Given aid and succor, perhaps a thousand men
of good character, plus a thorough commander
might hold off the armies of Khotan. Looking
down the rows of poplars, we sought to mystify
the enemy, but ended with the mystification of
our own men and women. "Alone!," she said,
taking infinite pains to do so. Fringe groups
hid in the forests at the edge of the plain.
Residues of the past posted in strong positions.
Defending or attacking, willy-nilly, a general
must hold his tongue so as not to tip his hand.
He found his troops less reliable than ever,
unwilling to study ground, to realize how
important it is to choose positions with care
on more exposed terrain. Another child dead,
another whose remains were not found.
One cigarette apiece they were allotted,
a humble beginning. Ever-widening circles
lapped the shores of the cow-pond. The nation
untenable, after all those years of promise.
I was reading Chekhov’s "Three Sisters" again
for the last time when I lost the timetable my travel
agent had slipped into the envelope holding my ticket.
Someone said I should ask the conductor to give
me a new one. I said, "Hell, who really cares where
we’re going or when we’ll get there?" The train itself
certainly didn’t care who I was or where I was going.
It just kept up its little mantra: Ticket-taker, ticket-taker,
ticket-taker, ticket-taker, ticket-taker . . . well, you get
my meaning, don’tcha, buddy? If pressed to say so,
I’d say that the passengers in this car are funny,
sensual, and poignant. The guy in front of me goes
so far as to amuse himself by, every ten or fifteen
minutes, plucking a single strand of hair from the back
of the head of the woman in front of him, the one who’s
been sleeping ever since we pulled out of the station
in Detroit. Still, a full bladder will often make my visit
to the lavatory at the rear of the car worthwhile and
rewarding. Wherever we’re going we must be running
along the terminator now–there’s sunshine to the right
and darkness, with looming thunderheads, off to the
left. Excitement is pitched at a level of intensity that seems
more like ecstasy than potty-mouthed travel. The miles
are repetitive, but never really mawkish. The conductor
is terrific in his well-pressed uniform, stopping to pull
out of his watch pocket a lidded, round watch just like the one
my grandfather left to my father and my father passed on
to me–superbly crafted. Tickety-tock, tickety-tock,
tickety-tock. The train, while never for a moment losing
its momentum, integrates us into landscape after landscape.
Around the time that dawn breaks on the prairie, some of my
fellow passengers wake up and begin to converse–you know,
mundane stuff with bits of confusion and banality mixed in.
A mother with two kids cuddled up on the seat next to her
says to one, "Don’t be a chatterbox, chatterbox, chatterbox."
Across the aisle, two gentlemen in publishing are having
a little talk about how most trade house editors get their MSS
from agents now, and how, with the "whole anthrax thing"
folks are much less inclined to be reading unsolicited work.
I make a note of that, and wait to be called for breakfast.
Unless otherwise specified, no infringement intended,
all collusions pipelined into our hemisphere will, until further
notice, be tax-free. Respectable owners no longer need fear
eminent domain or undue appropriations (look up under
"honeysuckle"). Collections of like terms, although you may
object, are subjected to editorial scrutiny and often revised.
Imagine January, spread out before us like a beach, the sanctity
of that moment. We were always unsure (depending what "un"
meant) who really owned the key of C-sharp minor. Sound
penetrates the walls, and the whole thing threatens to go nuclear.
Hundreds of flights up, all was quiet, except for a slight rustle
as we unfolded our lies. The singer’s nose grew longer as he sang,
every verse in three languages. Phantom oil rigs dotted the Gulf,
the maps to them unlocked. Unsold books attack Alaskan shores.
Halvard Johnson has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and Baltimore City Arts. Four collections of poetry—Transparencies and Projections, The Dance of the Red Swan, Eclipse, and Winter Journey—from New Rivers Press are archived at the Contemporary American Poetry Archives. Recent collections include Rapsodie espagnole, G(e)nome, The Sonnet Project, Theory of Harmony—all from www.xpressed.org—and The English Lesson, from Unicorn Press in North Carolina. A new poetry collection called Guide to the Tokyo Subway is just out from Hamilton Stone Editions. He lives in New York City.