granny & the bathtub or (in the baskets along the pavement on the
rua da prata the bananas for sale are tremendously yellow in the sunlight)
the bananas are not yellow in the sunlight
the sunlight turns their yellow off
bananas are the apotheosis of sunlight
antitheses of everything that’s off
which would you rather have, someone
asked—
the yellow of bananas, or its opposite,
your name, or the yellow of bananas?
Who would shrug to such a question, or
deny it?
We all
know, and have learned since the earliest childhood,
That
yellow is more in bananas than bananas in yellow.
This knowledge has not stopped us,
however,
From preferring yellow.
If, though (and the questions must be
stated),
Yellow is not yellow in the way
bananas are bananas,
How then does one get through a
typical day,
Is
not-yellow more useful than the affirmation of bananas
Granny used to tell me to use yellow
in the bathtub.
Granny used to tell me duckies weren’t
bananas.
Granny used to tell me things that
never helped me
Determine if the use of yellow was
less than yellow.
I went to the banana merchant one
sunny fine day
And asked
for two kilos of his highest quality yellow.
He looked
at me the way merchants do when asked such questions,
He looked at me and he sold me no
bananas.
The morning
after my mother died i was eating a bowl of yellow
When a knock came at the door. It was my mother.
Of
course. Haven’t I always told you not to put your yellow in a bowl,
It belongs on a plate. Here. Use this one. And she slammed one down.
when i die
i’ve always known i would turn to yellow,
reflecting
somehow the sunlight in the grave.
there,
it’s never night, night’s also dead,
i will be
not i will be
in the
baskets along the pavement of the
rua da prata the bananas for sale are
tremendously
yellow in the sunlight
on the rua
da prata the shrewd banana merchants
have become yellow, like their bananas
the banana
merchants buy their bananas directly
from monkeys who, being shrewder but less
mercantile, laugh more freely
the
monkeys’ knowledge and the bananas’, not
entirely analogous, is no more or less
so than
the merchants’
yellow is
the quality the monkeys sell, but the
merchants think what they are buying is
bananas
along the
pavement banana buyers stroll, and
become the sunlight in a manner not
unbefitting
bananas,
monkeys, merchants, buyers (all
eaters of bananas but bananas), children of
sunlight, on the rua da prata
tremendously
yellow. Tremendously.
how
monkeys hold adverbs in their bellies like truth
while we shrewdly trade bananas
you have
heard it said that yellow has no
opposite, but monkeys disagree – the opposite
of yellow is this
yellow days
on a good
day
but what
is a good day?
i see the
sun as an overturned turnip truck,
the
turnips dancing their happy deaths
On a bad
day
but what
is a bad day?
the sun is
a charred tuna on beds of burning lemongrass,
the tuna
flopping on its barbecued grave in the incarcerated sky
On other
days
but are
there other days?
the sun is
just the sun,
and tuna
and turnips are in the sea and the earth,
And that
is that
d
in the
baskets along the pavement of the rua da prata the bananas for sale are
tremendously yellow in the sunlight. hermadida cox strides in silver sandals.
She is of the lineage of the third provedor
of the Hospital Real de Todos os
Santos, which until now has made little difference. Juan de capos da
masa di conquistadodo du alvararo comes from a long family of banana merchants,
which has made much difference. Hermadida and juan are about to meet, not over
bananas, as one might expect, but below them. ms. Cox, whose nickname is nixi,
is fretting about her pet poodle, albert, who’s very cute but has a present
problem with indigestion, causing consternation. Senor de capos da masa di
conquistadodo du alvararo is obsessed with the daughter of senor de
conquistadodo da alvararo di masa du capos, the banana merchant across the way,
who has recently returned from amerika after a lengthy absence, quite
transformed, and is temporarily helping her father sell bananas, to great
effect, including the notable decline of juan’s revenues. He casts now barrowsfull in the targus daily,
brownspotted saddies, as he calls them, but in Portuguese, after a pessoa poem,
or so he thinks. Juan’s marriage is less than good enough and he has
compensated for this perhaps more tragic decline by means of his bananas. Now, though, he is in an alfacinha tizzy, his
marriage being what it is, his bananas becoming what they are, the banana
merchant’s daughter stretching his diameter of joy and sorrow in the ancient
way, and unbeknownst to him in any rational or sensuous sense, nixi just
appearing. Wearing just a straw straw
hat, lightly magenta’d sundress, and silver sandals, concerned only of albert,
still it is challenging not to be distracted by the bananas in the baskets,
albert’s unfortunate duodenum giving way to yellow’s temporarily superior
existence. In the brilliant sunlight the
bananas’ yellowness is tremendous, paling lemons and rapeseed, turning butter
brown. They redefine yellow in such a
way as to make all other redefinitions seem restatements, as if yellow comes
into existence solely and firstly on the rua da prata, as if it seeks these
bananas to call its very own and see, virginally, itself. Nixi briefly loses
her breath, her thoughts of albert. But,
then, now, look, here, there, upahead, totheright … – … – … brownspotted
saddies. She recalls the pessoa poem, or thinks she does. Albert returns rushedly and with him guilt
for his departure. Why even is she not
with him now? Why is he with the detested mother who cannot love him according
to the methods he is destined to be loved?
All this, and more, the brownspotted saddies bring, in the midst of
yellowest yellow, under the unspotted sun.
she wavers, faintly hints at toppling.
The banana merchant’s daughter catches her dimming eye, rushes out to
catch her, to save her from the pavement, but this rushing and catching and
saving at the very time alfonsanano on his bicycle is racing through after
having stolen bread from mrs peccabilo, whom he hates, and all—the banana
merchant’s daughter, nixi, yeah, yes, her memories of Alfred too, the stolen
bread, alfonsanano, the bicycle, some bananas, sundry tourists, many locals we
shall not mention—conglomerate briefly and are dispersed, flung indeed, and
nixi to below the saddies for her appointed meeting with senor de capos da masa
di conquistadodo du alvararo, quite etiologically opening doors to his divorce
and albert’s irrelevance and the recovery of juan’s revenues and the
redisappearance of the banana merchant’s daughter and the sunlight, which has
been the one dependable character in our story, continues to shine in the
baskets along the pavement of the rua da prata, and in it, tremendously yellow,
bananas are for sale
d
puke and tampons
and all things yellow
This
morning the human is a beautiful disaster
A
constipation of jelly beans
An
unflushed toilet of tampons
Haven’t i
seen the human like a sidewalk lay itself down by forgettable avenues, cars
pouring down its esophagi, moon and sun like calculus in the neglected heavens
I have
seen something
I have
seen a simulacrum of mathematics,
Though i
don’t know what this means
I have
seen the text of a dream in a mirage of concrete
I have
seen
I have
seen
I have
seen the human low and smelly like a puked g&t
I have
seen the woman and the man dance into each other like softballs
What have
i seen?
I have
seen nothing.
The world
is as beautiful as genocide
Tampons
are our future royalty
Dawn
breaks the way it always does, over easy
I think i
have counted to 8 or 9
On a good
day
8 or 9 is
less than 4
i know
because i studied math once,
in a
vomiting cubicle in lee’s palace on a throne
you dogs
of sunrise
you
beautiful dogs of sunrise
walk down
thine appointed stairs to the high blinding
and weep,
not for
that or this or the child on the stoop who weeps
not for
the stew of stars or your own lonely destiny
but only
for this morning
only for
this morning on its treadmill of glory
in its
wormy-fingered dew
we miss
each other like meteors
words are
burnt kale chips
the human
rides a slide of sunrise
to the
tune of toast and slaughter
it slips
into its automobile like a vagina
we are
less than trees
we sing
only of a torn blanket in an incarcerated crib
on the
back of … on the back of … not gods, …
on the
back of …
But only
this morning
fuck pessoa
i forget
about yellow
i forget
about the rua da prata
i forget
about bananas
i forget
about sunlight
but i
don’t forget about sunlight
or yellow
or even
bananas
i forget
about the rua da prata
i forget
about in the baskets along the pavement
on the rua da prata the bananas for sale were tremendously yellow in the
sunlight
but i
don’t
dundas square
fire
hydrants too are yellow,
in the
manner of fire
pavement
is yellow
in the
avocado morning cradling its burden of feet
men with
their yellow ties,
as
irregular as streetcars
women
yellower than yellow walk on themselves.
weeping the
pavement with yellow tears,
all is
yellow, even the avocados,
which exist,
truly, only in my mind:
the red
purses are yellow
the orange
tangerine ads are yellow
the memory
of night is yellow
the
horrible knowledge of a winter cast irrevocably
into the future is yellow
yellow is
the imperfection of perfection,
Gb,
another tyranny in the news
The
picture of god i saw in the glassblowing furnace
(no, god
was white)
white is
yellow
the
streetcars as they round the intractable corner
birthed
like endless siblings from an original dawn
are yellow
even
bananas are yellow
tremendously
yellow
all is
yellow in the prism of this empty holy may
the
skyscrapers like flowers,
death like
a daffodil
falling
accidentally in my coffee
and
floating, saying nothing
may prayer
I hide in the marrows of harrowing.
I lie in the lies of truth. The
clouds of my days are tongues, wagging hope that hasn’t met itself. the grave rises like a smiling spectre on the
seeds of spring. All is tea and crumpets
after all. One can only hide in them,
and lie. One can only wag and meet the
meeting that hasn’t met. Let us order
pizza on the verandah of our tears. Let
us wash the dishes. Let us count to ten
the way they used to in the yesteryear.
I am a battery. I store
energy. I am packaged by the past for
future whirrings. I sing the songs. I have not known alleys the way i would have
known them if i had wanted to. I can
count to ten. I think. On days i think. The roofs are green. Like god or tomatoes or silent films. I climb the holy mountain like an injected
sheep. Bliss and condolences. They remind me of my mother. Who after all isn’t dead, but dead. Let’s count the suns. Let’s ride to Rome the way the slaves always
do in movies. I do not hide. I hide in hiding. Clouds climb like bricks to Auschwitz and do
not count. I count. I count the springs. I hide in truth. My days are like the grave. Tea drinks us all. i sing the songs. I’m never much as clean as yesterday. And that is it. these choppy sentences, signifying
themselves. Let us crumpet. Amen.
*** this ninth and final yellow poem is rabidly and impoverishly presented, due to the usual translation exigencies. so be it. ***
in the baskets along the pavement on the
rua da prata the bananas for sale were tremendously yellow in the sunlight
in along on for in
the the the
the the
baskets
pavement ruadaprata bananas sale yellow sunlight
were
tremendously
? ? ?
the bananas1
were
tremendously
yellow2
in the baskets
along
the
pavement
on
the ruadaprata
1for sale
2in the sunlight
in the pavement
along
the sunlight
on
the baskets
for
ruadaprata
in
the sale
in the ruadaprata
along
the sale
on
the pavement
for
sunlight
in
the baskets
in the sale
along
the ruadaprata
on
the sunlight
for
baskets
in
the pavement
in the sunlight
along
the baskets
on
the sale
for
pavement
in
the ruadaprata
the yellow
was
tremendously
banana
sunlight the in yellow tremendously were
sale for bananas the prata da rua the on pavement the along baskets the in
