SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Twelve
PHILIP HAMMIAL
Ps & Qs
Between wet Elvis & dry Elvis
I stand corrected
by Madam. Mind
my Ps & Qs: Peccadillos &
Quadraphonics. On cue: Gather
it in, the harvest, its faucet
in mother's closet jammed open. That my sailor
might survive in this sea she's prepared to open
a shark's belly with her teeth. Welcome
aboard, welcome to the rendering, the insouciance
of which will curtail any evacuation, even of
that effigy which his Holiness would squeeze out
for the Mass, for those widows who would project
an image of modernity & obviously fail, their kitchens
given over to scullions who make the best of what can
only be described as a chronic penile disfunction. Pick
your own peck of peppers, boys; I've got
better things to do. Like? Like
get it right, how I stand, cuffed, rump out
between a wet & a dry Elvis.
Arrows
Hereby know that the narrative in which the curare-
tipped arrows will find a home confirms the fact
that one man's slur is another's slut, i.e., camp followers
are still camp followers no matter who they follow, the
latest guru or that ancient piper who having gone
down to the sea in ships would pipe aboard
a dozen slave merchants all of them attesting to
the efficacy of silk-lined cages for those rambunctious
circus hands who drive tent stakes in deeper than the
thought of a Nietzche scholar who's seen better days, his
prepubescent students preparing shackles & a Maypole.
Yes, he'll be danced around, a soon-to-be Saint Sebastian
if he doesn't mend his ways, & soon, in the next three
minutes actually, the conjugal bed swelling with shame
until it fills the entire room, bedside tables crushed
against those baby-pink walls; make yourself at home
but if I were you I'd want to know if the Fall
was going to be gradual or steep & if the latter
I wouldn't be begging sanity from the mad; it simply
doesn't work that way & as for France, well, patience,
you'll bless it with your presence if not this year then
the next. Should, considering the possibility of a delay,
we introduce one of those cultural interventions so
popular among our cutting-edge colleagues? Too much
of a has-been, I wouldn't know where to start. How about
if, as compensation, I introduced a string section? – a bit
of heart-felt moaning while I gather my wits for one
of those whole-body feels that apparently are de rigueur if
going international is your thing. Is it mine?
Good question. What can I say? – that
I can only tie one shoe at a time. Holy, if You're here
please show yourself; my time is running out.
Rub Me
the wrong way it might come true, that wish you made
ten years ago before you said: To best a buckaroo
was what I was born to do, before you sold
that goodness stuff to Amid & Anoush who wallowing
in that stuff admitted that it was their idea to waterboard me
until I acknowledged that my interest in the ways
of the Ouled Nail was inappropriate given
my propensity for repeating the banter of disgruntled
shepherds who can't remember when or why
they lost their sheep. No excuses! Just drag
that out-of-tune piano over to the window
& toss it out. And what you whisper
to the next lamb in this line, not
in this line but in the next line, it too
is inappropriate it has no place in this poem
about music that falls through air like a hullabaloo about
nothing gone horribly wrong. What
will I do when I'm dead? I'll wear my wolf suit
to the prom; I'll ask your wife to-be to dance
with me & she will.
Hail great thief of wives-to-be
you dare to pull this carpet out from under me? No
matter, I'll crawl to your kitchen, I'll lick
your plates clean, I'll be that Little Boy Blue
who deletes the green from your Big Boy Green.
How you like them apples, your Highness? That wish
you made – that you might be a fright to all – it's most
to yourself. Best run & hide. To best a buckaroo
is what I was born to do.
Philip Hammial is originally from Detroit, and has lived in Australia since 1972. He has had 37 poetry collections published, the most recent being Detroit & Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow Press, NY, 2018). He was the Australian writer-in-residence at the Cite International des Arts in Paris for six months.
