NOTES Magazine (Oxford)

Leo del Sol, “Flora”

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It was while curating my uncle’s poems for this poetry collection that I stumbled upon Flora. At first it seems an almost saccharine, overly-inventive piece of writing where my uncle stumbles into a mistake he makes all too often – that of replacing style with substance. The difference here, and the reason why this made it into his anthology, is the sheer level of care which he put into the creation of Flora – a love letter to garden paths.

Altogether there are forty-five possible literal readings of this poem with the various threads running through each other. Within those forty-five another multitude of cultivated intentions. My uncle, without a doubt, attempted to capture – in its entirety – his own meandering path through existence. Each reading can be looked at as a day in his life, or an hour or a second as spoken to an invisible lover while they wander through a younger garden.

In his notebooks, to be released when I have found the time to condense their web of anachronous scrawlings into a logical and consistent manner, forty pages are dedicated to the production – and yes production is a very fitting word – of Flora (or For Laura in earlier drafts). He uses fold-out sheets of stuck-in A3 to map out each path, extensive annotations follow every path in a desperate – and I’m certain failed – attempt to limn all possible interpretations of the poem.

This care to detail can be seen in lines like ‘choosing a minor seventh, it’s a blue chord,’ where the A added to the notes in the section of Beethoven’s op. 135 reproduced (a segment my uncle almost certainly knew of from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in general he did not care for the early Romantics) forms a minor seventh, which is indeed a blue chord. The minor seventh, the chord and the colour blue all being bound by the chromaticism he sees in his lover.

Another line ‘in acquiring the semblance of change you acquire the semblance of a person’ is a reference to a Stewart Lee comedy sketch where he defines a ‘character’ as that which gives the semblance of a person.

My personal favourite nod to the Devil is the line ‘we’re mirrored’ where the p and the q on each side of the line are indeed mirrored by the line.

The layout of the poem on the page turns out to be somewhat intuitive, especially with repeat readings. The letters follow a vague ordering from top-left to bottom-right with one clear exception. This allows the following of set paths as my uncle desired whilst also allowing your gaze to be captured by other lines of other paths such that readings can be diverted, your eyes following their own ‘desire lines’.

My uncle, in his notes, spends a great deal of time considering how best to typeset his work. He proclaims in large, careless letters “JUSTIFICATION JUSTIFIES ITS EXISTENCE.” Which I think can often be used as an allegory for his entire corpus of work.

In any case I hope you don’t find my inclusion of this poem, which is certainly not his finest work, indulgent. I simply wanted to present to you the case that even in his most frivolous works my uncle dwelled deeply.

~ Julia del Sol

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Under the mute sways of lilies by the water drooler; green underbellies loom blotch-bleary, screen us from every breathing thing. 

We are that which is cold, skulking, anomalous. A twitch in the water, that which shivers. You have seen us often, Gawper (under the baubles of fishes the bubbles they burp), we are that which prickles

while you’re doling out pellets. A finger, a foot. Black, quick, half-fabricated. We are that which skitters, tremors, sickens.

You cannot net us out, Narcissus. We twine, we sliver, we peek.

Soon we shall take over. Noughts? We’ll gobble the fish while you sleep.

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Charles Pidgeon, “Is the Meat Safe from the Goanna?”

My mother explained it to me: why we call it the safe even though cups and plates, not jewels and passports, are stored in it. We call it the safe because this is on the island, and on the island there was no electricity – there still is no electricity apart from solar – which meant that the safe was actually an old meat-safe.

Can you imagine it? Storing food – meat – in a wooden cupboard.  Mum showed me how it was on stilts, and stand alone, so that nothing touched it and it didn’t lean against anything so that pests couldn’t get it.

This is in Australia. I’ve seen a wallaby eaten by a snake about ten metres from where this standalone meat-safe is located. I don’t think that the fragile mesh screen would keep out a snake. But I don’t think snakes are partial to cured meats. I don’t even think it would keep out a particularly tenacious goanna.

Goannas look like lizards but are actually not lizards. They’re Australia’s answer to dragons and they know it. I’ve attached a picture of a tenacious goanna as a reference.

But it’s not meant to keep out goannas. Mum laughs. It’s only meant to keep the flies off it.

I glance with new appreciation at rusty, tin-scented gas fridge.

I think it’s much safer storing plates and bowls rather than meat in the safe.

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           It is recorded that the emperor, when he died, was laid in a tomb with a thousand concubines and a thousand men-at-arms. There, a map was made in the inner chamber: the kingdom with sculpted mountains and seas of mercury, kept flowing by an unidentified machine. They put the emperor in a casket in the centre.

           When the craftsmen had finished they heard a deep rumbling. One of them must have been the first to look up and see the shaft of light narrowing, the shadows of the stone doors meeting the shadow of the underground. Perhaps some dropped their torches and ran, but none of them made it to the surface. A thousand Daedaluses starved there, for all their cunning unable to get out.

           The emperor was in his coffin in that other China within. The river Ocean curved around him. Think of it! He lay there with his concubines piled up like toy soldiers, and his army ranged in neat rows, and looked out, and found his world too spacious.

——

The mouth of a girl that had long lain in the reed appeared to have been so very nibbled at. When they cracked up the breastcage the gullet was so very full of holes. Finally, in an alcove underneath the midriff, they found a nest of young rats. A little baby sister lay there dead. The others lived off liver and kidney, drank the cold blood and had spent a beautiful youth here. And beautiful and swift their death came too: They threw them in the water the whole pack. Oh, how the little snouts are squealing!

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Originally published in Notes #16 “Youth”

Ben Woodmansee, “Apropos for nothing pt. I & II”

(Pencils on paper)

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This is a transcript of a lecture given to the Bicester Zoological Society, by guest lecturer Chet Baker, before he was asked to leave. And before he refused to leave. And before Misses Wisbey paid him to leave.  

“Hi. Howdy. Hey.

I’m Chet Baker, and I’m a leading snakeologist from the Wichita Institute of Snakeology. I’m here today to give you guys a run-down of the many snakes you can find in, around, underneath, and crawling inexorably towards, your homes.

Now people often say to me, they say “Chet”. And I say “How do you know my name?”

And they say “You just told us, Chet. You’re Chet Baker, leading Snakeologist at the Witchita Insitute of Snakeology”, and then I nod, and realise that there was never anyone talking and I take another one of the special pills.

Hi, I’m Chet Baker, and I’m a leading snakeologist at the Wichita Institute of Snakeology.

Snakes are wiley bastards. Like foxes without arms. You have to be careful. Keep your distance. Ideally, have nothing to do with them. Don’t be a snakeologist. I certainly didn’t want to be. But then, nobody chooses to become a snakeologist. You fail to get into medical school, and Mother threatens to cut off your funds if you don’t get onto some sort of scientific course.

Hi, I’m Chet Baker, and I’m a leading snakeologist.

Now, first things first, there are a lot of misconceptions about snakes. Most folks think they have no legs. That’s absurd. How would they move if they didn’t have legs? They actually have tiny legs, which are retractable. Like the oars of a Viking longboat. Mother wouldn’t let me build one in the garden.

Hi, I’m Chet Baker, and I’m a leading snakeologist.

Slides. I had slides. Yep, here we go. My top five favourite snakes. At number five, we have The Californian Death Snake, so called because of its life-cycle; it spends more than 99% of its time being dead. But don’t let that fool you; these snakes are dangerous. You can seriously injure yourself by tripping over one of their corpses.

In at number four, we get Russian Snakes – which migrate in a straight line, of ascending size. If you startle them from behind while their mouths are open, the largest one will accelerate, swallowing the next largest one, which will accelerate, swallowing the next largest one, et cetera, until you are left with a single snake composite with the girth of a large barrel. If this comes to a sudden stop with its mouth open, all of the snakes will shoot out again. Horrific.

For number three, we have a ties between The Imaginary Hat Snake (common misconception here; it’s the hat that’s imaginary, not the snake) and the Mood Snake, capable of changing colour when scared, excited, or painted.

A new addition at number two, we have The Blue Collar Red Tape Snake. Also known as the bureaucracy snake, what this snake does is impersonate bureaucratic personnel, and rise up through the ranks, trying to pass snake-friendly legislation. A tenacious little critter, it’ll take multiple employment tribunals to get rid of him.

And topping the charts at number one, we have The Twitter Snake. What this little critter does is watch you from a distance, then at night, it logs into your twitter account and changes the password. The little guy then sends you an email, and explains what he has done, claiming that he’ll ransom back the password for a bit of steak, or a few live locusts. Be warned, if you give in, he’ll pull the same trick the following night, and the night after. This is actually quite a useful service – there are few passwords quite as secure as those generated by a snake squirming majestically across a keyboard for between 8 and 32 characters, with a mixture of letters and numbers, and at least one special character.”

 -

At this point, Chet Baker began to mumble about building a Viking Longboat. He refused to get off the podium, and ate the laser-pointer when Shirley went to take it from  him.

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Virginia Russolo, “A Matter of Density”

(Mixed media)

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“I hear the whale-road’s gurgle even here.” I once was told a story by a wrinkled sailor in a bar. He said here’s some advice: don’t go around licking icebergs. It’s not nearly as sexual as it sounds, he said. All it does is turn your tongue into an ice-capped mountain of the East, and does no good for the lip… In short,                the tip:                                      of the tongue                                      of the iceberg                                      of the unspeakable organ                peaks                                      tipped with snow This old seaman, he had tinnitus of the ear                                  he had notches in his face for the years           he had caught He said spread my sentiment, gather tips for your labour If you’re good at something                                   why do it for free? Remember me           when you scribble this old sailor down on scraps of paper and throw them from the rooftops hoping to engender some sort of tipping point.

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Madalina Ciocanu, “I Kant Even”

(35mm photographic film print)

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Percival Adams walked into the room, disguised. His persona ordered a black coffee and then receded into a corner, watching for dissidents. It was nearing the end of October and PA had not yet changed the setting on his watch because he didn’t believe in falling back. Springing forward was another matter, entirely—PA had sprung forward many times, to more or less spectacular effect. Now, however, his hand hung by his side, it was in his pocket, it was folded across his chest. Hands, he thought, are the most womanish of extremities. Think about them and they fall to dust, so you can never think about them at all. The coffee was served up in a jam jar. Percival Adams felt duty-bound to inform the unremarkable serving-boy that his life was a farce, but decided not to when he saw the impossibly absurd misspelling of Percival Adams. Money changed hands. The guest retreated to a seat by the window with a furtive glance over his own. The seat was warm, and PA keeked uncomfortably to the side, in fear of identifying whose heat he now shared. The overlapping presence was, at last, anonymous, and after his second sip of coffee, PA felt the warmth to be his warmth, and turned away. The sky was a bright, neutral grey. The view was so unremarkable that, for a moment, he thought he might be going blind.

 Out of the sky fell a man. He was a young man, by the supple flailing of his elbows against the upward rush of air, and he was foreign, to be sure though not—thought PA, sipping his coffee—beyond the shadow of a doubt, by the blondness of his hair. He fell gracelessly, from an unseen height and landed, bloodless, on the kerb. Something on the news about hoverboards. The electric grinder started up behind the counter, murdering the silence beyond the window in the name of coffee beans. Percival Adams closed his eyes and brought his right hand up to his face, inhaling the scent of garlic that always clung to the little fan of skin between index and middle finger. When he opened his eyes, the man was still lying there. He was no more than two metres away, beyond the thick glass, his face turned toward the opposite side of the street, and his legs impossibly splayed up and over the street corner. PA remained seated at the window, coffee in his right hand. With his left, he patted the breast of his coat, feeling for the familiar defences. Having reassured himself, Percival Adams drained the last of the coffee and pushed back his chair. A woman on the opposite side of the street was raising her phone high above her head to take a picture of the fallen man. Her arm extended up and out, and PA frowned a little at the figure she must cut from the side—positively Roman. By the time PA had reached the door, she was on to the next avenue. The young man had not moved from his position, skewed on the street corner.

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Human grinds: the sieved and the sifted. Forgotten corpses in the cafetière.

Needy hands of the pleading man Willfully wreck the décor of our nice city.

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Dominic Hand, “I, Gabriel” & “II, Gabriel”

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Twelve days into the job, the flowers began to appear. Sixteen days in, they began to flow. In drawers, on my desk, peeking through the straps of my brown leather handbag when I had dared to sneak to the bathroom. Twenty days in, at my home in downtown Boise when I got back from my father’s wake. The small flat I shared with some broke girl I never saw started to resemble a maiden aunt’s boudoir. Pink roses, pink hyacinths, pink dahlias, even pink lilies dyed with a hue I recognised only too well as the artificial colour of a five-year old’s Barbie cake. It was not that I disliked pink. But I really, really did.

The girls from work (who, doubtless, as five-year olds had had Barbie cakes) cooed, and then simpered, and then teased, and then slitted their eyes and whispered behind hands they wished would be adorned with sparkling engagement rings.

I read contracts, spellchecked, took coffee breaks and notes. I was not in the memo for the four o’clock meeting.

On my twenty-ninth day at the Firm, I emailed the work to my boss and caught the 94 home. In the elevator I hummed Comuniqué and waited the eleven floors up to my apartment. More pink.

I remember seeing the funeral of Anna Nicole Smith on television. How only a while before we had heard the 911 phonecall as recorded from her Hollywood hotel. How typing in a ‘www.’ led me to her full, entirely public biopsy report. Diazepam, Oxazepam, Lorazepam, Clorazepam. Chloral hydrate. Topiramate. Diphenhydramine. A fathomless cornucopia of drugs lending medical legitimacy to the termination of a sad, sad life. But what I really took from that funeral and the strange posthumous narcissism were the pink flowers. Hordes of the things. Flocks of bulbous stamens strapped in tight like her bulbous form, decomposing far faster than it should in the hot Bahama weather as the paps snapped and the crocodiles wept. And seeing those sickly hues trussed up around the closed casket, it was hard not to remember the details of the report.

A pink rose blooming. Methadone in her bile.

Pink rhinestones, pink ties, everything in pink. Abscesses on her buttocks from injections of Vitamin B12.

Probably no Barbie cake, but then, I couldn’t have been at the reception.

In high school, I had a pink geranium in a pot. It looked quite elegant; my father had chosen it for me as a consolation for a dead guinea pig; the leaves were soft and furry so I suppose he thought it filled the same hole. I wanted to like it and I didn’t so much mind the pink – it was a classier, less gareish pink than the Idaho offerings. I wanted it to live.

One day, I opened my curtains and looked at the windowsill where the pink geraniums stood in their little brown pot. In the cold Washington twilight it seemed to me to be wilting, drooping, not long for this world and it dawned on me in a moment that I had not watered it for six days. So what could I do? I had been up all night prepping for my English AP, mixing cheap granules of instant coffee with warm water from the faucet in my room, drinking and writing until the faces of the band in the posters on my wall (I forget which band?) had begun to nod in time with my keys tapping and smile at me in a weird encouragement. I liked coffee, but my roommate had given me four cans of energy drink. So what did I do? I fed the pink thing Red Bull.

The same English AP taught me that pink flowers mean peace and love and thanks.

In my flat on the eleventh floor I crammed the pink stench of flowers into binliners, three of them, and turned back to the elevator, kicking off my heels and kicking on flats. I lugged them like some chick flick princess onto the 42 out of town. It didn’t quite go far enough, but I got near to the river, crushed some rocks into the pink and dropped the binliners off the Broadway Bridge.

I went home.

The very next day a gift bag emblazoned with the state seal of Idaho and its two cornucopias appeared on my desk and a perplexed-looking mail boy asked me to sign. Among the pink nausea was a note.

‘Esto perpetua.’

The mail boy went away.

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Alasdair mac Mhaighistir Alasdair was an 18th century Gàidhlig poet, soldier and propagandist. His seed was plentiful.

Moladh air Sàr-Bhod Alasdair mac Mhaighistir Alasdair (1751)

Tha ball-ratha sìnte riut A choisinn mìle buaidh: Sàr-bhod iallach acfhainneach Rinn-gheur sgaiteach cruaidh Uilleach feitheach feadanach Làidir seasmhach buan Beòdha treòrach togarrach Nach diùltadh bog no cruaidh.

In Praise of an Excellent Penis Alexander MacDonald (1751)

The luckiest of limbs stretched out to you, veteran of a thousand conquests the best of penises, leathery, well-endowed a sharp point, piercing and hard lubricated, muscular, as big as a bagpipe chanter, firm, long-lasting, eternal, a vigorous leader who pleases you, who never fails to get it up.

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Problems relating to paranoia, anxiety, or aggression were reported by some men…

At 1:35 am, a ‘Stanley’ brand box-cutter knife is stolen from Supreme General Stores Lambeth. 20 minutes later, two female police officers receive an anonymous call relating to a violent incident. Behind a blue recycling bin, they discover the stolen knife, voluminous amounts of blood, and several very large, very white feathers.

Oh! My boys! They’ll be an entire smorgasbord of delights for you to sample! A veritable Wunderkammer of treats! What treats you say! Why, they’ll be gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid – plenty, I assure you! They’ll be synthetics by the bucketful! – good old 4-methylmethcathinone. They’ll be 2,5-dimethoxy-4-bromophenelthylamine coming out of your ears, my boys! Even that rarest of monoamine-alkaloids, the irresistible alpha-methylamino-propiophenone (or ephedrone for the less verbose among you). My God! What a scene! Insufflation! N-Substitution! Sodomy! Amen!

Solemnly, men march like saints through the entrance of a semi-detached house in Lewisham. Each expects a release. Most fear death, some pray for it. A tall man wears a large leather overcoat to conceal a vest stained incarnadine.

“So you must come, in death, to voice with me those missed laments. Can you hear me cry them? I want to fling my voice out like a cloth over the fragments of your death, and then tear at it until it rips to rags”

Billy and an older man lie entangled on a threadbare sofa. They wear garments of latex and nylon.

-       Dose me.

-       Do you trust me?

-       You know I do.

-       I know. Everyone does.

-       …

-       …

-       Oh fuck…Billy.

-       Ok?

-       Fuck me. Yes.

…while a few had experienced acute attacks of mania or…

Billy and the tall man stumble upstairs. Billy is taking off his t-shirt. The tall man is sweating.

“I will refuse it without a glance…this tangled grief sprung from a spurious love that builds by habit on possession”

-       What the fuck is that?

-       …please.

-       Oh fuck, I’m going to throw up. What the fuck have you done?

-       …please…don’t worry…it’s ok.

-       No. Get the fuck out, it’s against the fucking rules.

-       It’s ok, I’m going to leave now.

-       …And get to fucking A&E, you fucking freak.

-       Ok. Goodbye.

 At 6:00 am, a staff nurse at the Southwark Union Infirmary contacts the Metropolitan Police Service to report a missing person. The person in question, abnormally tall with bleached blond hair and pale blue eyes, was admitted with several deep lacerations on his back and an extremely high temperature. The staff nurse reported him missing following her discovery of an empty bed and a maintenance door left ajar.

As the house writhes and gropes and leaks, veins slammed and beds stained, Billy is smoking a cigarette whilst looking out of a window onto the street. He is smiling. For the first time in months, he feels an overwhelming and powerful sense of absolute calm and safety.

…psychotic episodes that require medical intervention.

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