Three Poems After Bill Yarrow’s THE LICE OF CHRIST

by Jefferson Hansen

Bill Yarrow divides his latest book, The Lice of Christ (MadHat), into three sections, each of which explores a specific poetic form. Indeed, it could be argued that the book is about form itself, but we will leave that discussion to tomorrow’s post, which will review the book. Today, I will write an imitation of each of the three forms Bill posits in the book.

1.     If You

for Bill Yarrow

if you work away in Omaha

you may think of the dales of Wisconsin

and wonder what happened to Houdini

and if you go to outer Antwerp

you may consider the many roads and routes

to get you to a cherished place in Rome

and if you end up in Nevada

you may forget to gamble and whore

and go to artsy movies at the cineplex

and if you titter away the hours in Paris

you may chomp on escargots

and wish you were eating a hairy burger

and if you drop down in New York

you may wish you tried Trenton instead

the history is more circumscribed

and if you stop in Washington, D.C.,

your eyes may bug out and burn

as they look up at the absent tall buildings

and if you rip and laugh in Mongolia

you may consider chomping cheese

Italy makes it strange, and sometimes best

you may simply not be where you are

like Johnny Cash singing “Big River”

on the outskirts of Tel Aviv

2.

Composition

                        for Bill Yarrow

•The composition may demand more than it ought.

•The composition rests on a cushion of thought and prereflection. Tradition also plays a role, but we won’t talk about that now.

•A composition may or may not matter, but sometimes matters some.

•The matter of a composition is inert marks on a paper or computer. The composition lives in hearing or seeing it in air, or e(i)ther.

•Sometimes energy does not equal mc².

•Human beings are not compositions. We are more variable and complicated than than the most layered and discontinuous collages. We are not what we are.

•The intent of a composition always matters, at least.

•Snowstorms can blind the trajectory of a composition. Compositions can otherwise lose their way, and sometimes those are the most interesting ones.

•Some prefer compositions that get away from themselves.

•A list is a form of a composition, although often not a particularly interesting one.

•Interest is in the ear of the beholder, to a justifiable or unjustifiable extent. There is always also indifference.

•Compositions may wish against their very arc.

•Some compositions don’t arc, they sway and shimmy, shatter and scatter, size up and sizzle. Others just do what they are supposed to.

•A composition cannot be simply boring unless it wants to.

•Sometimes, simple matters more than complex.

•A composition may be layers of pulses, each shaking and shimmying to its own beat, that occasionally match up, creating for a moment of magic, only to then fall back to not being typically sized up.

3.

The Guy Wished

            —for Bill Yarrow

The guy wished for a different kind of day, one with

turquoise skies and leaves of fragile, budding green.

Instead, he got the day he realized he had arthritis

in his left knee. The word came not from a doctor.

In fact, there was no word at all, just the realization

that was months in the making. In winter he thought

the stiffness and pain resulted from some ill-fitting boots

he had stupidly just bought. It went away. When it

came back in the spring he thought it came from the

way he favored his ankle for a week after twisting it.

In the summer he chalked it up to the relentless heat.

One day in the fall he suddenly just knew that it was

arthritic, and that he had a decade of sodium naproxen

in front of him, before he had to face the knife, as

his dad did, as his older buddy Frank did, as many must.