find that an airplane that looks like an airplane may be something less.’ ” – Roger G. Miller, “A Preliminary to War: The 1st Aero Squadron and the Mexican Punitive Expedition of 1916 ”
i believe in gallons of powerful coffee
laced with quarts of cream
pyramids of raspberry danishes
high-stacked beds of juicy steaks
cigarettes of marijuana and tobacco
fine dry wine
martinis with olives
the curve inward of a woman’s waist
(nature’s most perfect line)
the wet spot
the way she comes under my touch
her smile and the light in her eyes
and the light
my god, the light!
(Published in nibble eleven, 2009; copyright 2009, 2023, by Tetman Callis.)
i dreamed i was having
an affair with monica lewinsky.
she and i spent the night
at her house (in my dream).
it was a nice house (in my dream).
monica’s mom was concerned
but we told her, it’s okay, monica’s
mom, we didn’t have sex.
it rained that night. monica
snuck outside and covered my
car with a tarp while i slept.
that’s how nice she is.
i awoke (out of my dream),
ate nuts for breakfast, showered
and found i was down to my
last pair of clean briefs.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The wise say that for men there are seven gates through which admission may be gained into Heaven. There are asceticism, benevolence, tranquillity of mind, self-command, modesty, simplicity, and kindness to all creatures. The wise also say that a person loseth all these in consequence of vanity. That man who having acquired knowledge regardeth himself as learned, and with his learning destroyeth the reputation of other, never attaineth to regions of indestructible felicity.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
daybreak in april
the drive-thru lane of a fast-food restaurant
perched on a railing in front of my car
two sparrows, one atop the other
i’ll take fries with that
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
two persons were talking this
morning at the 7-11 checkout
isn’t it great the rain we’re having?
yes, but wouldn’t it be better to see
it at home in the garden? oh, yes!
no talk of the war
sore spot, this war
hundreds of children marched
from the high school yesterday,
in spontaneous protest peacefully
marching miles, escorted after
a few blocks by local police officers,
who cautioned them to stay
out of the streets and off of
federal property
they peacefully returned and were
all suspended from school, given
today to stay at home
the authorities appreciated their
idealism and exercise of free
speech, but cautioned them
that if they marched again,
the consequences would be severe
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“White people are scared of change, believing that what they have is being taken away from them by people they consider unworthy. But all they’re doing is poking a bear with a stick. In 2004, the Anglo population in Texas became a minority. The last majority-Anglo high-school class in Texas graduated in 2014. There will never be another. The reality is, it’s all over for the Anglos.” – Evan Smith, of the Texas Tribune (quoted by Lawrence Wright in “America’s Future is Texas,” The New Yorker, July 10 & 17, 2017)
she said she would
rather die than go
back to kansas
after she bought
her ticket, what else
was he to do?
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)