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.