Monday, October 31, 2011

Chimes Street Journal



Queering the Confederacy:
Chimes Street Journal XIX-XXI
__________________

“the palm tree
out my window”
—John Wieners,
August 11, The Journal of
John Wieners Is to Be
Called 707 Scott Street
For Billie Holiday

she be butterfly mcqueen—
knowing nothin about babies
but lots about young men

she didn’t care about—
the day or the arms of the
spiral nebula galaxy

her tarot deck was enough—
to clue her into each day and
a young guy’s adam’s apple

slipping down his bell bottoms—
him standing nude at night by
the window, did it matter?

just the joy of him around—
hearing him move in the rooms
breathing hard in the apartment

like a delta verb unfolding—
her lips brushing his bellybutton
more like a cat than a woman

unraveling she thought—
all the hidden secrets of the
world bending down doing it

but the delta demanded—
more than just a dinge slacker
drugs & her attentions

these weren’t the kind of—
decadent powers that the
delta dimensions needed

there were special moments—
and motions going downward
inward toward decadence

getting lewd & unconscious—
more than just faggoty dreams
could possibly come up with

behind the dope the dawning—
realization that some hideous
knowledge was spewing her face

it came back to haunt her—
legacy of old lovers like a savage
going down on moses once again

old carothers mccaslin buying a—
mistress for his slave-lover thucydus
then making love to their daughter

then waiting for his young son—
committing even more incest and
miscegenation with his progeny

his own daughter, his own son—
this heritage of human ownership
this blaxploitation doing down low

Chimes Street Journal XX

“at times called evil
because of this world”
—John Wieners,
August 11, The Journal of
John Wieners Is to Be
Called 707 Scott Street
For Billie Holiday

from that moment on—
being born plantation-bred
like bon of interracial love

ike mccaslin reading it—
finally understanding what
the ledgers really meant

incestuous miscegenation—
between father, daughter
and sucking off his own son

“no, no, not even him”—
the pure and perfect incest
the ur-sanctuary primal rape

henry sutpen appalled—
by his own brother a mulatto
he’d fallen in love with him

they’d got it on there—
in the ole miss dormitory
eulalia getting her revenge

then dovetailing down into—
go down moses and doing
the absalom down-low thing

her apocryphal history—
like the falkner family set forth
in unvanquished short stories

shadow families, shadow sons—
shadow daughters, ongoing
shadow performances

the old colonel’s legacy—
the incestuous coupling of
her lips with creole dinge

she became delta autumn—
tallahatchie river dreams
she didn’t hate the south

“i don’t hate it,” she said—
the worthless oral intercourse
creaming her cumly lips

she felt orphaned from—
herself, dirty yet shameless
knowing true adultery now

her poet identity—
written down in a ledger
a plantation commissary note

ledgers & delta fiction—
enigmatic manuscripts
full of hidden sin, sex

a disillusioned sense—
of bondage & deliverance
cryptic black slave cock

sex after knowing that—
a collaborative negro text
her inmost-me was dinge

yoknapatawpha cum—
elegiac wasted loves and
corrupted imagination

gone hippie innocence—
she had a secret of her own
she be a dinge queen now

Chimes Street Journal XXI

“the legacy given
us at our birth”
—John Wieners,
August 11, The Journal of
John Wieners Is to Be
Called 707 Scott Street
For Billie Holiday

it comes back to—
haunt her, betraying the
moment of her birth

it wasn’t a shameful—
legacy like bon’s mulatto
prick when he was born

miss faulkner is discrete—
colonel sutpen rats around
down in the big easy

finds out eulalia is back—
no longer back home down
there in haiti with her father

old man sutpen finding out—
his exiled negro son is married
with a kid in the vieux carré

a young handsome bon vivant—
a flamboyant beautiful young man
courting french quarter culture

but when did he really find out—
that eulalia was dinge not spanish
why did he throw them out?

eulalia tried to hid it—
the midwife didn’t want sutpen
to see his own newborn son

and when he forced his way—
into the plantation mansion dark
bedroom & opened the curtains

that’s when sutpen saw it—
what discrete genteel miss faulkner
doesn’t say about the kid

the same shock moviegoers—
felt back in the blaxploitation ‘60s
that french flick saying it all

“my baby’s black!!!” up there—
on the drive-in american screens
directed by claude bernard-aubert

a whole sanctuary-esque—
chapter could be written about
that absalom bedroom scene

the newborn youth naked—
pretty as a black jesus baby
born in a plantation manger

bon sutpen’s penis black—
jet-black as the ace of spades
her mother’s legacy revealed

he threw them out—
cursed her for ruining his
sutpen dynastic future plans

to become delta bourbon—
to be a southern gentleman
a mississippi cotton landowner

how could he be an aristocrat—
with a “nigger” son his legacy
and so he got remarried fast

but even so henry his son—
turned out to be a hick faggot
falling in love with his own brother

gawd knows what they did in bed—
one can just hear colonel sutpen
in his shiloh tent cursing henry

bon not only queered his son—
but was gonna marry his daughter
and set up his own dinge dynasty





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