The Second Sex
Page 1
ALSO BY MICHAEL ROBBINS
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in Penguin Books 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Michael Robbins
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Robbins, Michael, 1972–
[Poems. Selections]
The second sex / Michael Robbins.
pages cm.—(Penguin Poets)
eBook ISBN 978-0-698-16901-2
I. Title.
PS3618.O315244A6 2014
811'.6—dc23
2014014466
Version_1
Contents
Also by Michael Robbins
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Springtime in Chicago in November
Live Rust
Sonnets to Edward Snowden
The Second Sex
That’s Incredible!
Be Myself
Günter Glieben Glauchen Glöben
Seasons in the Abyss
To Anthony Madrid
Not Fade Away
Out of the Cellar
Peel Off the Scabs
Mississippi
Sunday Morning
40th Anniversary Edition
Overnight
Within a Budding Grove
Poem Beginning with a Line from Samuel Johnson
In the Air Tonight
Friend of the Devil
Rhymes
The Song Remains the Same
Sweat, Piss, Jizz & Blood
Country Music
Oh Wow
On Making Mixes for Girls Who Won’t Give Death Metal a Chance
Butcher Holler
Lose Myself
Michael Jackson
Political Poem for Michael Robbins to Sing
Twentieth Century Fox
To the Drone Vaguely Realizing Eastward
Sweet Virginia
Sticky Fingers
Big Country
Out Here in the Fields
Acknowledgments and Notes
About the Author
to the memory of Bill Knott
Look at your money. No one is smiling.
—ALLAN PETERSON
Springtime in Chicago in November
Springtime in Chicago in November.
My forty-first year to heaven.
My left hand wants to know
what my right hand is doing.
Oh. Sorry I asked.
First comes love, which I disparage.
I blight with plagues a baby carriage.
Green means go and red means red.
Now we’re cooking with Sudafed.
Steer by, deerfly. I hereby declare
the deer tick on my derriere
a heretic. Derelict, hunker down.
Get the Led out, Goodman Brown.
Get thee behind me, Nathan.
Horseman, ramble on.
Springtime snows white hairs on me.
Green means go and go means gone.
Live Rust
In the clearing I stand,
a boxer! Putting all your shit
in boxes, dragging the boxes
to this stupid clearing.
A man walks into his forties.
Says, You lost me at “hello.”
I’m tying balloon animals.
Here you go. That’s a rooster.
To burn out or to fade away?
I’m keeping my options open.
I’m looking for option C.
I’m boning up on Coptic.
I’m scrolling past the Dead Sea,
talking to Christ on the road
from Kiss My Ass to Damascus.
I kick my prick. I refute it THUS.
Be tawdry for me, thou.
Be like unto Sierra Mist
when it opens in the first
cold of spring. Be a Chippewa.
According to the oral history,
outside the Tastee Freez
you sucked on a chili dog
with your head between your knees.
The United States of Fuck You Too
is what you’re about to receive.
You can shoot all the kids you like,
but you can never leave.
The mind is a terrible thing.
That outboard motor.
The tedium is the message.
The chimp signs hugs in his enclosure.
Is this Mick Jagger which I see before me?
Come, let me clutch thee.
I consider the lilies beneath me.
I tell the Magdalene not to touch me.
I tell the miniature schnauzer not to swarm.
I tell my willy it’s getting warm.
I tell the content to fuck the form.
Sonnets to Edward Snowden
Who is the United States?
The grassy knoll elaborates.
Ask not what the Dew can do for you.
Ask about our special rates
for armed forces personnel.
All right, then, I’ll go to hell.
These colors don’t run—
red, white, and carbohydrate gel.
Navy SEALs are good to go
for AvP 2.0.
All along the White House fence
the Redskins mascot leads the chants.
Full fathom five Osama lies.
The blue-chip Dow industrials rise.
Who is the United States?
A snail paces by the Golden Gate’s
anti-swan-dive hotline sign.
The snail is going to be fine.
Disabling a suicide
detector is prohibited.
A snail searches a starless sky
with the bionic arm he calls an eye.
The stars have got the bee disease.
The disappearing colonies
are no longer buzzworthy.
So ferry cross New Jersey.
I’m a black kid in a hoodie.
This land’s the place I love. Et odi.
Who is the United States?
A grief ago—I’m bad with dates—
our fathers brought forth a queer
shoulder in a convex mirror.
I find it hard.
It was hard to found.
Unscrew the lids from the jars!
Prometheus outbound
on Aeroflot follows the Moskva
down to Gorky Park.
I’m proud to be a terrorist.
Mistakes were made at Plymouth Rock.
You might not be aware of this.
The ant’s a centaur, more or less.
The Second Sex
After the first sex, there is no other.
I stick my gender in a blender
and click send. Voilà!
Your new ex-girlfriend.
You cuckold me with your husband.
I move a box with Ludacris.
The captain turns on, we begin our descent.
Be gentle with me, I’m new to this.
I say the wrong thing. I have OCD.
My obsessive compulsions are disorderly.
I say the wrong thing, did I already say?
I drive my dominatrix away.
The coyote drives her in a false-bottomed van.
He drops her in the desert. The bluffs are tan.
She’ll get a job at Chili’s picking up butts.
I feel ya, Ophelia, I say to my nuts.
And there is pansies. That’s for thoughts.
That’s Incredible!
I will pull an airplane with my teeth
and I will pull an airplane with my hair.
I write about cats. Cats, when you read this,
write about me. Be the change you want to see.
I’ve legally changed my name to Whites Only.
Changed it back, I should say.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME made me
the man I am today.
That, and the University of Phoenix.
Old man, take a look at my life.
Charles Simic, in the gloaming, with a roach,
take a look at my life. I’m a lot like you.
A man stands up and says I will catch
a bullet in my teeth! That’s incredible!
He eats a sword, hilt first, and spits
up a million people persons.
A dolphin pulls an airplane with its blowhole
and keeps the black box for itself.
Bottleneck dolphins don’t even have bones,
yet here we are, giving them medals . . .
This is my ass. And that is a hole
in ground zero. I know which is which.
It’s the one with the smoke pouring out.
This is my handle; this is my spout.
Be Myself
I took back the night. Wrested it
from the Chinese, many of whom
were shorter than me.
Two billion outstretched Chinese
hands, give or take a few
thousand amputees.
A cheap knockoff, the night
proved to be—Nokla
not Nokia on the touch screen.
Well, even Old Peng gotta eat,
Confucius say. Or maybe that
was Cassius Clay.
In me, folks, a movable object
meets a resistible force. I haven’t
worked a day since the accident
of birth. Born of woman,
my father the same. Make love
then war. I’ll bring round the car.
These children that I spit on
are immune to my consultations.
I’ll have none myself. It isn’t
(Write it!) a fiasco. I am small,
I contain platitudes.
Günter Glieben Glauchen Glöben
Says here to burn the rich and take their shit.
I’m paraphrasing. I’m barely grazing
the surplus. Do the rich have inner lives,
like little lambs and Antigone?
They never give me their money.
Bill Gates, the great humanitarian,
stands upon a peak in Darien.
I said Bill, I believe this is killing me.
A sculptor sees the statue in the slab,
the shiv in the toothbrush. The stab.
I plump for Red October. Sink or swim
or wade or creep or fly or soak
it all in kerosene. Miguel Hernández,
tell me, if you know, why there’s a darkness
on the edge of credit. My student loans?
Forget it. Burn it up. Let’s go for broke.
Watch the shares go up in smoke. Nostalgia’s
just another word that starts with No.
Seasons in the Abyss
Du Fu, you dufus, that’s not
a goose. You’re drunk.
Please allow me to introduce . . .
no, that’s not your horse.
(No, nor woman neither.)
Into every life a little
Freud must fall. I’m a fraud.
I stole that pun. Like I said:
I’m afraid. Into every light
a little moth must blunder . . .
Cue power ballad.
I don’t know what to call a spade.
The sky will lately swish stuff.
I open my barbaric yap.
Du Fu joins me on the veranda.
We are old and full of crap.
The millionaires across the way,
their homes are all ablaze.
We like it when those homes collapse
like moths before clichés.
To Anthony Madrid
Distant is our exit, unmoving the traffic;
useful are the implements of a trade;
movies in 3-D are intolerable.
Ash on the wind, nobody’s naming names;
neither the drive-thru voice that takes my order
nor the divine can be clearly understood.
Bleak is the arbor, pungent the homeless;
apples for apples, a fool’s swap;
never write down your password.
Left lane closed, stonecraft asks patience;
an athlete’s shoe, many covet it;
the wise are full of loathing.
Tick harbors pathogens, bull’s-eye rash;
who trusts will be deceived;
one in five goes undiagnosed.
Summer in the city, girl out of college
cannot install the A/C;
three dollars to withdraw cash.
Long the line for coffee, great my need;
the shaven adepts seat their gods in grain;
no right turn on red.
North wind, trees bow down;
gaily skitters the Juicy Juice carton;
a car alarm is no sign of theft.
Fresh out the kitchen is the remix,
strong the noise of the ambulance bay;
pull out slow until you can see.
Buttered and shaggy the bees;
a man fishes in a dumpster,
I look away; angels are real.
Longtime listener, first-time caller;
dogs know more than they let on;
show me on the doll where I touched you.
The cleric bars the clinic doors;
single-celled, the House Majority Whip;
very well then, I contradict you.
Distant our exit, unmoving the traffic;
useless the smoking cessation kit;
a wise adage, Expect Delays.
Not Fade Away
Half of the Beatles have fallen
and half are yet to fall.
Keith Moon has set. Hank Williams
hasn’t answered yet.
Children sing for Alex Chilton.
Whitney Houston’s left the Hilton.
Hendrix, Guru, Bonham, Janis.
They have a tendency to vanish.
Bolan, Bell, and Boon by car.
How I wonder w
here they are.
Hell is now Jeff Hanneman’s.
Adam Yauch and three Ramones.
[This space held in reserve
for Zimmerman and Osterberg,
for Bruce and Neil and Keith,
that sere and yellow leaf.]
Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings,
Stinson, Sterling, Otis Redding.
Johnny Thunders and Joe Strummer,
Ronnie Dio, Donna Summer.
Randy Rhoads and Kurt Cobain,
Patsy Cline and Ronnie Lane.
Poly Styrene, Teena Marie.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Out of the Cellar
Windows to wash and dust to dust.
You must improve your archaic bust.
In the name of extremes, and of
Krispy Kremes, and of mascara metal,
amen. I mean, come on,
I’ve known rivers. I know seems.
I rent my shoes. Daddy worked
the pneumatic tubes. Hold steady,
Holy See. You’ve really got
a hold on me.
Because your friends don’t dance,
I’m applying for grants. Thanks,
Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.
I don my customary suit of solemn black.
It takes a nation of morons to hold me back.
Peel Off the Scabs
Peel off the scabs! Unscrew
the daughters themselves from their jambs!
God became a man,
surely I can do the same.
I don’t know wrong from light.
I can’t tell my bright from left.
I really must be going.
I must be going soft.
I and I am I because I know
I wanna be your little dog.
Don’t spit me out. Just swallow me.
I’ll be your burning synagogue.
O Captain! my Tennille! the Eagles
will come and pull out his eyes.
Jesus coming back, they say,
and we’ll all shout Surprise!
Is it any wonder I’ve got
too much blood on my hands? The calls
are coming from inside the house.
I’m sick of my insane demands.
Mississippi
Old news, Orion, old Ford: