McDaniel - The Endarkenment
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- Book:The Endarkenment
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- Publisher:University of Pittsburgh Press
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- Year:2008
- Rating:5 / 5
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The Endarkenment: summary, description and annotation
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Known for his commanding stage presence as a reader, McDaniel trades hard in his fourth book on his rough-and-tumble personaa recovering addict from the working class streetswhile also showing softer sides. McDaniels sometimes awkward, if earnest searching might just be what allows him to find moments of great beauty, humor and stillness.
Publishers Weekly
McDaniel is known for his talent performing his poems, however his voice doesnt lose its impact in written form. It may be more powerful because the reader can view the poets unique ideas and phrases over and over until their various meanings sink in.
Gently Read Literature
McDaniel zings metaphors across the page like hes the Robin Williams of poetry. This collection in frequently moving and inventive with enough lightheartedness and whimsy to balance the heaviness of the darker moments.
hipbooksterclub.com
Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of Alibi School, The...
McDaniel: author's other books
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Pitt Poetry Series
Ed Ochester, Editor
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright 2008, Jeffrey McDaniel
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 10: 0-8229-5995-X (paperback)
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-5995-3 (paperback)
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-9067-3 (electronic)
Title page art: Bill Adams, One Eye, ballpoint pen on paper, 2003
for Christine Caballero, the undarkener of my spirit
en-dark-en-ment (in-dr-kn-mnt)
noun
1. the act or a means of endarkening
2. the state of being endarkened
3. capitalized: an American anti-intellectual movement of the 21st century (known as the Age of Endarkenment), that emphasized the use of illogic to scrutinize previously accepted traditions and doctrines and that brought about many humanitarian disasters
4. a cursed state in which the individual is handcuffed to desire and henceforth suffering and attains transcendental misery
Looking at your face now, thirty-nine years
after the fact, is like returning to a crime scene.
Every tooth in your mouth is shaped
like my tombstone, each bone in your hand
is a last straw capable of breaking my back.
I apologize for the hairline. I cut corners
on the follicles, and that was my fault.
But how about them thighs? Strong enough
to crack walnuts. And how about the hazel
I drizzled into your sockets? Sparkly darkness
I called it. Wanting you to be fierce,
but not bloodthirsty, I modeled your nose
after a sharks, sanded your teeth down to the dullness
of a groupers. Im sorry for lifting your fingerprints
from two opposing sourcesI loved the idea
of your hands constantly being pulled
in two directions. Obviously I poured too much
acceleration into your temperI didnt
want you getting trampled and figured (incorrectly)
your slender wrists would keep your fists
dangling at your sides. But oh that pulsating
estuarythoughts twinkling in your mind
shimmer like glow-in-the-dark jellyfish.
It still feels like I am the razor, and you
are the wrist, like Im the window,
and youre the person about to jump out.
Im from touch football in parking lots and street-corner Romeos
Im from half-brothers and three-quarter nelsons
Im from watered-down blue blood and finger-painting on subway walls
Im from tongue kisses in stairwells and tequila sunsets in the closet
Im from stealing the coins out of other peoples wishing wells
Im from jordache jeans and pick-up games in the twilight
Im from Italian girls wearing murmurs I oh so badly wanted to speak
Im from sidestepped obligations and nomadic fingertips
Im from listerine in alleyways and whiskers in the vaseline
Im from unreliable narrators and abandoned buildings
Im from dont cross 24th Street because of the Irish and dont cross South Street because of the blacks
Im from the merry-go-round where white guys in cars slow down after midnight to take a visual bite out of my twelve-year-old ass
Im from fuck you when my friends are around, and please stop looking at me, please stop looking at me, please stop looking at me, when Im alone
Im from sucker punches and a mouthful of blood spit in my face
Im from a nightgown breathing at the bottom of a staircase
Im from I wished you died in that hospital
Im from exit plans that involve shotguns
Im from you gonna front like the hard guy, you better back that shit up
You and your pal are pinned around a ceramic plate
that holds a forty-dollar rock of crystal meth
shaped like a dirty snow-colored tooth
pried from the mouth of a beggar. Your brain is a swarm
of asteroids orbiting the small, chemical sun. Its late
August, midafternoon air thick and pungent,
like youre trapped inside the armpit of a construction worker.
Youre in the bedroom of your friends older sister,
the first living girl you ever saw naked: four years ago, peering
through the slats of the wooden shower outside her fathers
beach house. You lean over, snort one of her limbs
into your head, where it shreds into confetti. A blue fan
flings a thimble of stickiness in your direction. You squeeze
your lids, try to visualize her under the shower:
a lavender bar of soap smearing a streak of bubbles
over her abdomen. You clench your jaw, wish
for a mental brake pedal. You go to the bathroom, fetch
your penis from your underpants. It feels so not-yours
in your hand, seems to squint at you, tries to inch its way
back into your pelvis. The yellow trickles out.
You return to the bed, where your friend licks his lips
like a perpetual envelope. A rusty pipe leaks in your throat.
In three days, you will start tenth grade, for the second time.
Put on your seatbeltit will be a forty-hour night.
Twelve years old, treading water in the deep end
when Maria Goretti swims up and snatches
my tennis ball, clutches it to her new chest,
dares me to wrestle it back. The worldthe lifeguard
in his elevated metal bucket, the grown-ups
buried in their lounge chairs, the other kids shallow-end
frolickingcan only see our heads, the twelve inches
bobbing above water, not the other fifty-eight
writhing beneath the surface, our silk thighs brushing,
our bathing suits bursting with these new pieces
of organic technology invented inside us. The grown-ups,
nerve endings filed down to a bore, and the lifeguard
with his transistor brain dont know Maria and I
have grown gills, that were breathing underwater, that life
is happening down here. In twenty years, well climb out,
grab towels, slide on wedding rings, and sink
into our respective lounge chairs. The grown-ups
will have moved to Florida, a state with so many old people
it looks like a coffin being lowered at an angle
into the earth. The pool will be cemented over, paved
into a parking lot, where once a year Maria and I will come
with our bathing suits bunched up in our pockets
and stare at the yellow lines and the nicked fenders and think
how certain tailpipes look like the rusty lips of snorkels.
Whatever happened to the heavy breather?
Technology*69, caller ID, the internet
has rendered his kink obsolete. Who
can he dial now? He is the 8-track
of deviants. He tried launching filthy messages
in the naughty housewife chat room,
but they just treated him like he was normal,
which was damn near a death blow.
Should we gather up the last few
still out there, breathing all heavy in the wild,
before they go extinct, place them
in a special zoo, in cages, complete
with rotary phones, unplugged
of course, and nondescript apartment
furniturecrumpled-up sandwich
wrappersto re-create the natural habitat?
Perhaps a plaque that reads: here
sits the heavy breather. He used to call
housewives in the afternoon, turn his breath
into a fog machine. He lived for that
first intake of air, the gasp that escaped
her mouth like a weather balloon
as his fog traveled through her.
There was another person in the room,
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