JP's take on Ass 6: mi nalgas de cigarrillo son su nalgas de cigarrillo

By -
Hey kids,

The title and topic was inspired by a wonderful babelfish translation Mjr. Gn. Bea Mao gave me once. section ii is entirely round-trip spanish translated in babelfish, which means that the original is lost (though I will say that one of the original lines was from a book i read about pedagogy, saying that teaching creative writing was equivalent to "putting wings on the invisible." guess which sentence it is! it's like a treasure hunt). the poem's pretty crass and ridiculous but i think it's super fun and stuff. Sorry for the lateness <3K! I don't think any of youse have read this before, but it's been edited since.




mi nalgas de cigarrillo son su nalgas de cigarrillo

1. expletive deleted

We buttfucked at her house
which made me uncomfortable
but you said it was the only way
you’d get lit in this wind.

Between giant pulls
from a jug of Carlo,
we talked of rumps
and junks and badonk

adonks, but never addressed
that if you burn from the ass,
what goes up to your lips? Nips
of whiskey all around, but

when “all around” is two people
alone in Southie playing hooky
from more philosophical friends,
it’s not really a little swig. We get fucked

the fuck up, buttfucking down
Avenue of the Arts, snuffing
out on the reflecting pool, penetrating
the surface with camel-colored ends.

2. the babelfish dilemma

The round-trip one is dangerous in uproar,
translators taking everything above that I say
but the language is not sensible, arbitrary and strange.

The cloud of ignorance, the repetition of destruction,
a fist of the wine, a yearling calf of smoke,
a small good thing bad going, a tattoo in the hair net.

The communication is for the pigs.
Him praise, Babelfish, although you know not
what you do it.

Comments

  1. B. BarrettSeptember 16, 2009 at 4:20 PM

    I dig the first part of this piece, Jim. I think it's juvenile, but there's a kind of undercurrent to it. I can't quite put my finger on it but it has something to do with the push and pull I perceive happening in the first stanza. The buttfucking (uncomfortable in its own right) and then the "the only way / you'd get lit in this wind" kind of elevates it, makes it stranger and shimmery. The question about burning from the ass has a similar effect. The whole part of the poem becomes about, to me, the interplay between the impenetrability of sex and the curiosity of youth - but don't quote me.

    As for the babelfish dilemma portion, I think it detracts because the other part is so weirdly-good. It feels tangential. Though I do like "The communication is for the pigs" and "although you know not / what you do it." Those lines are just fab and I think would be served in a long exploration of this theme in a different poem.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JonSeptember 16, 2009 at 8:07 PM

    agreed on all counts, sir. Believe it or not, the second part was, initially, a further explanation of the "buttfucking" thing. but the round-trip translation did two cool things: it used words i'd never used ("yearling calf?" wtf is a yearling), and it took the poem ENTIRELY out of my hands, which was strange. So it occupies an interesting place. Maybe what I'll try to do is edit down the original and see where the round-trip takes me. That's gonna be a ridiculous amount of effort for a very small pay-off, but that's my writing style in general!

    the fourth stanza of the 1st section loses some of the fun and gets a little weighed down. Adds an element of reality to it, but is it worth it? I've gotta take a look at this, and like you said, it's supposed to be playful with several things that resist playfulness, I just have to make sure it stays playful, and avoids clever or cool.

    good on yer, sir.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Second Assignment, late (of course) but worth it (I hope)

By -
I wanted to write something that dealt with the construction of gendered identities, so I did. It works within a specifically heterosexual lens, which is intentional. Yet, it's not totally critique. There's a kind of mesermizing aspect to the dance of gender: a formulaic, unsympathetic samba toward something monstruous, elegant and artificial. -B. Table of Context i. mater every woman must own a little black dress, must wear it’s simple shape with complexity, learn it’s secret: that every woman is her own secret stuffed into a silhouette. every woman must own a little black dress, must remember where it’s curves meet, feign simplicity or at least the shape of it, learn where to make room for secrets in a silhouette. every woman must own a little black dress, must tuck away the shape of her dreams, learn how to hold herself simply, secret the complexities into the shape of a silhouette. ii. pater a man is an elegy of wood and stone. a man is not allowed. a man is an elegy of b...
Read more

Third Assignment: Pass that Stash, a treasure hunt

By -
Even though a certain Rodder, *ahem,hoo-ah,ahem* didn't subject hisself to Kate's assignment, I'm posting another for general cogitation. I've got a hunger my friends, and that hunger happens to be for badass poetry. Here it is: Optional Step 1) Get schwasted. Approved varieties: whiskey, Pabst, Carlo, or a $10 bottle of champagne 2) Go on a magical internets treasure hunt. The stipulations are as follows: a) A pastiche poem of sorts is to be made, blasted, molded, squeezed out of the treasure hunt. b) The hunt must be multimedia (I'm thinking the triumvirate of music, film, text; but play with this how you want). c) A search engine must be used in order to generate islands along your personal treasure map (this is so we aren't purposely going to sexy sites we've scoped out before). d) We google (or whatever) 5 of the same words/phrases to generate different websites to put on the map. These words/phrases are to be voted and decided on by this SUNDA...
Read more

JP on "deal with me," BBRRRRAP!

By -
Bbrrrrap! (the force is strong in others) I don’t shake, I detonate. See I can pile up words like casings in a bullet factory. See I can twist your ear with a swish of jawbone. A cotillion of lashing. An affront of debutantes. I don’t give a fuck, I keep them all for myself. I break it smooth: the force is strong in others, the mysteries beat firm in the breasts of any John, but Tenderheels I will workmanlike my way into your softest tissues, will pound the raw meat of your feet into crunked trochees, shatter this tartare tertiary terroir until it speaks in the voice of all joyous aberrants! Bbrrrrap! goes the bass-loud glade! Bbrrrrap! goes the drumbomb in your heartspace! strongarm the yellowpages if you want that fancy stacking, here is just the sound of explosions and sega chimes ringing brash in the long dark. pray only so your knees get hard enough to get down. write only so the pens get stabbier – see the bloodshed we dream with graph paper! Bbrrrrap! I detonate! Bbrrrrap! I...
Read more