Issuu

MELANIE NEILSON

Reader Souvenir

MELANIE NEILSON

Reader Souvenir

MELANIE NEILSON

Reader Souvenir

Cover Art: Jean Foos, Matta-Clark at Zwirner, 2016, ink on postcard Design: FoosProjects This book has been composed in FF Scala and Neue Haas Unica Pro Printed in the United States of America

Limited Edition 25 This is No. _________

For Roman and Martial

CONTENTS Anecdote of the Strawberry Teapot |

Notational Queenly Light in Gold |

United Literature of Grandmothers |

The Idea of Detection |

Poe Cameo |

Try Poe In Fine Nightness |

Kindred Reading |

Coming to You Dead From the Supernatural Beige House |

The Earlier Idea |

Convulsive Beauty in the Fur Teacup Bar |

The Awful Fiction |

Acknowledgments |

MELANIE NEILSON

Reader Souvenir

ANECDOTE OF THE STRAWBERRY TEAPOT I placed Tennessee into a teapot, To write the impossible part On a summer thundercloud, To a branch of pink buds handle. The farm radio almanac homily, Love the only victor over time Tuned up to it, past floating window sill, In static spirit, afternoon of a teapot. Into the word where nobody goes, Live, it said, and night rounded day. Netting with the circle of the eye, Like crazing patterns in porcelain.

NOTATIONAL QUEENLY LIGHT IN GOLD Reader Souvenir for Phillis Wheatley Rove above whole souls See th’ soaring or rolling With faith, my attempts Trail here below, On Imagination under Sumptuous magnification, New optics surpass, launch The reader in attendance, Into measured space --She speaks Latin, that Refulgent songs do disclose, And sing their flow’ry scope. Unbounded fauna, flora, All mighty cloud seas above, Potent glows her Science! By Phillis unveil’d, the Anemoi Wand’ring Mind’s Eye of freedoms, Our Author-Ladyship leader Of the mental schooner, Sailed The London to London. Picture oneself, O to follow this Action writing on audience hearts, Command a heavenly progress, Assert then, thy tempest thought.

UNITED LITERATURE OF GRANDMOTHERS I saw grandmothers everywhere, Overgrown girlhood gardens, On the outskirts of an echo, sunning. Now lightning is key in the Owl-defying boyhood trees, Guardian mothers of urgent hearts. A how-to scout of past, present, future. Composition of Grandmother field techniques, Elocution in the stacks close-up, Resurrect through writing, blithe air Devotional, foreseeable, all united, Grandmother lit shadows.

THE IDEA OF DETECTION I knew The idea Struck French When the bed Read the bed, Yet brain Born rain States the time: To Exit Twice, Lost or found Ordinary songs, In memory Of ideal Inspection. Defect today, Heart Things Rhyme cello Tomorrow. An old armchair Francophile Your groves Got me Afternoon---

Enter footsteps! Will-I unveil? Nill-I prevail, It would. It will. That single Thought, The wish To a wish Is enough, Out of this Mind cloud. Myself, The clock, Then you: Dear Director, Please return The pure Verse time Detector.

POE CAMEO Tilt to lightning rod man as lantern chance, Like Poet like suspect invents a grass plot Sun shock exposed and content past midnight Case of mortal selves dance in strange songs ! Ear, come here and see a wrack sail full and dark Dazzling until skies pour imagining a tribe of moths Thanks for remembering my reading Poe to you in disguise The feather door floats over underworld mudshine. Do light itâ€™s late enjoy the machinery, good grief ! Still emitting pulses in plain sites of national imagining Hammer the tulip tree music tomb of Poe, Calm blooms see some circular sentence humming Soft granite monstrous dues of ham and bottle Attention caught bent wise hurled to the future.

TRY POE IN FINE NIGHTNESS Tilt sunlight to lightning chance invent the plant the lantern dance intent the math the song a case for grass plot rooms. Ear see here who like an echo shores up sails filtering and like an echo went wracked moth to be Mud shine imagination in disguise read the feathers and joy machinery in plain sites the tulip tree Hammer blooms circular sentence hums granite ham and bottle eye caught hurled to the future.

KINDRED READING 1. Horror on the other side of the time-slip Nadir vortex zenith, the claim has come: Hearts. Brains. Sssouls. Who’s in charge here? Who is the Madame or Mister University President? Read it with your bones, Rough edged page wound. Bloodiest crash history of now In the United Sanctuary of Library May you find home in time. 2. Fold the reader into a difficult place, closer to history, psychic front line. Beginning at the end, then the middle, begin again. Broken calendar, busted hourglass. The secret code between bibliophiles, book travelers, author to reader. 3. Library portal tricks open, behind the gray chair, overdue bricks convert the mansion. Puzzling over that quote or my head I know it’s poetry. It’s the timing, or time travel. Dismantled reader zone, wrecking crew behind scenes. At two minutes to midnight: why did I write this may be the only way I can read home? 10

COMING TO YOU DEAD FROM THE SUPERNATURAL BEIGE HOUSE Extract 1 First in the car, later in the office, a future starry night, turn on desk lamp, shadows cast, simultaneously silhouette of a woman on crutches, ghost hand wings. It wasn’t an accident. It was a state of incompletion, of broken regular programming, debris clouds streaming. “You’ve been working so hard on your secret government projects, Jane...This is the perfect way for you to relax...”

Extract 2 HELLO OFFRAMP WUTHERING TEXTS PLASMA SCREEN STAGE PETROL BLOOD SEARCHERS STREAMING GIANT MILITARY TIME MILITARY SPACE 24 HOURS ANTI-CLIMATE FICTION TWO TEXTS: “Things ok?” “Yeah.”

Extract 3 “GOT MEAT?” Billboard: Fake blood mustachioed 100 foot tall poster child, Little Satanic Shirley Twitter. “WHERE’S THE MILK?” Insect candy assembly lines, moss hanging over Savannah. Ten advertising commandments ironing ribbons and sheets, conveyer belt exorcism. 11

Extract 4 The guest told the television station: ‘The stars are out tonight, just beyond the cloud cover.” Cross winds and thunder lines. Ideologically incoherent militia applications. Ride sunset into flaming metal garbage cans, Throw spaghetti at the meteorological map. Dozens of plasma screens relay seismic activity, You know Dante’s last wallet reads itself. Southern Gothic complacent rural heart, Debris, sensors, data points, cash clouds. Unprepared to continue learning, Go homicidal at one line of “useless” poetry. Sirens, gutted church shell, mall, designer handbag bonfire to keep warm.

Extract 5 Vague cannibalism. Cloudless with raptors. Chopped up speaker into soup. Too visceral to pin down. Overcome horror with horror. Interchangeable inner lives. They heart luxury goods. Everywhere bacon deodorizer. Pigs are extinct. Central mass with satellites. 12

Extract 6 What a rotten Hell, all we meet are crazy people. Violent subway accidents. Librairies foreclosed. Movie houses burning. Pianos are extinct. Terrible violin score, an incidental imagination power outage andante. Coming to you dead from the supernatural beige house, purple water, eviction via email, flooded church basement food pantry, banal imperial bloodsport machine in Shakespearean siege, floundering unrelenting typhoon warning de-creation in spurts.

Extract 7 SIGNALING Reverend Lockwood preaches an interminable sermon of hellfire and brimstone divided into four hundred and ninety parts. A leg here, an arm there, anatomy of an assembly line, secretive subway station. Elevated regulated bridge of scraps B-concrete POETRY Heavenly Devils Hellâ€™s Bells smelly antebellum ad hoc racism anchor spelling haters. Mind boggling supermassive white hole shipping containers forgotten dermatitis petrol leisure clothing. pieces of the world.

Extract 8 Solitary straphanger writing the bridge over the sublime void of the day. Conductor: “Ladies and Gentlemen, please do not use objects or body parts to hold the train doors open.” “This is a local Down South bound train.” Terrific sense of possession, mid-bridge drift. She needs the cash.

Extract 9 Sunset stats stars restart and we emerge to rebehold the block chain of stars.

Extract 10 I was a screen—the more I saw, the less they would. Crypto meal ingredients in a bottle. Starry night clearing. Cloud free skies are indicative of fair weather for the near future. Goodbye to the beginning. Hello song of triumphant love, Of spring and the mockingbird family, the robin wood.

THE EARLIER IDEA

It is 9:58 am. A woman is thinking. Almost ten. She wonders, is it still possible to have the day without harm? Two hours earlier, she took good notes. The drizzle space of Sunday filled the air and made it easier to hope. Quiet shapes of children sleeping. Oh right, three meals in the next eight hours. Pause the process. Coat and keys. She walked fast. To supermarket, to gather, spend, then carry two bags 15 minutes back from store to home. Food prep. She tries to tell herself relief may not be very important. This is like the beginning for me here, in this kitchen, with the notebook, the words are the center of everything. The house was not quiet and the world was not calm. The words were floating as if there never was a page. Unfixed and tired of waiting, without a sound, wanting to be written down in her notebook. First she wants a second chance to write up the earlier idea.

CONVULSIVE BEAUTY IN THE FUR TEACUP BAR An Artist, Detective, & French Poet go into a Bar: Disembodied voiceover (BARTENDER): “Is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism?

ARTIST: “Yes. I synchronize politics and space with my private third eye 24/7.”

DETECTIVE: “Space, I was born to name you, to drive my Ford Galaxie into the sunset on a green wind.”

ARTIST: “Let the shut down of fossil fuels begin. And like a pump that draws water from an actual river, this love story will stretch across time and space.”

PAUL ELUARD ( French Surrealist Poet): “There is another world and it is in this one.”

Clinking of glasses. The End.

THE AWFUL FICTION

I was going to write my autobiography once, “The Projectionist’s Daughter” but at twenty-one you never get around to anything like that. And it’s just as well—it would have been little more than nominal silent movie material. Mostly flat with flashes here and there but not enough of them. My father was in the “picture business.” As a very young man he worked as a projectionist in a small town. That movie house is one of several haunted houses with resigned ghosts in my family history. If I strip my personal story down to its narrative base, it might go like this: a mother with a “fish story” of a past, a father with his own melodramatic tale, and the daughter who thinks they’re both dead, all come to an understanding through selfless love and the discovery of a long-lost logbook.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Jean Foos, John High, Erica Hunt, Jessica Grim, Jacob Matkov, John Neilson, and Louis Parascandola.