Reading to Celebrate the Release of Ed Dorn's COLLECTED POEMS

Friday October 4, 7:30 p.m.

@ SubterraneanArthouse

2179 Bancroft Way

Berkeley, CA

with Jennifer Dunbar Dorn

and guests:

Maya Dorn

Micah Ballard

Eileein O’Malley Callahan

Steve Dickison

Patrick Dunagan

Stephen Emerson

Gloria Frym

Owen Hill

Joanne Kyger

Duncan McNaughton

Kevin Opstedal

Cedar Sigo

Sunnylyn Thibodeaux

Featuring historic recordings of Ed Dorn

from the SFSU Poetry Center Archives.

Advance tickets$10

Low income $5 at the door

no one turned away for lack of dinero.

Gallons of kool-aid spilling into the sea

There was no place else to go

so I parked it in the spot reserved for those

who have a history of violence

& waited as the tide rushed in

across the sand

No music yet the palm trees on

Beach Street seem to be

gearing up for a rendition of

“Hooray for Hollywood”

buried in a slice of cold ocean water

bite down                     release

burnt kelp, blue agave, morning glory

I know, I read it backwards

on hands & knees     

beneath the display window

A suntan neatly folded over the

balcony of my heart

Silver wrists & fog

drifting in on the wings of Chuang Tzu’s butterfly

as they affect a tropical storm

forming in the Pacific

south of Baja

                                    & the way shadows

fall against her cheek at sundown

as I excavate a smile

5:31 p.m. & the sun is like a turquoise ring

on a finger of fog

Two Boat Dreams

1.

I was on the deck of a yacht

anchored just inside the reef

at Tahiti

drinking beer & smoking

cigarettes with my brother-in-law

who was telling me how

we could make a million dollars

teaching the Tahitians

how to make a really good hamburger

2.

I visit Joanne & Donald who are living on a massive houseboat

                               a triple-decker Donald calls it.

Joanne says they’re sailing it to Fiji soon.

Everyone speaks Russian in Fiji, Joanne tells me.

She is bestowing great wisdom upon me.

I know this is true because I can’t understand any of it.

As I’m leaving she hands me two books:

The Tropic of Concrete

& A Streetcar Named Virgil.

Aqua-Man Meets the Mermaid with the Palomino Seahorse Tattoo

Thus it was revealed

Palm trees travel in packs of three

but when the drink hits the fan

in the middle of your

underwater ballet lesson

the resonance is as derivative a consequence

as a ransom note

written in sea-green lipstick

Drizzle.  Splash.  Trickle.  Blink.

I recorded every wing-

                        flap & fin-splash from

Point Sur to Topanga

            with my Yater spoon strumming

                                    the valves & hinges

as your kelp-lit eyes

                        ignited the prevailing haze

Treading Water

The fog is drifting in now the

sidewalk is wet & the air tastes like

seawater

            because that’s really what it is

what we are

                        damp & shimmering

in the first light

The Drift

I said I’d give all 7 and a half oceans

to know what you’re thinking

tilted in the fog

like a bikini in the refrigerator
sweating out the last day of summer

After You’ve Gone

Watching wet foot

prints evaporate

on sun

bleached pavement

My Name is Ozymandias (But You Can Call Me Ozzy)

Monday morning has a way of slipping

into Friday afternoon

but we bubble along as though nothing

happened

low-riding beneath the weather

irrevocably stoned

& stalling out on the sand-swept pavement

stretching far & away

& my smog blue eyes go blank

like the slick rock of exposed tidepools

because whenever you flip a coin

I always call the darkside

remembering your reflection in a burnt spoon

like the face of Elvis in a tortilla

w/that sneer of cold command

hip & disdainful

but cormorants slice the sky into quatrains anyway

& the domino effect is more like a

flotation device than a popsicle

wrapped in a 20 dollar bill

the balance in trade

walking in on flames

like Mayakovsky

w/a dog named Snake Eyes

Just the molecules & me

Skidding around the corner

fishtailing like a big rig in a typhoon

it’s all about the sin of angels & the roof

caving in

            the danger inherent in a universe

that gets too close

                        like the string attached is

tied to a tractor hauling 20 tons of sunsets

            & like a forgotten movie star

            sitting in the dark of an empty theater

            no one leaps from the balcony

            into a shot-glass because the escape scene was

            so real you could feel the rushing

            water rising up around you sweeping you

            away

                        Acceleration, the dawn’s mist & dark

                        gods beyond the reef

The late summer air here is as thick as a tear-

drop

Do the Tsunami

The visible damp in the bending mirror

                        as translucent as it is opaque

            rising & falling in the roll & ache

of the swell

                        all deep green calypso as might

restring the seabreeze anointed by our

                                    several interpretations

swept across the drumroll sand where

                        diesel whispers flawlessly thread

the beach eucalyptus

            & the silver bridge to dreamless sleep

I never knew when to say when

Your little heart flips

maybe spins off a pirouette

the way a page torn from a dream flutters

as it falls

                            & I wait where the gull’s

call pierces the thundering

              concrete the wash of foam the

                            wet sand sliding beneath my

                                    feet the raw mist relentless

                                                as drifting ashes of neon . . .

              the sky dropping in to add a little

              contrast

                                    Your jungle canopy

                                                & the shattered glass

with a seabreeze

                                     strumming the fence wire

& the fortune palms

               like the tide

                                                whispering your name