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The Donkey's Tail, selected posters 2007-2013, John Nixon

The Donkey's Tail is an experimental, abstract, free noise, improv, garage ensemble using electric guitars, drums and percussion teamed with trumpets, cello, triangle, saxophone, power tools, bottles, squeaking dog toys and alike. The group was formed in early 2007 by artist John Nixon as a recording project. To date 70 studio and live CDs have been released by the ensemble. 

The Donkey's Tail will have an exhibition room in MELBOURNE NOW, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 22 Nov 2013 - 25 March 2014 

To hear The Donkey's Tail go here https://soundcloud.com/thedonkeystail

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The Ring: Poems 1956-1969 Harry Mathews. Artwork by Joe Brainard

The Ring: Poems 1956-1969. Leeds, UK: Juillard Editions, 1970. Mathews’ first collection of poetry—from the press of his old friend, the artist Trevor Winkfield, and a gathering he dedicated to Maxine Groffsky. The first and only title in a projected series of Juillard Editions. Quarto [280 x 215] [38] pages duplicated typescript, rectos only, stapled into heavy card wrappers with artwork by Joe Brainard. $200.00 available from here: http://www.nicholaspounder.com/

Harry Mathews [1930 - ] If Harry Mathews is esteemed predominantly for his masterful fiction, it is nonetheless as a poet that he ventured upon a writing career. The marriage of form and content evident in the inventions of Tlooth or Cigarettes emerged from the discovery, as he puts it in a 1987 interview with John Ashbery, that prose could be written with the same arbitrariness as poetry. This discovery is traceable back to his initial encounter with the work of Raymond Roussel. Tempting as the separation of genres may be, it constitutes in regard to this writer’s works an absolute error. John Beer 

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Five New Ideas - Part Five, JENNIFER KIETZMAN

It Was Like My Vagina

It was like my vagina had a pulse or something one of those Tales from the Crypt in which you realize your body is an incubator and that thrumming an aberrant pulse an engine that won’t quite turn over. I am certain the waterbug is dead. Select career pants and jackets. Either way you lose.

The storm approaches quickly. She will not go quietly. The picture is Braden tramping to the final rock of the island, set against water and sky. She writes too.

I don’t know what high road I thought I was taking in sitting next to him but he smelled BAD. In a compound sort of way. But in the end it was the scratching that got to me. The women in the back spoke of pleasant things to be encountered in Mankato, MN. But Mankato doesn’t have everything. It is true however that not far from there is where Jay Hormel redefined what it means to be meat. The baby was born. Does wine make my teeth red? Must everything have a romantic subplot?

The emptiness has to go somewhere. Who decides who gets the armrest? My seatmate in Navy plaid, that’s who. He expels air like tomato soup at a lazy boil. Through the clouds (less a thing than a happening at that height) the cemeteries look like circuit boards.

A guy at the cobbler’s told a small girl he wished he was her age and had it to do all over again. What for? I handed my shoes over. He remembered the trolley that ran from Carroll Gardens to Park Circle and one that ran from there out to Coney Island. His buddy walked in and demonstrated the basic steps of the Argentine Cross which ended by the door with a little waggle of the hips. He put his hands on my face (they felt like cold toast) and invited me to a Knights of Columbus dance.

Eight New Ideas

Prince Charles with that worried long red horseface has been named the world’s best dressed man. He said that sounds like something I would do. He said run your fingers all around me. Wouldn’t you? Is it possible that a building that big could just come right up on me like that? Its crown (cruciform groin vault) clad in silver Enduro KA-2 a metal developed in Germany by Krupp looks like a chestnut blossom (ice cream cone). Be it ever so humble. Ordered dust covers. Day wasted. Over the hours that are ours the others are like sedatives.

And now I am tempted by a top.

Catherine Kietzman brought in the most scrap metal and rubber during war drives. Favoring tax reform makes you a Communist. Everyone can stand to hear the poor cry. God didn’t do for you, Donna Paine. Catherine Kietzman did. The Post Office makes you a Fascist. We speak different languages but there is only one line. Though most patrons will not physically attack a cutter-in-line no words are spared. An old lady refused to let a man “simply” slide an envelope through the window without waiting in line. I admired her. If he tried that shit on me I’d tell him he had to get permission from everyone else in line before I’d even think about it. And when he slid it in anyway I kicked him in the balls.

The shirtless homeless guy on the train who already had three seats to himself jabbed at a woman standing near him and said you’re not moving. Apparently he needed more leg room. He was exposing our weakness to show us some kind of essential truth about ourselves (that we don’t always like to move) while demonstrating a juvenile tendency to take things TOO FAR.

The Indian tennis player (ranked 130th in the world) is moderately hot, yes? He has no fat on his body. But can he do the Lindy Hop?

My Great Uncle Phillip and Martin Kippenberger were fat jaundiced men with little heads and bad livers. Phillip taught mother everything she knows about packing and he wept uncontrollably at goodbyes. Anne’s dream in which I dissed her with a look that said don’t bother me now I’ve got problems made me think about how I consider myself a good listener. I get off the train and tell him I just got off the train he says he knows it he’s at the Chinese so I turn back.

There’s nothing wrong with Ellen her mother says she just loves too much meaning there’s a lot wrong with Ellen. We pull out the foot bath to see what good it might do.

The cluster of ants was so thick it turned the corner of the towel black. As I approached it slowly broom at the ready the economy size waterbug became bigger still until the cat snapped it up in her jaws and ran upstairs. And when you see Anita Bryant hand Ronald Reagan an orange you think about your childhood. Bud sent holly from South Jersey at Christmas and Ruthellen and Larry oranges and grapefruit from Florida. The only time you had lobster Mr. Cederstrom brought it down from Maine. I saw my first crocuses in Park Slope and smelled the hyancinths. I get excited just thinking about magnolias. Out of nowhere I smelled ashtrays and was reminded of home. Like bundt cake. The correct term is bald-faced and refers to a face without whiskers. Beards were commonly worn by businessmen as a way to mask facial expressions when making deals.

Nutty

I’d gone into the kitchen to see how the sweet potatoes were doing and was thinking about what Anne said to Tom: “I know I love you.” In the end (which end?) we’re all human (really?) no matter how famous we (who?) are. A mourning dove was watching me from the window ledge. Much curiosity. Jason joined us. He suggested we give it some bread. I said no, there wouldn’t be enough for our dinner. He said I was being selfish.

More interesting to me than the general fact of homosexual activity amongst bonobos is that the low-ranking female bonobos “advertise” the sex act more loudly when invited to have sex with high-ranking bonobos. Other than other reasons for having sex (reduce stress and competition, develop affiliations, express and test social relationships, reconciling conflicts and consoling victims in distress) their impulse is to fuck up the social order. And if you really let yourself get inside that thought, coupled with how little we know of what they know, it changes everything.

The minister who was leading Jason’s sister Sharon’s retreat invited us to write encouraging words to her. Jason wrote about a time when he was nine and Sharon was 16 and she had just gotten her license and drove him to South Street in Philadelphia. He saw a homeless guy who said, “Hey, what are you doin’?” They went into a hippie shop run by a guy in tights so tight you could see his balls. Pink Floyd was playing. Jason said it was the first time he’d realized there were new experiences. The main thing (at least in our minds) was to say nothing about God, or his “son.”

Did you like the sausages? He always asks about them when my thoughts have moved on to something else.

We rifled through a big box of family photos. Jason said of my father’s mother she’s got your chin. He’s right. She does. Here’s one of the block parties: men with ’70s sideburns and striped pants playing volleyball in the street. And here’s a gray-haired man in leisure pants and a blue short-sleeved sweater-top with white piping jumping up to spike the ball. It’s my father, fully airborne. A woman no one knows could only be the girl he was dating before he joined the Navy. We let it pass. Then Pop and his navy buddies sunning themselves in their underwear on the deck of a destroyer. It’s the gayest he gets. There’s a picture of me jumping up in a spread eagle (both feet off the ground). I am my father’s daughter.

In the winter you can hear the wind whipping across the lake from way off. There’s a cat walking across the snow like Jesus, probably looking for the limburger we threw out yesterday. Also a nuthatch, three deer and a woodpecker. We’re all hungry. Here, try some of this pound cake.

I put the bower birds here so I’ll always remember them. I don’t want the feeling to go away. But when someone says they couldn’t live without you, they could. Who can you trust? Only my cobbler can tell me “good zipper” and have me believe him. He said “nice boots,” and his toothless assistant came running.

At the laundromat a very small boy literally saunters past a small girl. They eye each other animalistically. So much for childhood. They were the same height but she had a bigger head.

If you’re ever looking for Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews in Borough Park, don’t bother. Stores are out of them. Nutty Chews are not the same. I say I need Goldenberg’s, but he doesn’t sell them. The Chinese don’t carry them either. Neither does Boris. Neither do the three Arabs. They all had Nutty Chews. Forget Duane Reade, they never have anything. There’s a store on 46th St. and 11th Ave. that never looks open but always is. It’s run by a funny British Hasidic woman. She says she used to have a big Goldenberg’s display until “the Jewish inspector” told her to take it down and only carry Nutty Chews. “You won’t find Goldenberg’s in any of the Jewish stores in the neighborhood.” So Goldenberg’s is treyf?

Purple martins are expected here around April 15th.

Stiff Breeze

Is it true that if it can’t be grown it’s got to be mined? In looking for an answer, I thought vaguely (the best I could do) about the origins of things. I decided it was true and sad. True things are sad because they’re finite, like plates under desserts. Somewhere off to the right, a man sang that the spot where he stood was empty. Ruth Gruber, who in 1932 was the youngest person (age 8) ever to earn a doctorate, said Alaska taught her to live inside time and that it was pointless to be restless.

I like a man in a suit. I let the image move around me. I admire him standing there—too hot in a suit to sit. He dabs at his sweat without expression. I don’t even mind a little double chin on a man in a suit. Then he walks away.

As if it’s not bad enough to be overslaughed (passed over for a promotion), which is from the Dutch overslaan, slaan meaning to strike, it has to sound like what’s done to cabbage to make it edible. Heavy linen and heavy metal are not the same things. As a means of differentiating, that adjective is useless.

The Dharma Bums

Heading west I peeked into an orange restaurant with curved white walls and saw a child on a grownup lap stabbing a drink with a straw. I was running the marathon in five mile chunks. Somewhat into the first chunk I got a second wind and ran as if running was what I do. Jason called to tell me he bought sweat suits at Kmart on his break. The idea was that wearing these would make us feel like we lived in a heated apartment.

Mom’s house is messier than ever. Sleeping arrangements are on a first come basis. You can’t get to any of the bedrooms. Mary Jo and Paul took the pull-out couch in grandmother’s old room, Katya the double blow-up bed in the living room and I, the last to commit, the twin blow-up in the dining room wedged between a drop leaf table and some cane chairs.

When I hear from Jason he’s scrubbing and re-curing the cast iron cookware. If only we’d win the lottery but what about looking for better jobs? Forget about velvet bed pillows. One day I hadn’t heard from him in a while which made me wonder in the middle of a dysfunctional family drama if he hadn’t called in sick and question why he wanted me to get the refill on painkillers. Before the movie ended I got a text: I bought pants, three pair at $20 each. What a relief! The pants were thick and had even thicker pocket linings. Later he said that Matt’s assessment of his movie treatments was correct, that what he’d written did resemble stuff two guys would shout out at a bar, that he needed to make you “care” about them.

This is what this hat does. I’m not wearing it wrong. It doesn’t go down any further. I’m tired of updates from friends though I’m sure they’ve written perfectly good books.

P.S. My pie didn’t crack!

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Five New Ideas - Part Four, LARRY FAGIN

Ecology

The stars at night are big and bright. I wouldn’t open that in here. Save yourself. Montaigne says you must give yourself to others, not only to yourself.  But in “My Life to Live” the distinction between “lend” and “give” is eliminated. I don’t get it. How does that privilege other over self? You need a key keeper to get into your house. Then the bomb goes off. Throw everything away after using it once.

Betty: Is it good luck or bad luck when a black cat crosses your path?

Janitor: That all depends on what happens afterwards.

Nearsensical

Now it can be told. The sky touches the forehead. Well, almost. Who said all is ‘partly’? What about death?  I’m open to it, but just a crack. Then I was rounded off. I remember now, it was my old art teacher, Mr. Jensen. Stars fell to earth. Things land where they’re meant to land. Never heard of you. You can sleep on the couch. It’s freezing in here. One way to get warm would be to set yourself on fire. Or put on your woolies.  

King Rene’s Chimney

I found an old issue of Antaeus on the sidewalk and read Peter Handke’s story, “The Lovers,” translated by Ralph Manheim. It confused me that both the man and the woman in the story are referred to as “he” or “him.” There are certain extrospective situations that put me in direct cognitive contact with people’s minds and states. Still it’s a crap shoot. How do I know they’re not just my own? Walking around in the castle or outside, nothing is sure. But cuddle up a little closer. We could be the lovers, or at least on speaking terms.

On the Air

I wrote a song for my cat. Would you like to hear it? No? There’s no way anyone’s going to live up to that. There’s no truth to it, either. Oh, no—it’s the TRUTH SQUAD. Feets do yr stuff. Yes, the no’s have it. Anyway, you went to the typewriter, right? When’s Qwerty coming? Oh, he’ll be along right after Ma Perkins. No, I’d say death is a good deal, there’s no hindsight. A good deal of time anyway. I mean look at brave Hector, he’s been dead awhile. No you look at him. I need my head examined. By Young Doctor Malone. And if I wear these Kleenex boxes on my feet, you promise to keep it on the QT? And don’t stay too long in paradise. And turn off that fucking radio!

Remembrance of Things Lapsed 

While in Hong Kong I accepted gifts of a Patek Philippe watch and custom suits at Sam’s Tailor and Modestos. I came to meetings with Poland Spring water bottles filled with vodka. I wore clerical garb to the opera. I’m sorry for the pain I caused. I’m not sure how much time is left but I never feel anxious. There are so many distractions—art and literature, music, cards, Anna, you, Gayfryd, the cats, collections and recollections. Look at this miniature. Thinking back to Fall 1967, when I took over Reliance Insurance and gave my first reading at the Poetry Project—all gone now. And just what was wrong with “all its dizzy raptures”? Eh? Tell me that. But keep trying. Look at Ashbery over there. He gives it all he’s got.

Five New Ideas - Part Three, THOMAS DELAHAYE

Civilian

Treatment of my first time out in plainclothes

Still at attention, more toward a window

Than a drawer, rendezvous with the middle

Steps with bad footing

For coinage, costs closing in

Making good on promise on arrival

Arrangement argument

Skin specific of networks

Stood up as flaxen reeds

To a tied together meal

Leaves gobbled

Why wait amazed at people

Never arriving to see them?

When on that current of drowning

Or desperately saved, will standard operations

Begin again? I must see to this business

You may give me one penny to do so

Reel ends flapping, people depart theater

Quick to tuck their skin back in

To wait for limousines 

Far away seems impossible

Scratching your no-name knees

Distantly lie on a bed

To be tickled

Evacuation

I’ll talk, I’ll talk

We live by the sea

Evacuate by land

Friends appear ass-backwards

In the corridor

Think this is a joke?  Stocks are 

Down, ruminants run free

We’ll all be fed something

Pre-chewed

And no buildings will remain standing

The weeks will wisely go by

Before our assembled husks are shook

By sudden rainwater

We are heading south

On lumpy terrain

We’ve stuffed our pockets

With produce past its prime

To swallow would be to retard our progress

Wipe out our ETA

Groundwater is property

Man Dying

Ahem thank you I love this bed

I want to lie in it and look out

My childhood window

And there’s my seventh dog wagging

It’s my smell she smells

What you told my face was right

It’s the moon that wakes you up

And gets you going, not you

Or maybe I’ll take your face outside

With my blanket and tent

And memorize it

After that you could leave but I won’t say I’m sorry

But anyway you’re not included

In this thing like my knees are

Like mountains in bed

As blue as a blanket

My sister knows just enough of me to talk to

So I listen

I have a timer it’s buzzing

Have you noticed my birthday only lasts a few days

I received a card from an insurance agent

Thanks but I have plenty of horse sense

Little plasticine horses that live on the bookshelf

Just in case I get sick (no prognosis)

But gnaw on this donkey bone

The blood moves to a catchment

First lunch

I love peanut butter and honey

But what about almond butter and mixed pickles—

Have you even thought of that?

On white bread naturally

Before you stop breathing

Race you to your stomach 

Regency

Preparing for a great comradeship

Or being pushed into it

Hot sand

Hot peppers for dinner

Night and day

Many opportunities on the front lawn 

Lakes filling up with water

Terrible fear of quicksand or sandstorm

Fear of sleep

As much as anything

Moving further down the beach

Pushing all the sand to one side

Got you first prize

A crown of hot peppers

Making you a regent

Excellency

Comrade

What of our friendship?

Yes, Thomas

We’ll always be friends

Let’s invite those who have already eaten

To dinner

Nothing can stop us now

Wind of It

What’s in a computer?

People are developing around me 

They must be confronted and stopped

Same here

Listening is the problem

Oh, sure, there’s always the courthouse

Why don’t they stick me in there?

I am without peer

Murderwise

If it’s a case of what I do or don’t say

It’s already on Broadway

New Haven at least

Or just tryouts somewhere

You’re invited, so are they

Personal and civic functions not far apart

Unity of place! 

Everyone comes from somewhere to here

You are one who knows

On your own with a megaphone

It’s time you moved over

What not to touch in the room

Paper, lamps, me

General public line up here

Tell me about the places you’ve been

Other than the airport

I’ve been there too

So long ago

And I’m there now 

Good for you, Louie

Thanks for asking how I’m doing

What else did you want to know?

Kraftwerk, Sydney Opera House, 25.05.13

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