Prose and poetry, for the most part
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
on the fifteenth floor of the building where i work, the men’s room has two stalls—
one for special needs and one for regular joes.
the fifteenth floor also has the office where i work,
and it has another office, a federal agency, discreet and well-armed.
(the agency’s name does not appear on the building’s lobby directory. i see
the agents bringing carts of weapons up by freight elevator, and i see nothing.)
i stop by the men’s room to sit a spell, routine business,
with a copy of the new yorker at hand.
the stall for regular joes is occupied. i occupy the other.
my installed neighbor flushed as soon as i came in.
good, he’ll be leaving soon and i can concentrate on relaxing.
but he doesn’t leave. he rustles a newspaper.
i pull down my pants and sit.
he sits.
i sit.
he rustles his paper again, noisily, and flushes again.
i read the new yorker. (an article about sleeping with baby.
nothing this issue about crapping with strangers.)
i sit.
he sits.
i try to relax.
i hear my neighbor pissing, rustling noisily again,
flushing, standing, buckling, zipping, etc.,
and i am at last alone in the men’s room on the fifteenth floor,
in the stall for special needs, reading the new yorker and relaxing
just down the hall from the regular joes with their guns and ammunition.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
my bright, beloved son
my shining morning star
i weep for you now
a hissing serpent on the floor of hell
you have broken my heart, my first-born son
i weep for you
i weep for myself
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
i found you puttering in the dark back yard at a reunion of surfaces and smiles
joking nervously as you skillfully ignored me, eyes never meeting mine
i asked you if you would despite your little gold ring
and you gave the same answer you gave on all saints day
do you recall that day, darling, when you told me what i could do
well
you weren’t the only one
but you were the only one
frolicking in the desert sand, laughing
dancing drunkenly around the brown van and matching station wagon
children with our adult toys, dodging each other just to play at getting along
i rolled another joint and hit out on the highway
a snow-streaked mountain rose from the flat sand and the joint wasn’t getting me high
not like they used to get me high so high
a cold rain fell and i stood outside the gym
i smoked a joint but it didn’t seem to get me high
all the children waited inside
i opened the door and told them the grass is no good
i awoke thinking, it’s still early in the day
i should get out to the desert in a hurry so i’ll have all day to be high
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
people look at me they got
they look so afraid in their eyes
they got when they look at me it’s like
what do people why
i don’t
never mind forget it’s not
can you spare
do you have any
mister excuse me sir
excuse me sir do you
excuse me sir can you spare some change
i’d like to get something to eat you don’t
excuse me mister could you spare
some change i’m trying i want
i’m trying to get to california
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
we are the workers, the telemarketers and associates, frayed-collar seasonals
and scuffed-shoe temps, assemblers of components and stackers of goods,
salt of the earth, populating battlefield and factory and giant retail outlet,
we are the shareholders of scraps, hard-scrabbling for a can of peas
and a ticket to the game
we are the workers, we take no franchise, all but silent save
the muttering of complaint (they’ll fire you if they hear you say that)
we puff our cigarettes just outside steel-plated back doors, our exhaled smoke
bright in the winter sun, our breath smoky in the cold morning air
we are the workers, we watch from the sidelines, from balcony seats, from back rows
we are the men and women who take the late shift, who clean up the mess,
scouring and buffing, sweeping and dusting, making the world shine spotless and bright
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
the rains came raining hard and for weeks cold autumn rains out of low gray
skies the desert’s flowers bloomed rotted and washed away lizards snakes and
rabbits gathered on high ground around clumps of mesquite coyotes
padded splashing through puddles searching for stragglers inadequately
hidden under the mesquite’s protecting thorns or for corpses bloating
just under the face of the waters or washed up on the shorelets
around each little clump island where the ground was turning into the
kind of mud you could make into bricks for houses if only the rain
would stop and the sun come out long enough for the bricks to be cut then
baked through dry and hard thousands of square miles round miles triangulated
miles jagged-edged miles shoved up one against the other with edges that
didn’t match all these miles covered in household mud just waiting to be
cut shaped and patted into bricks leavened with the bones the coyotes
didn’t eat with stems and leaves of drowned grasses blossoms off rotted
wildflowers a nation could be mobilized given a mission
volunteers crusading into the desert to make bricks for all the
shivering homeless of africa asia indianapolis
and south fusilado of the cardboard shacks there would be no need for
the sun to come out the army could be sent in soldiers towing huge
field ovens behind heavy tracked vehicles bricks baked on the spot spray
coated with some experimental titanium- or graphite-based
resin then loaded onto pallets in stacks covered with canvas bearing
reinforced eyes at specified intervals along the edges strong
nylon ropes passing through the eyes and made secure other ropes coming
off the corners of the pallets to join and loop loosely at the tops
while huge helicopters settle over fields of pallets hovering
while soldiers in ponchos and boonie hats stand atop the palleted
stacks of canvas-covered resin-coated bricks the soldiers hooking
the ropes to hooks hanging from chains hanging from the bellies of the
helicopters the soldiers double-checking to ensure that the ropes
and hooks and chains are secure then jumping from the pallets into the
mud splashing catching the eyes of the helicopter pilots giving
the high sign the thumbs up the wave off the when you are ready gridley
to the pilots whose helicopters lift straining against the weight of
their loads pulling the pallets out of the sucking mud and up into
cruising altitude flying them to the nearest concrete airstrip where
military transports dumpy olive drab turboprops and sleek silver
jets wait to take on loads of bricks made of mud and bones and flowers to
fly to every part of the world bringing the makings of homes to
millions of people who may have had a pot to piss in but had no
window to throw it out of who would never know what it was like to
have the wolf at the door until they could build themselves huts to put doors
in people who for ease of planning could be reckoned as being without
discernible direction who would never know what hit them when it
did who knew how to be grateful for the well-molded military
brick who could speak a smattering of english who could swallow pride by
the tunful who knew what side their bread was buttered on if they could get
bread and who could be counted on never to breathe a word always to
go quietly ever to wait their turn and know it when it came and
never to forget never to forgive and who would swear that next time
it wouldn’t be them and it wouldn’t be rain
(Published in different form as “The Well-Molded Military Brick” in New York Tyrant, 18 December 2017; copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
in the land of the blind i had one eye
and i was the king
more than the king i was the god
i could take whatever and whoever i wanted
all the gold
any young virgin
bored with this i traveled to the land of those who have two eyes
sometimes a third
and some even four
they could see what i could not
they could perceive depth and see within
their servants all were one-eyed men
there is no way for me to return to my kingdom
i serve others now, and no longer know the blind
(Published in Folly, April 2010; copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
november 14, 2001, and i’m high. it’s 11 o’clock. the 11th hour.
the taliban are broken and fleeing—like slaughtered chickens,
by the reported report of their leader, whose name
i forget but he didn’t have—doesn’t have—a catchy name like hitler.
now there was a name you could sink your teeth into.
not to be too bloodthirsty about it, but let us—us being me,
in my several manifestations of self, always alone but
never lonely—let us celebrate tonight the mixed blessing
of so many jihaders being eager for martyrdom under
american carpet-bombing and spooky.
oh spooky. to be under spooky. there you are,
you’re on the ground, it’s dark, you hear aircraft overhead
but you can’t see them and figure they can’t see you,
but spooky has the range down tight with a night-goggled
crew loosing tubes of fire with a thousand explosions
at their ends. you’re at those ends, farewell.
i keep getting distracted from our war and everything else
and smoking more pot, which sounds like a good plan to us—
all of me—right now. it’s a new moon making a useful excuse
for something where the true excuse has always been, when it is the case,
oh look—i have more pot—i think i’ll smoke it.
it is the case now, with a dozen three- and four-month-old
plants in what we call the studio. any time is pot-tea time.
or lame pun time. or smoke time. smoke the main brace.
once it’s burned through, watch the watch collapse.
before, or at the very start of, when tonight i began getting
herbally distracted, i made a list of goals for the next
two months. five they are in number, these goals, and here they are.
but first, another hit. i grow some pretty decent weed.
goal the first is to finish the periodicals, which means
to plow in a readsome way through the three stacks
of magazines etc. on the floor in front of the television,
which three stacks total
wait—
37 inches in height. such a forbidding lot of transience.
wait—
more pot. come to me, my lovely, my mary jane,
let us open a second front.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)