by Nathan Hoks
Beneath the corkscrew of my libido
Within the coalition of my slumber
Between the swagger of my oil tanks
On the kite string of the image
Behind the body armor of going on and on
In the cottage of my spectacles
In the cabin of my speechlessness
In the bondage of my voice box
In the cocktail of my inaccuracy
In the cocktail of my appetite
In the cocktail of a steady gaze
In the cocktail of a steady gaze
PEOPLE OF THE INTERIOR
Nathan Hoks is a millipede
With a thousand eyes, sparkling shards
Of glass stabbing at our footwear.
He should be squashed.
He should be flayed.
He should be torn from himself
And made to watch the writhing arms
Strewn across the concrete floor.
He should be born before we talk about him like this.
But Nathan Hoks cannot be killed.
Nathan Hoks will evaporate in the kettle.
Nathan Hoks is a vague hunger.
Nathan Hoks is a 50/50 blend
Gunpowder and guts. Film comes
Whirring out of his mouth.
Rusted screws hold his fingers to his hands.
Flies hang around his buttocks.
Shoots and pods are sprouting from his intestines.
Nathan Hoks is a fork in the egg yolk.
Nathan Hoks is a penitentiary.
Nathan Hoks lives inside himself
Where he is choking on the curtains,
Coughing clouds of dust into the sky.
When he looks in the mirror
He sees brown bile filling a barrel.
His face is a bubble.
His face is a mail bomb.
His handshake is a dragonfly
Fucking itself to death.
SPIRAL OF THE INTERIOR
1
In the first spiral
the blueberries roll out of the bag. We spend an afternoon picking them up one by one then wiping purple streaks off the kitchen floor. Outside a robin is looking in.
In all the subsequent spirals
my teeth are pulling at the frontal lobe. A lake forms in the middle of my face. Another face forms in the bottom of the lake. Personality sprouts like weeds along the shore. At last Nathan Hoks is becoming a purple streak.
In some embowered corner
a seedling springs to life. As I approach it enervations take hold of each limb one at a time. I sink deep into the cushion of sound where I can hear a bullhorn voice whispering messages about water. I’ll need to eat in a few days. I take a towel and a toothbrush. Nothing else.
2
In another spiral
I hear the chapel filling with voices. The dust motes scamper to the windowsills. Another sky slides away revealing that the gears and wires above us have stalled and are starting to sparkle. A neighbor puts his hand on my shoulder. The symptoms begin—I shiver—sleep settles for the foot—etc.
Thin passageways
shaped like white diamonds open in every direction but Nathan Hoks is not a multitude and cannot splinter to follow them. I toss an eyelash toward each portal then hang my head around the bandana, listening.
Zipping the sweater
to the neck I feel myself burrow straight into the ground, my lips dislodged by mud, my sternum housing a coiled snake, bodies swallowing bodies, the spiral coming for the face, toes confused with worms and pebbles.
3
In the only spiral
I awaken to find the bright room drenched in a cleansing agent. It tastes white, a kind of scintillation that wraps around the tongue. Children play quietly in the yard. They are wearing red sweatshirts and bouncing rubber balls. The sky has turned into a large ball sitting on the porch watching over us.
But after lunch
a symptom returns, namely, I feel that I am holding a poker in my left hand and I must go from house to house to find a fire to tend to. I hate ringing the bells
and I ring the bell.
The door creaks open but no one is behind it. The odor of grass and dandelions comes from the hallway. I stick my head in and can see that, in the kitchen at the end of the hallway, someone has left the refrigerator open. I close it and go home.
4
After the yellow feeling
fades from my skin I lie on the grass where I want to shake off the necklace of droplets. I need to hold on to a spoon or some object of equal proportion that can simulate the scooping of the cerebral cortex. I will dig out the illness this way and an ocean of electrolytes will wash out my intestines.
Three or four
feelings later the spoon wish turns to rain. A ghost finger taps me on the shoulder but I will not disappear with it into the oak’s bear-shaped shadow. I have to watch this sparrow bounce and eat in the grass.
The wind pops
the soap bubble, my face disperses with angels of teeth and loam. The snake sheds its skin, the tree of steam leafs its way into the sky.
5
The third spiral
gives way to a beeping dump truck which comes and goes in even waves. I cannot see the construction project. I must imagine the rubble they carry away and the rubble yard they take it to.
In the rubble yard
another face is being formed, one with sponges and pimples, one with gaskets and a fedora and a mustache, one that can stomach the sky’s drills and nails, one that needs no medication. Its gravel eyes pierce the sun-cloud and as I lean over to kiss it
I am transported.
My sandals are still in the closet. I hate the closet. I hate opening it. I hate closing it. I hate putting coats in it. I hate taking coats from it. I never leave the house.
6
“Spiral, believe me,”
I say to myself, “spiral, come out of the laboratory, out of the knotty tree stub, hold yourself before my eyes, spiral, spin me into the eggshell of oblivion, that bed sinks into the bones.
I look for you
in open books, in folded sheets, in closed cupboards, in canceled checks, in locked accounts, in roaring flames, in murmuring streams, in floating foam, in floating water, in rusty canisters and half-opened eyes.
To find you
I do nothing. I do not clean the kitchen. I do not empty the cup. My lips remain parched, the face is never built, it recoils from itself. When the stream freezes I walk across. Nothing resides there.”
7
In the new spiral
the water bottle dumps continuously over my head but the water feels like air blowing warm dust over a gas station where the attendant has turned into a water bottle in which I see my face.
And I see small specks
of sand and call them the stars. I wrap my hair around my fist and punch at the invisible malady. My pocket is full of petals freshly torn from a lilac.
Freshly torn
from a lilac. Freshly torn. A lilac freshly torn. Torn from a town beside a lake. A torn flower from a town by a lake. Fresh lake. Fresh town. From a lilac freshly torn. A petal torn.
INFINITE INTERIOR
The pasture you are filled with
Fills with water, exactly what
You’ve been waiting for,
Another mirror to put you
In your place. And as you become
What you are waiting for
What you are waiting for
Becomes what you always were.
His handshake is a dragonfly
Personality sprouts like weeds along the shore
I am not a multitude and cannot splinter to follow them
I am
transported
LILY OF THE INTERIOR
A lily is sprouting from my head.
First I love it, then I want it dead.
FAMILY OF THE INTERIOR
When my wife comes home from work
The invisible bird is still hissing near
Her head. She looks for the mail and wrinkles
Her nose at a waft of cottage cheese.
I’m hungry too. I open the fridge
And the bird disappears. My son
Plays alone with a tiny tuba beneath
The unopened window, the one I call
Luminous plateau, the one he calls
Atrium, that eruption of peaceful mental
Functions which halts the heretofore
Continuous progress of the tuba’s tune.
I sense a nascent ache in my lower back.
My mood becomes a kind of verb.
I reach for my son, I kiss his cheek.
My wife turns off the sink.
FILM OF THE INTERIOR
Last night I watched my favorite movie
Because I wanted to forget how terrible
Love is, a gift, a crumbling leaf
Coughed up. A piece of plaster
Fell from the ceiling so I placed it
In a jar and labeled it “You” because I was
Looking for my friend on the ceiling
And I was looking for my friend in the night
And I was looking for my friend in my brain
And in the library and in the office
And in the bathroom, all of which
Held growing blotches of night.
In the morning my face rose like mist
Off a lake. Now it is snickering all the time
Because it loves you, it has this secret
Of ripped purple paper to show you,
It thinks of you as this green entity
Not entirely organic, but prelinguistic
And miles of fire stretching our visual field.
INSTITUTION OF THE INTERIOR
An anonymous institution
Was controlling my limbs
And my insides were turning
To crumbs. They reminded me
Of an old scone you can’t
Even hold between your fingers
But if you could get it
To your mouth it would be
Delicious, you’d fill up
Your stomach and take a nap
In the noon light shining
Through the window,
Your greasy long hair
A pool of dark light deep
In the middle of your being.
And when the delivery truck
Comes by the building,
You wake up. You become
Another institution,
One with a name that we
Could ride a bus to, and
In fact we rode a bus to you,
We asked about your policies,
You filed a missing persons
Report because I kept
Telling you how much I wept
Without you on my side.
Now that you have
Installed a tracking device
Somewhere in the ocean
Of my skin you can find me
Whenever I am gurgling coffee
Or riding my bicycle
Along the lakefront.
And I can hear the thud
Of your footsteps and I know
Now how you know.
GOD OF THE INTERIOR
My god is the god of snowdrifts.
My god is the god of dumb beasts and rocks.
I beat on the counter,
I blast a mirror in the sandstorm,
I’m looking for my god but
My god is a quickie,
My god is a Popsicle melting on the pavement
And I’m happy I have shoes.
My god is the author of seven books of poems.
My god treads upon the ground
But laughs like a ballerina.
My god yowls in a pillow
And I yowl in a pillow and together
We are the choir of angels.
My god has bad manners, shitty syntax,
And a rusty shovel heavier than snow.
Let’s help him out.
Let’s buy him a snowblower.
Let’s bring him a care package.
My god is the emperor of ice cream
And the prince of hate and the queen of voltage
And the whore of capitalism.
My god is a circuit breaker.
My god was born in the mouth of a slaughtered cow
And dropped in the sink by an indifferent nurse.
My god’s heart is an affliction.
My god’s face is an abrasion.
My god says nobody is perfect,
Nobody is holy.
Nobody can look at my god without
Feeling a wheel grinding at the ribcage.
My god is falling through the storm cloud
And needs a better parachute.
My god crawls on his belly because
My god is a saint.
My god is a suicide because
My god is a saint.
I walk around town looking
For my god in the windows
And in the bare branches
And in the bookstores
And in the dog shit.
My god lives on a fire escape.
My god has no tangible benefits to the soul.
My god is the word “No” stuck in the mouth.
My god my god every word is my god.
My god is a cutthroat.
My god consists of nothing but muscle.
My god wears too much makeup
Which blocks his pores so the sweat can’t escape.
It’s hard to know if I only have one god.
My god lives in the capital of pain.
My god is bored with the intellect and drunk by noon.
My god hates vegetables but eats them in emergencies.
My god is the shadow on the river.
My god is a good mother.
My god doesn’t give a shit.
FAREWELL, INTERIOR
1
The interior holds out its leathery hands.
It wants to take me to California
Where technicians will construct my head,
And where the streetlights are broken yolks
And small furry things crawl up my legs.
2
I decline the offer so the interior flips a switch
Which makes my teeth cold as though
I am eating ice cubes in luminous fog.
I eat the ice cubes and the city evaporates.
Rain clouds swab my eyebrows with sleep.
3
A bee lands between me and the interior
Where a thicket has sprouted up.
When I step inside I lose the ability to think
But my ability to blow suddenly into a thousand pieces
Separates me from the interior which
4
Trembles like a newborn lamb.
Poor interior, it is only a pink thing
Puking out breast milk. It is only this
Persuasive reflex churning in
The darkening hole of myself.
5
O Interior! My wounds are your wounds!
I drizzle them over your outstretched canvas
And drill holes so the light will reach us on
The other side where a canol
a field
Is waiting to wrap us in its breath.
6
Dear Interior, I have no interior!
I am a shaved head turning into a field of breath,
This is the final birth and when the wind
Starts spinning a circle of leaves
An invisible man leaps out of the center.
HÔTEL L’INTÉRIEUR
When I suck on the mint I have
The sensation that there is a hotel
In my chest and it is my duty
To clean the linens and vacuum
The hallways which are lined
With Louis Quatorze mirrors.
The guests wear red tights
And smoke tobacco from the colonies.
When they fall asleep they evaporate
So I am left with these flame-shaped curtains.
I draw a bath and snuff the candle.
I am so bored with feeling.
Oblivion
The middle of your being
I’m hungry too
I am so bored with feeling
THE
EXTERIOR
SANDWICH OF THE EXTERIOR
Chapter 1
I woke up to the news I’d be given a free sandwich. I had to wade through the flats and find the knob for the faucet. It sounded horrible, like a leaf blower and a weed whacker waltzing in a stone quarry. But for a free sandwich I was willing to take a risk.
Chapter 2
First I took a bath and imagined a waterfall filling the bathroom. But then I became stuck thinking about the water’s origin at the top of a mountain, how it had started as a trickle and plummeted to this furious crashing wall. So I closed my eyes and listened to no-tone. Whimpering grasshoppers, the train-song, pile-driving into the anthill of my brain.
Chapter 3
That was an easy solution and I was proud of myself for thinking of it so quickly. Now that I had my shoes on I was hoping to find my sandwich by the docks on the other side of the islet. Some giant milk-squirting nozzle was there, and a man who was eating a hamburger and holding a stick. I asked him, “Is this where the sandwiches are?” He looked at me and chewed.