A Wall of Noise

A Virtual Poetry (Micro)Chap

by Damon Hubbs

A Wall of Noise at Vassar, ’89

We eat psychocandy and gaze at our shoes

long before you disappear to study British Romanticism

everyone incendiary with Frank O’Hara, us too

like a snake wrapped around an axe in Côte Basque

we put arms beyond use, fuse damage and joy

a wall of noise at Vassar in ’89 makes our teardrops explode

we’re lost children on the move

we’re lost children head-on in love.

They bring soft axes to a summer picnic

dream of unpicking stitches of the galactic curtain.

Break it and take it until the goulash goes cold

like pigeons tearing a hole for the first crack of light

they have orange shirts with old-fashioned borders

but the sentry doesn’t shoot.

Lorca plays guitar and the sentry doesn’t shoot. 

Everyone is on the move, head-on in love.

Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time

all twisted twilight, then

popping collars, pleating pipes

your tennis game vandalizes the Old Masters

the way you hoist the ball

like a severed head on the Piazza della Signoria

O baby, I don’t care

if they’re pissed with the mannerists

let’s slender

and splay the knife    

let’s get sentimental about bad taste.

I like the type with a long neck.

Camisole —Wellfleet, MA

I left Wellfleet in danger of collapsing

and you devalued like a bridal party

trundled in a dingy,

it’s been skunk hour here since ’58

give or take a year

you read The Laughing Policeman

without laughing

did you lack the gilded ear,

the ankle-biters show off their wealth

ganking our beach and chandeliers

my mortality washed ashore in vigorous depression

that thing you did with your clitoris

had me pretending that I’m worthy—

honestly all this dredging takes its toll

when you slip like a mollusk from a camisole

and that couple from Cape Elizabeth

who collect Nazi dinnerware, oof—

laughing off the cost of murder

with Allach porcelain plates and mugs,

all this dredging takes its toll      displayed just so.   

Fantastic Garlands —Provincetown, MA

A few days in the Province Lands & I am only one

only one girl crowned

& anchored for her heart’s desire.

The wet heat of Commercial St. tickles me like fantastic garlands

& the lobster dumplings at Mews, forward

not lasting  

but still I can’t loosen your claw

& the bog song of Bearberry Hill says come along

& the wet heat of Commercial St. tickles me like fantastic garlands

blending events feared & desired, actual &

imagined. Now we are the party & the guests

a modern girl larded with multitudes

perfect teeth, screamy dreamy

a magical vampishness to tumble you in the sun.

All day I speak in tongues

like a mermaid, or a spirit—

the Ariels at Long Point Beach know me well,

Molly Bish & Margaret Cavendish know me well

they know my useless dress and cursive singing,

they know cocktails at the Post Office Cafe & Cabaret impress 

it’s the breakwater, Ophelia, that divides me.

Robert & Elizabeth’s Dinner Party—Truro, MA

The ministry of war

veterans sent coffee cake. They have the severe formalism

of a jigsaw puzzle and a taste for making lists.

Conversation is a knight’s tour

of taxonomic cruelty

of millionaire eccentrics and Frigidaire wives; 

they suck off every square on the board

without landing on the same cock twice—

oh rigolade, oh consommé

We have our own Big Other

our obsession with market culture

overwash and obeyed.

This isn’t your first time hosting the Union Dead. 

There’s talk of buying a lighthouse.

Your aquarium is gilded in the divine right of kings.

Ginger Nut has a purse

bell sleeved in Hercules braid—

oh rigolade, oh consommé

Your daughter has a menagerie of armadillos.

Your son papers walls like a Montessori Rubens. 

Where is Flanders, exactly

it’s as vague as the invention of modern terror.

*Originally published at Don’t Submit.

Little Quick

whereupon you want to take up dance

and breathe like statuary, call yourself a creature of the night;

whereupon your love for the steel mills of Pittsburg 

is more than just a flash in the pan;

whereupon your leg is a grande battement of Bauhaus bent metal;

surprise me, I say

whereupon you want to take up dance

with the outstretched arms of Wuthering Heights

spellwork vespering on the tips of the toes; 

whereupon each movement is Cocteau and Peter Pan;

whereupon the program notes say forest of a dream

and neither of us know what that means

surprise me, I say

and you run along the beach expressing the eternal

in the everyday. I follow body tracks

and every time you start to reveal

the secret of your magic trick, you perform another

little quick, thereupon

astonishing me—

Chasing Daphne

of European fountains you were dotingly enamored,

the baroness who collected pipes and drains

the boom and bust of baroque drapery, bodily machines

Daphne youthed in Travertine

I embrace every tree in the West.

Grow my hair,

wear women’s clothes

to get an inch closer to you

my sweetly slutty princess days.

I’m out of breath from Paris to Marseilles

il fonce to rakish Rome,

what would maman say.

O Triumph spitfired with leaden arrows.

I am crowded and leaking strange relics.

Like a guerrilla war in high heels.

Isn’t the moss wonderful, darling.

BIO: Damon Hubbs writes poems about Thulsa Doom, Italo disco & girls who cry at airports. He's the author of three chapbooks (most recently Charm of Difference, from Back Room Poetry). His latest work appears/is forthcoming in BRUISER, Don't Submit!, Riggwelter Press, Misery Tourism, Bullshit Lit, & elsewhere. twitter @damon_hubbs