I wish that I knew what I know
Rod Stewart knows now, I wish
I had his everything, especially
when he dolls it up for me, a flick
of a bang to the sky. How did Rod
Stewart get the way he got and how
does he not stop being that way.
Rod Stewart is a stand in for our
mother issues and our lack of
understanding of corporate
taxation rates, historically
speaking. Rod Stewart is everyone’s
worst vision for their child, like
who cares about the genetic
test that will tell me if I’ve got
a thriver or not, what if I have
a Rod Stewart inside of me, growing
now as I speak, knowing what he
knows now that he didn’t know
then that we know he knows now
when he wasn’t even beginning
to know it. Sometimes at the base
of my skull I can feel Rod Stewart’s
comb plucking a tangle, teasing
a feather from my hairs. Rod
Stewart on a tire swing, Rod
Stewart inside a tunnel, Rod
Stewart watching TV, Rod
Stewart driving on the wrong
side of the street in another country.
Rod Stewart is not me and I am not
him yet, but I am still growing and I
do not yet know what I knew then
when I was watching the news a lot
in bed. There is no way Rod Stewart
has a normal sized bed just like there
is no way some very large men have
regular sized toilets. There are just
some things you know and then there
are just some things you don’t.
+
The difference between the news
reporters and the internal
documentarians is one of
timeliness.
Let’s say I want this
out there now.
Now.
Like already.
Let’s say I wish I’d already
said it.
Had it eaten, consumed, drunk
for breakfast.
Let’s say good and done
and onto the next.
Out with the
rest.
A paragraph is not a problem
a poem is.
It’s not like I sit around
yesterday’s news.
But years gone by, remember
paper yellows.
Please deliver me the 1930s
New York Times by noon.
Do you read the news and think
you can have some impact on the news.
Are we talking affect or
effect.
Do you read the news
whatfor.
We watched for four
years until we stopped.
We kept waiting for it to
stop don’t stop.
We are trapped like tele-
grams from another time.
We hear people talking
out the window and
go to close it.
We do.
We are trying to record.
Fortunely.
I have spoken to my colleague in this way
and received no reply.
I am worried there will be
mandated togetherness.
I heard you had a party
and it was inside.
It is possible the entire house
is being eaten.
Forces seen and
un.
I need to be un if I am to be
at all.
I am talking career ending
in a way no one
from the future
will understand.
Maybe I mean
the past.
Maybe the future will be all
about career ending.
Before you take a step
take a leap.
Dummy didn’t make the thing
you think he did.
He lifted up his arms
and we all felt it.
We all felt good
for him.
To leave behind his scandal
of trees.
He levitated and orbited around
the driveway for a while.
Until his career
really took off.
Without commentary
or favor.
He was a success
of his own kind.
Never wrong,
always night.
Gilded a little
among the palms.
.tiff)
Sandra Doller is the author of several books of poetry and poetry-adjacent things including Oriflamme, Chora, Man Years, and Leave Your Body Behind, plus a smattering of essays, collaborations, and translations: The Yesterday Project, Sonneteers, and Mystérieuse. Her newest book, Not Now Now, is forthcoming from Rescue Press. Doller is the founder of 1913 a journal of forms/1913 Press, where she remains l'éditrice-in-chief, publishing poetry, poetics, prose and else by emerging and established writers. The recipient of various honors including the Paul Engle-James Michener Fellowship and the Anomalous Press Translation Prize, she lives in the USA—for now.