David Alpaugh
David Alpaugh’s essay “The Professionalization of Poetry” was serialized in two issues of Poets &
Writers Magazine in 2003. It drew over two hundred letters and emails and
was widely discussed on the internet. Alpaugh’s poetry, fiction, drama and
criticism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including
Exquisite Corpse, The Formalist, Modern Drama, Poetry, Twentieth Century
Literature, The Literature of Work, and California Poetry from the Gold
Rush to the Present. His collection
Counterpoint won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press and
his chapbooks have been published by Coracle Books and Pudding House
Publications. A graduate of Rutgers University and the University of California,
Berkeley, where he was a Woodrow Wilson and Ford Foundation fellow, Alpaugh
operates Small Poetry
Press, a chapbook design and printing service, and edits its Select Poets
Series. He has taught at the U. C., Berkeley extension and hosts one of the
San Francisco Bay Area’s most popular monthly poetry reading venues. He was a
guest speaker at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers in 2003 and defended his
controversial thesis of
The
Professionalization of Poetry at the AWP 2004 Convention in Chicago. His
collection Heavy Lifting will be the first book published by
Alehouse Press. His poem "Electronic
Epitaph" appears as an animated MP3 reading on a very inventive website called
Blue's Cruzio Cafe, edited
by J. J. Webb.
Statement
Today I am throwing old checks away
That lay in a shoebox five years, fearing audit.
They’re free—free, at last, to burn or decay.
Money still talks, but her ghouls simply say,
“Something was sold at a price and you bought it.”
Today I am throwing old checks away.
Each bears its signature; year, month & day;
And pays to the order of Mammon: due profit.
They’re free—free, at last, to burn or decay.
Here’s one for Sears; here’s one for ballet;
Airfare to Rome; a homeless benefit.
Today I am throwing old checks away,
Saying “Ciao!” to old wolves they kept at bay
While they tended our credit and fed it bit by bit.
They’re free—free, at last, to burn or decay.
I crumple the papered past. I murmur, “Hurray.”
It’s my shredder now must reconcile chit, chit, chit.
Today I am throwing old checks away.
They’re free—free, at last, to burn or decay.
Originally published in The Formalist
Heavy Lifting
A contentious granite monument inscribed with the ten
commandments was finally removed from public view
at the Alabama state judicial building yesterday
in the face of furious protests.
—The Guardian Unlimited, 08/28/2003
I laid my hands on that granite Bible
and helped tilt five thousand pounds
off the courthouse floor so the bailiff
could wedge a jack under the pedestal.
Words graved in stone rose into the air
honor thy father... shalt not kill... adultery
words that took me back—way, way back
to bible school... those gloomy Sundays.
We wheeled the ten commandments
into storage; covered them with a sheet
and locked the door—while protesters
wept on the courthouse steps.
Two tons are a snap to move these days
with hydraulic jacks & powered dollies.
Still, I couldn’t help thinking how hard
it was for a solitary man like Moses
to strap those great stone tablets on
to his back and lug them all the way
down the craggy slope of Mt. Sinai!
Shoulders, loins aching, how tempted
he must have been to dump God’s
magma opus into a fiery fissure—
and run for cover like a Philistine,
more fearful of a hernia than brimstone.
What a relief to reach level ground
and look back at that arduous mountain—
to lay those heavy strictures down for a while
before rousing his sleeping children.
Originally published in Octavo
Unrefined
I’m vulgar.
If I were wheat I’d be bulgar.
If I were a bird I’d be Crow.
If I were absurd I’d be Pozzo.
If I were a Norse God I’d be Loki.
If I were a dance, the hokey-pokey.
Slip me the keys to the kingdom
and I’ll let the riffraff come—
the leper, the beggar, the poet and the bum.
If I were on the surface, I’d be scum.
If I could put on strings, I’d be a ukulele
and if Segovia came, I’d say, “Sorry—
only Arthur Godfrey can strum me.”
Things gross in nature become me.
I am the chaff which the wind driveth away
I am the human laugh of the feral child at play.
I’m the only man at the brothel
who still goes upstairs with Olga!
Even my rhyme is half-assed.
I’m vulgar.
From Counterpoint
At the World's End
Once again I have made it
to this one story building in Florida
and have found my way beyond
the Cuban guard at the front desk
watching a rerun of Fantasy Island
and the candy-striper coaxing a wobbly old man
into an aluminum walker
to the little corner room at the world’s end
and Aunt Rebekah one more time.
Once again she shows me photographs
of people who were part of my childhood
and people I’ve heard about, but never seen:
How pretty she was in pigtails…
How proud at her eighth grade graduation…
How healthy on the day she married Uncle Walter.
And there’s a middle to reflect on
here at the world’s end (though she doesn’t
bring the photos out today). And the beginning
of the end’s in a shoebox under her bed—
retirement years, full of oranges & lemons,
uneventful, free of snow.
There are no recent photographs.
No one wants to look at Aunt Rebekah’s leg
with the tight shiny skin and pools of purple blood
or dwell too long on or try to image up
the leg already claimed by diabetes.
Or admire the candor with which these legs
chide the legs in the photo on the wall
when she posed on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City.
These are hers. They are now.
Even the missing one is hers, now.
There’s not much to do here at the world’s end.
This is a place where it can take all morning
to cut your toenails; where a crossword
can take days to finish
under a magnifying glass.
We sit. We embrace.
We remember Aunt Alice.
We remember the house in New Market
and the farm in Hunterdon County,
now a busy shopping mall
but…
There’s not much to say here at the world’s end.
It seems more natural to stare at the walls
or look out the window at the birds.
This is not a good place for words.
From Counterpoint
Rollfast
What we did that summer evening
was turn our bicycles upside-down
so the seats were on the ground
and the wheels in the air—
then we twirled the pedal round and round
till our knuckles and fingers were white
and we couldn’t make out individual spokes:
just a silver blur and an incremental hum
as the wheel sang the song of its appetite.
What we did next was feed the wheel flowers,
flowers not worth putting in a crystal vase
—Trifolium, Dandelion, Queen Anne’s Lace—
flowers that thrived on parental neglect
in the unkempt grass by the utility shed
as if to affirm Britannica on weed:
any plant growing where it is not wanted.
Who would be afraid of an idle wheel that spat
out handfuls of ragtag flowers, already half dead?
And the bleeding stalks left a stinging answer
in the summer air: perfume we’d count on ever
after—to keep coming at us stronger than before.
Lynne Saughter went first; she thrust in dandelions;
then Bruce Edwards, a single budding clover:
the only sign we’d get that his own tousled head
would test the metaphor’s might just two weeks later
when wheels would screech and metal do its work
a few miles west off Willow Pass Road.
It was starting to get dark on Mount Diablo.
We flipped our bicycles right-side-up
and raced around the cul-de-sac like maniacs,
or Dante’s damned, or Milton’s falling angels,
getting high on the last drops of Daylight Savings
until parents cried, Allee, allee, in-free!
Later we fell asleep thanking Schwinn,
Rollfast and whatever gods may be
for the night, the mountain and the wheel
within a wheel—like love, like magic,
like a spell to help us keep our balance,
and make up for bald tires,
as we cycle to the valley floor.
From Counterpoint
Scene from The Book of the Dead
Painting on Papyrus, circa 1450 B.C.
Your heart shall be weighed
against a feather
one day
by Anubis they say
while the Ibis-headed Thoth looks on
assaying its truthfulness, determining whether
you shall pass into the presence of Osiris
whose throne rests on water
like a lily
or be devoured by the wolf-god, Amenait
And so it behooves even the leanest of heart
to notice the feather hovering in the balance
before the trial by metaphor begins
how light it is, how lonely
how fallen from the sky
yet warm with the beating of the wing
bear it to your lover
and she’ll close her eyes
rub it wistfully against each cheek
use it to dust the gold dragon
on the lid of a jewelry box
woo a sullen child back to mirth
wear it as a keepsake in her hair
almost forget it’s a feather
dipping the thirsty quill
into sepia, alizarin or lampblack
Originally published in Poetry