sincere furniture

by Damon Hubbs

“I watch the skaters & want to weep for joy…”

                                                                   Bernadette Mayer

It’s true I said I was writing a poem for Emily

about minimalism and lawn chairs because even though

I don’t know Emily I know she likes sparse, carefully constructed

poetry that resembles the Violator album by Depeche Mode.

I was a little drunk when I said I was writing a poem for Emily

because many good things happened that day

and I was sitting in my backyard like a king in a deck chair

which is not unlike the deck chair David Ghan

carries across the Scottish Highlands and Swiss Alps

while he’s looking for a comfortable place to enjoy the silence.

I was enjoying the silence too. 

Less really is more in regard to the ice in my gin

and summer, striving for immediacy

flying in like a cushie-doo

which is apparently a Scots term for “wood pigeon,”

and the sun, hanging like a gold medal just beyond my shed,

all of it had me feeling like a champion

like Nancy Kerrigan before she was attacked

with a baton in the Cabo Arena in Detroit, Michigan

in 1994.

It’s true I said I was writing a poem for Emily

although I find more perils than pleasures in art these days

and while Violator is a synth-pop masterpiece

fleshed out with fuckboy sonics and heavy hooks

I don’t care for minimalism.

I’m sorry, Emily.

White space violates me.

It’s like sincere furniture

all that adroit nonchalance,

all those crickets

and columns

and poems consisting of one word

lighght (for example)

or

silencio []

all those corners opening in all directions

upanddown, upanddown

it makes me claustrophobic.

I never get touchy-feely

with Donald Judd

or Robert Creeley.

No.

No.

The frame is not the manifesto.

It’s true I said I was writing a poem for Emily

because I like that poem she wrote

“Daughter Wields Boxcutter.”

I counted thirty-two words (I may have miscounted

because of the gin), eight lines, three stanzas

and Tonya Harding

crashing in out of nowhere

with variation and great change

which is all I ever wanted

in a poem (or a song).

I’d like to shower the ice with flowers

baroque bouquets of daffodils and carnations

freesias and white tulips and red roses,

and while I’m probably going a bit overboard here

    * I don’t plan on adding footnotes

     although an epigraph by Kenneth Koch

     or Bernadette Mayer might do the trick*

I want to say something like:

“Baby. You won. You won.

You WON!”

Too much is just enough.

Nobody remembers Nancy Kerrigan.

What’s a camel spin? Whoop-de-doo the triple Lutz.

Photo of Damon Hubbs

BIO: Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. He's the author of the full-length collection Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). He has also published four poetry chapbooks, The Day Sharks Walk on Land, Coin Doors & Empires, Charm of Difference, and The Railroad Poems.

From avant-garde journals to indie sleaze rags, Damon’s poems have been featured in a wide variety of publications, including: Revolution John, BRUISER, Dark Winter Lit, Broken Antler, Apocalypse Confidential, Farewell Transmission, The Gorko Gazette, Spectra, Book of Matches, Otoliths, Utriculi, Ranger Magazine, Don’t Submit!, Dreich, Cajun Mutt Press, Yellow Mama, Horror Sleaze Trash, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Beatnik Cowboy, Roi Fainéant, Bullshit Lit, Urban Pigs Press, Misery Tourism, Antiphony, The Argyle Literary Magazine, Suburban Witchcraft Magazine, Sparks of Calliope, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, the engine(idling, Synchronized Chaos, and more.