Giménez Smith - The city she was: poems

THE CITY SHE WAS

The Mountain West Poetry Series
Stephanie GSchwind & Donald Revell, series editors

We Are Starved, by Joshua Kryah
The City She Was, by Carmen Gimnez Smith

POEMS

Carmen Gimnez Smith

The Center for Literary Publishing
Colorado State University

Copyright 2011 by Carmen Gimnez Smith.
All rights reserved.

For information about permission to reproduce
selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Center for Literary Publishing,
9105 Campus Delivery, Department of English,
Colorado State University,
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-9105.

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gimnez Smith, Carmen, 1971
The city she was : poems / Carmen Gimnez Smith.
p. cm. -- (The Mountain West poetry series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-885635-19-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-885635-23-5 (electronic)
I. Title.

PS3607.I45215C58 2011
811.6--dc22

2011037729

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

1 2 3 4 5 15 14 13 12 11

Publication of this book was made possible by a grant from
the National Endowment for the Arts.

To Jack Bunting and Larisa Chapman

I put up notice on the Internet where misspellers wrote the most compelling notes.
They wore industrial eyeglasses and ironic T-shirts and trucker hats
and often forgot their wallets. One taught me about science fiction porn
while we lay on his silk leopard-print sheets. After that, a Nugent
look-alike, then a mapmaker in Alaska and that old-timey
going-nowhere correspondence; I thought Id tell our kids about our cute meet
over Thanksgiving in the new fifties. I watched films that made me feel old
because of choice feminism contradictions and wrote poems about
the citys howling lunatics in technology and snark dialect compost.
And then, and then, and then. Met a lunatic on Craigslist.
Concerned about starts, I stuffed his inbox with amendments and bloated metonymy.
This happened for months. This happened while I healed from pneumonia,
from broken bones, from agoraphobia. Drinking beer gave me a panic, so whiskey.
Divorce ephemera, safe doors and pre-midlife. I collected fancy pens
and yeah, Im working on an article about anim and Marxism. Pills
made me shaky, but I filled myself with pills because they made me shaky.
Attended dotcom parties thrown by post-Stanford nerds in tucked-in shirts,
such Adams apples. They gave away fonty tchotchkes for Internet pet stores
and other terrible ideas. Just one hayride after the next and only tickling
and stalker calling, the hang-up thing. Wed work on it,
wed patch it up. My action item, my best of bread.
I met the lunatic and we did it until it outlived its hipness,
until it was Eastern European. We did it until the buildings came down.
We did it until the affect was moot, until the recipe got muddled.
We did it until I turned into myself, until the whole city turned into itself.
We did it until the line got too long and therapy turned me down. Im talking
Beginning of the Decline of Our Smug Empire. Im talking
about the rise of a collective posture for the skittering tower of our time.

This one softens the soul cartilage.
This one makes the red lights green.
I have bought enough powder
to make a tiny little cartoon cat.
Mitsubishi, Batman, Teletubby, Toyota:
I love you. I love the Earth and forgive it.
I love you: guy at the weird apartment
playing South Park video games, guy
with tennis scholarship and the guy
who has a grandmother whos dying
because you all carry. You make me
love helicopters and dust.

This one makes me throw up, but then
I listen to Pink Floyd in the dark without
getting scared. This one throws a dart
at my nemesis, but its a lame gesture.
This one makes my augmentation less brutal.
The doctor gives me one that says,
this might cause sudden death. 250 mg vs 500 mg.
Dry mouth, nausea, dizziness.
This one is legal, so its not as fun.
Take this one with orange juice.
Swallow this one with a spoonful of peanut butter.
Take this one alone. Dont take this one alone.
This one brings the horizon line into your lexicon,
and you store it for better occasions.

Chewing this puts me on a raft on Lake Erie.
Im in the sun, then Im in the mud baths
of Black Rock City getting felt up by a chick
with a bone in her nose, then Im at the top
of the hill of my street getting the mail,
no business driving, then Im alone
under the single bulb of self-interrogation.
This one makes me near-dead but still pretty.
This one makes my friends hate me.
This one makes my friends hating me
a dull sting, calamine lotion for the brain.
If I take this one, then I can bury
the undead with a spoon. This one
belongs in a hall of fame. The last one
not really the last one,
the one I want to relish, my first Casanova.

Like a wino I trolled the streets
in search of an elixir for my
melancholy. A Virgo with gold
teeth lured me into his lap
and sang songs about the fraudulent
landscape. The purple sky
is invented for you. The purple
sky is not among us. When his hand
traveled south, I blushed.
I left when tomorrow made sense.
Thats the way a walk renews
she makes her way through
the imperfect city and discovers
how the world is people
with hand puppets. People who shiver
metal sheets for thunder,
and then she squints her eyes
to fuzz it more, to prettify.

The ladies at the laundromat called me La Chula for my role on the show Trainwreck. I had birds in my hair and my porcelain feet chipped when walking. An earthquake and, an omen, the Emmy for Best Hookerwith a Heart of Gold Ingnue fell on me as I slept.

Later I sold chocolate smuggled in from Morocco, but it was so boring I faked my own death. Muffling my voice with a hanky, I called in as weeping mother. For days, I cried thinking about the things I hadnt gotten to do like jump from planes or have sex with British DJs.

My lover said massage school. He said PhD.

Then I built Taj Mahal replicas with dried pasta and sold them to Texas Junior Leaguers for thousands of dollars. I was moody and dark and skinny and Modern Painters did a feature on me. I posed on the roof of my building with a mannequin. I poured hot water on one of my works, and the photographer and I ate it.

After this, I professionally wrestled men and my ring name was Kristeva the Krusher because I was brutal and post-feminist. The league paid me in Macys gift cards, so I could buy lacy garments and complicate the paradigm.

Without training, you wont go places, my lover said. Without an education youll work where they cant remember your name, he said. Its not you. Its the edifice and me, our default. Were keeping you out on purpose because we only really like you in bits.

That year, I learned Pet through the mail from Sally Struthers who also spoke King Cobra, and I counseled cats although I was allergic. The cats argued that their reputation for indifference left them love-starved, but I talked over them because this was true for me, too.