1213: Pacific Power & Light by Michael Dickman
1213: Pacific Power & Light by Michael Dickman
Transcript
I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.
Recently, I read an op-ed in a local newspaper that complained about the appointment of a state poet laureate. The author made claims that the new laureate’s poetry was incomprehensible. He insinuates that the laureate should write more like a celebrated, older male poet who makes people laugh. He ends by calling poetry today, highfalutin. I took umbrage, but ultimately, I was saddened that this person carries a long-held suspicion about seemingly difficult art.
The beauty of poetry is its diversity and how it gives us an opportunity to feel language, rather than the poem acting only as a substitute for a Hallmark card or occasion for a punchline. Today’s image-driven poem might seem difficult, but a pattern emerges out of the catalog of dreamlike lines that reveals a powerful statement about social class, nature, urban environments, and ways of seeing.
Pacific Power & Light
by Michael Dickman
One way to see is through A Windowpane or Disco Hama Starlight hangs from a freshet in the front yard Telephone lines or unagi race up Foster Road to an adductor in my childhood window Bedroom hatcheries Lit up at night by car lights and drop-offs Awake in yellow sodium Electric eels The Coke in the fridge has a half-life The grass is soaked and has never heard of us The universe seems out of whack If I can’t call you I can’t call you Huge green pages turn over beneath struggling carp and Jet Skis I just stare at the pages * The rain is improvised And makes everything smell better Skinheads And gooseberries Tidal pressure and species pressure amount to big changes in the neighborhood over time and Johnson Creek The TV on with the sound off Plug-in footy pajamas are plugged in A Wiffle ball Swirls past fir trees Food stamps and precut linoleum A mignonette full of saline solution and local perspectives Fender bender in the ground cover Hoses instead of sprinklers Everything else is something private not worth mentioning Peed-in beds Spaghetti out of cans * Free lunch programs Float upstream through lichen and soft Tap water Battered and fried Regrowth getting a late start in deep S.E. The sound of ball bearings rubbed against other ball bearings Bicycles stolen off the front porch Skateboards stolen Adults are like tide pools on the couch nodding off between shows they suck out the combos in the suppository A crushed feeling of happiness and well-being Late afternoon in the living room Why not flush the toilet and write your name on water? Lemon wedge wired to a lightbulb String of pistils Palmolive With a salty or melon finish * High tide off 82nd & Foster A quick upper for aromatic pathways Without bus fare Evergreens drip Natural rewards onto crosswalks and curbs An impressionistic intervention Mom and Dad and the kids all drip Sea palms wave to us in the water Beta-blockers in the ocean spray Neighborhood kids on bikes dart through spillage with no hands beneath streetlights and starbursts Come home New floods on the porch won’t keep The neighbors close by or away It’s impossible to tell where one good deed ends and another begins Gentleness is all Gentleness and candy * The trees aren’t sick They sip and process recreationals Chlorophyll and spring again In soft focus For dinner broiled hamburgers and then Cheers Wet blacktop receives us Burnt yellow grass and the future Will keep me company Ants come inside when it rains and smell like peppermint Something’s not right Oregon cherries slur their words and trail blossoms like damp cornflakes that slick up the sidewalks A taste for granulated sugar Bottles of domestic And Theraflu Milk teeth on the new fern did you see it? I want to concentrate on you
"Pacific Power & Light" by Michael Dickman from PACIFIC POWER & LIGHT © 2024 Michael Dickman. Used by permission of Penguin Random House.
