Mike Maggio

STILL LIFE

What can the lonely gutter do

but embrace

a blue reclining nude

quenched

like a footpressed butt

mirrored in

the red-glazed wedges

of a restless beer bottle

and wait

for the swift tremulous cloud

to put out the sky.

Three Houses on Vineland Avenue

I

Three houses on Vineland Ave.

at 2 A.M. or so

the fog rolls in

three masses snuggled

in vast plush blankets

wheels roll

a red eye looms in the distance

wheels stop.

Home is where you happen to be at the moment.

II

At the tone the time will be

green

wheels roll

the radio strikes 2 at the triple intersection

eyes roll

walls in the clouded street

chimney floats like masts on sailing ships

wheels stop.

Believing is sight made sound.

III

Last call for alcohol

sounds and sights in twilight sleep

bottles roll

three nomads lost in the milky crossroads

doors roll

a roof eclipses the hands of time

welcome mats march by

footsteps stop.

What a mess of our lives we make.

EXPLANATION

A very bizarre experience occurred one night when I was going home in a very thick, LA fog.  I was stopped for a light at the intersection of Vineland Avenue and (God, it's been so long since I've left LA, I can't remember the other streets)! It's right in North Hollywood.  Anyhow, while I was waiting for the light to change, there appeared this ghostly image which actually frightened me because it was gigantic and indiscernible.  Soon, however, they emerged through the fog: three houses being transported, one behind the other, on these large trailers.

I had been toying sometime with the idea of writing cubist poetry: trying to apply the structure and vocabulary of cubist painting to poetic form.  I wanted to use light and shape, and I wanted to explore objects from various perspectives.  My experience that night on Vineland Avenue seemed to be the perfect vehicle for attempting this experiment.  That's how the poem came about.

I might also add it has been published in the NEW PRESS in New York, only after persistently arguing that ambiguity is an inherent part of the poem.