September 6: Poetry Workshops, Good Tired, "History of Pepperoni"

This past week, I led a couple poetry workshops based on prompts from John Ashbery poems.  The anniversary of Ashbery's death was September 3.  The great poet would have been 93 this year.

For all my friends who put up with my Ashbery musings and obsessing this week, I offer the poem below.  Something I wrote on Thursday.  I'm not sure if it's any good, but it makes me happy.

I'm tired this evening, but a good tired.  The result of mowing the lawn this afternoon, leading a Zoom workshop this evening, and drinking a couple glasses of cheap wine.  My son is screaming at one of his friends on the computer, and my puppy is sleeping next to me on the couch.  She's also exhausted.  From barking at passing cars.  Jumping up and down from the couch.  Chewing on things she's not supposed to chew.

I am ready for some rest.  A good night's sleep.

Saint Marty wishes all his disciples pleasant dreams.

History of Pepperoni

by:  Martin Achatz

after "Sleepers Awake"

Just before or during or after,
I turn myself inside out, look
for what I've just lost, mid-snore
or mid-dream, where I was
at Pizza Hut with John Ashbery,
him telling me about the history
of pepperoni, its roundness and spice,
how he painted with it, or was that Jackson
Pollock?  Maybe Andy Warhol,
Study in Pepperoni No. 32.  Ashbery
was old and young.  Fell asleep
mid-sentence, but kept talking,
writing, it was his best work
about love in his eighties, most
of his life in a museum somewhere,
and his lover (Husband, godammit!
he growled) would change his clothes
when he soiled them, wash
the flaccid flesh of his old young
body, tell him how beautiful he was
in his sleep, when poems hovered above,
around him like mosquito angels.

September 4: Loaves of Black Bread, Labor Day, Coming to a Close

When the three fools found the communal kitchen, whose main job was to make lunch for workers in the slaughterhouse, everybody had gone home but one woman who had been waiting for them impatiently.  She was a war widow.  So it goes.  She had her hat and coat on.  She wanted to go home, too, even though there wasn't anybody there.  Her white gloves were laid out side by side on the zinc counter top.

She had two big cans of soup for the Americans.  It was simmering over low fires on the gas range.  She had stacks of loaves of black bread, too.

She asked Gluck if he wasn't awfully young to be in the army.  He said he was.

She asked Billy Pilgrim what he was supposed to be.  Billy said he didn't know.  he was just trying to keep warm.  

"All the real soldiers are dead," she said.  It was true.  So it goes.

There's something ominous about this passage.  Billy and Edgar and Gluck are the last to show up for dinner.  The communal kitchen is deserted.  All that's left is a war widow, some soup, and loaves of black bread.  Soon, Edgar will be dead.  The bombs will start falling in a matter of days.  Things are drawing to a close on the German front.

I have the same feeling this Labor Day Monday.  It has been slow and quiet.  I got up around 8:30 this morning, and I've been working ever since.  Lesson planning.  Grading. E-mailing.  Now, blogging.  I will be having one final summer dinner with my family this evening.  Then, early bedtimes for my kids.  School for them tomorrow.

I always feel this kind of pall on Labor Day.  Much is coming to a close.  Summer and all its attendant freedoms will be memories by tomorrow night.  For myself, this week is going to be incredibly busy. Aside from work work and school work and teaching work, I've got a couple poetry workshops (tomorrow afternoon and Thursday evening) and a poetry open mic (tomorrow night).  That's why I've been so busy today.  Trying to get my shit together for the entire week to preserve what little sanity I still possess.

Welcome to autumn.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for all the check marks on his to-do list.