Amanda Deutch : Four poems

 

 

 

purslane

 

stretch marks. streets. cracks

so many 90’s

taxis

whack

and then scarcity

until right now

open

jsh

open

sk

open

sh

open

 

 

 

blanket flower

 

once went wondering

oir om tje woods

orange
yellow

wht an automatic

corsage

friends in corner digs
and dives

restaurants

and ice cream shops
take out and steak

we forget how primal
it is for us to talk

& listen

the human need to forage in the city for each other’s voices

 

 

 

yellow jewelweed

 

sexy

flower

of wet wet soil

bring on the bees

buzzz

bitch

ougo8

this is the real deal

brsdugiubh

what a world

when a woman

wants something

seh wants it

do that thing

 

re up

sur

see

she

sehll

 

 

 

purple dead nettle

 

just paint the wall in front of you

what are you pinko?

black wax

black tar

supposing I lie down right here

and now

this is not something i do often

artificial sweeteners

won’t kill you

on the spot.

in a dark room she

told us

what really went down

a fork in the road

a spoon in the night

a knife in the back

and then poof

ejjppvf

dffijij

 

snkjir

fr

awoooooooooo

 

 

 

 

 

Born and raised in New York City, Amanda Deutch is a poet and social practice artist. She is the author of several poetry chapbooks, most recently Bodega Night Pigeon Riot (above/ground 2020) and Surf Avenue and 29th Street Coney Island (Least Weasel 2018). Her poetry has been published in The New York Times, Oversound, The Rumpus, Cimarron Review, Ping Pong and in many other journals and magazines.

 

Colby Clair Stolson : bodega night pigeon riot, by Amanda Deutch

bodega night pigeon riot, Amanda Deutch
above/ground press, 2020

 

 

 

I was taught, and I believe, that in a later version of Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” he changed (fixed, really) one simple thing: he replaced the hard colon at the end of the first line (there are only two lines) with a semicolon. Guided, of course, this was the single-most elucidating statement on poetics in my whole time as an undergraduate. The colon handed the reader a metaphor, said, Look, these blurry, ghostly faces really are wet petals because I say so. Do you get it? It is raining. The semicolon, if we are to tilt our heads up a bit, says something much, much more interesting, and breaks free from what Pound thought, I think, to be an old and restrictive poetic device. The semicolon hands nothing over to the reader, but places two images in proximity to another by way of metonymy. The reader is encouraged to make whatever connection their mind can generate! With the semicolon, one may say these faces, placed beside wet petals and a black bough, look awfully wet, dark, and perhaps flower-like in the rain while the metro rolls past. But this is not making the heavy ontological statement familiar to the metaphor. The faces are not wet petals. With the semi-colon, we’ve only made that associative leap through the wonderful power of our meaning-making minds. This is the metonym. It is just as valid, thankfully, though less beautiful, to see the apparition of faces and the wet petals as two discrete images having nothing at all to do with each other. That could be the unmediated way of seeing, but it isn’t how we actually see with our minds and with the speed at which this world runs. Discreteness is not how the poet sees. Maybe at first. But then the links inevitably form a chain. Isolated, disparate, these adjectives are, for the poet, to be nowhere near the verb ‘to see’.

“saucer magnolia petals”

In bodega night pigeon riot, Amanda Deutch takes the metonym one formally exciting step further. She composed the chapbook on a commute along New York City’s elevated M and J subway lines on a Wednesday. Her method is proprioceptive: Everything through that subway’s window during her commute that she could see, compose and connect is here. There are no semicolons—her chapbook doesn’t need them! This is all in service to the form. She asks, What if the linking action of the semicolon was superseded by the action of flipping the page? Deutch moves us to think of the page and its stanza as one scene out of the window of one subway car. When you flip the page, you’ve blinked and the subway has moved on to showcase another scene. The pages themselves function as proximity, nearness, and, therefore, connection. This is immediately apparent to me when flipping through the chapbook. Most of its stanzas are neat groupings of three lines, a formal decision which beautifully imitates the long, rectangular image of the first subway car arriving on the first page. Each ensuing page is also the next subway car, in a way.

With the readerly act of flipping the page, the concrete images are chained along a very literal (i.e., metro) line and hit us like expertly-selected staccatos.^[1] The fast-moving sights and ‘landmarks’ that were picked out and locked down on this commute make not only a particular view of NYC and Brooklyn, but are also idiosyncratically and unequivocally Wednesday as observed, however indeterminate, by the poet. The “opacity outlining the architecture / of a mosque” may still be there, in that spot, on Thursday. However, depending on the time of day, on weather patterns, on the industrial haze, on the level of water density in the air, the opacity will never be the same. Nor is it likely that the poet’s recording of that opacity and that mosque will fall between “this moment of being / white static over the / New York City skyline” and “Now Pretty / Red Nail, Check”. Deutch’s poetics make this distinctly Wednesday. The commute on Thursday’s another thing altogether.

Popeyes, Checkers, Dunkin Donuts

graffiti on beige building:

Police State USA

 

bodega night pigeon riot is a picture of NYC (and of America) on a certain day and is a microcosm of NYC (and of America) in the 21st century. Deutch blends us a thick mélange of fast, fast consumption, of unique and plentiful places of worship, and of social commentary. As in the excerpt of graffiti above, one ingredient of the mix seems to produce or bring forth the other. The barrage of business, church, place, and filth (“this city / the filthy one”) reproduces that overwhelming of the senses only the presence of a city can elicit. The chain of concrete image after concrete image is a heavy one.

This city that makes

diamonds or glass

out of us all

It is not my place to say whether New York City has made or is making a diamond or glass out of Amanda Deutch. The city, to which I’ve never visited, would most definitely compress me into glass. Too transparent, they’d say. Doesn’t fragment the light at all. Whether diamond or glass, Deutch finds respite among the concrete and metal cityscape; in fact, respite is her final destination. Like Pound, who digs up the natural out of the urban, however darkly, Deutch departs on her journey with “saucer magnolia petals” and arrives at a Romantic scene underneath a tree, reading to children.

while petals

[page break]

litter the concrete.

It’s her expert use of “litter” that really gives the whole chapbook a cohesion in both form and content. The denotation and connotation of this word are both clear. We may see the napkins and potato chip bags flitting along the concrete in these petals, and, vice-versa, the petals in this litter. There may be beauty in it yet.

The formal statement made by bodega night pigeon riot is fresh and exciting. That content and form are eternal reflections of each other in this chapbook-length long poem is impressive. We ought to look forward to what comes next from Deutch.

 

 

 

 

Colby Clair Stolson is a young writer from Alberta. He grew up somewhere in the in-between, in a town called Ponoka. Every day he asks himself, 'who knows if the moon’s/a balloon’?

To make his wages, Stolson is the Sales and Marketing Coordinator for Calgary-based publisher of fine literature, Freehand Books. Catch him!—in the community!

---

^[1] Entirely for fun, and because I’ve never visited NYC, I mapped out Deutch’s commute to the highest fidelity possible. You can see it at this link. Be sure to check out Portland, the unnamed city in which I think she lived based on the textual evidence. In cases where the density of Popeyes or Dunkin’ Donuts was too immense, I’ve chosen to mark several of them off.

Amanda Deutch : bodega night pigeon riot, by Amanda Deutch

Pre-script:

I wrote this before the pandemic had the majority of the world sheltering in place. I think the need for small moments of wonder has only increased during this time of crisis.

          I grew up watching Wild Style on TV, wearing mismatched converse high-tops, and noticing all the random manifestations of street art in New York City.  Somewhere in an empty lot there was this giant assemblage of all kinds of stuffed animals, toys, and tires. It was enormous—  high as the tree tops. It was in the East Village, maybe on First Avenue or Avenue A.  I only caught glimpses of it at night when it was dark and I was out smoking with friends. So I am not sure whether it was in an empty lot or a community garden. (I could look it up, but I don’t really want to. I like having it remain in my memory as it is.) There were so many of these wacky manifestations of wonder throughout the five boroughs. In the 1980s, someone painted purple footprints all over Manhattan. The footprints went on for blocks. I wanted to spend a day following the footprints to see where they would go, if they lead to a destination or would just lead you on a labyrinthian day of wandering. (I was too young at the time to go follow them on my own.)

           I wrote bodega night pigeon riot while looking out the window on a long subway trip to work. It is a roughly 1.5 hour commute from Brooklyn to well, Brooklyn actually. I take two trains that go underground, two above ground (or elevated) trains and travel over the Manhattan and the Williamsburg Bridges. I actually enjoy this Wednesday commute because there is so much to see out the window and good people watching on these particular trains. It was a cloudy afternoon and I began to write. I got into a sort of liminal state and began to write what was happening outside the rectangular  subway windows. I saw graffiti on rooftops and high on the side of buildings, signs for businesses that were more basic than marketed (Burger, Best Liquor). And I devised some constraints for myself. I think it was five lines and three words per line. I wrote like that for 12-15 subway stops. At times, I found myself interrupt and enter into the poem, a memory conjured by a street name or the shape of a building. I allowed these associations and memories into the poem, but only minimally. I wanted the words to reflect the city outside, more than my own mind. I wrote and looked up and I had arrived at work. The poem captured the temporal journey.

          I try to keep my eyes open. For years, I didn’t have a smart phone. I held out until I couldn’t any longer. Friends would ask me often, “Well why not? Why don’t you just get one?” It was hard to explain in the quick pace of conversation what the real answer was: “I want to keep my eyes open to wonder.”  Instead, I would say, “Well. . .you know I want to be present” or “I want to protect my time and I don't want everyone expecting me to reply to texts or e-mails instantly. Plus if I drop it, it bounces.” That is true. But really it was for the wonder. I finally caved and got a smart phone 7 months ago after my last flip phone died. The flip phone fell onto a taqueria floor and broke in half. Earlier models had been super durable. This one stunk. It was beyond repair. Having a smart phone definitely impacts my sense of wonder. I catch myself reading articles on my phone while I’m walking down the street. If I am not careful I may pass some street art or moment of awe.

          The neighborhoods that the elevated trains travel through are changing. This is not a new story. While not too long ago, they were predominantly working class neighborhoods of color, they are now full of brand new "lofts" with 15-foot lease advertisements showing fashionable and young multicultural people smiling and playing pool. (I guess the loft buildings have pool tables? )

 

          From the train on my way to work, I am an observer, a witness to the change. The neighborhoods are gentrifying. People are being pushed out, displaced, and losing their homes. Flower shops and Santeria spots become trendy coffee shops and bars with millennial pink neon. Neighborhoods often lose their character this way and slowly cities globally have become more homogenized. Although, I am a native New Yorker, this is not my neighborhood. I don't live here. But as a New Yorker, I have always valued how many distinct and varied neighborhoods can thrive in New York City creating a riot for the senses. I sometimes see the whole of New York City as my home.

          Closer to Manhattan, in Williamsburg and Bushwick,  fashionable people get on and off the trains peacocking in all of their brightly colored clothes. As I get closer to work, the older people of color, and mothers with their children get on and off the train in their work clothes. Gradually the signs outside the window begin to change from English to Spanish. Once I pass Myrtle Avenue, more of the business signs are in Spanish: Pollo Rico and El Valle. By the time I finally arrive at my stop, Crescent Street, everybody is speaking Spanish.

          I photograph on the elevated trains I ride to work using a plastic panoramic point and shoot I bought at the Goodwill 15 years ago. This is my favorite camera. I think it cost $1.99. I used a photo lab in Brooklyn to develop and print the photographs. I didn’t have a smart phone yet when I wrote this poem (yes, even in 2019). It was me looking out the window in the city on my way to work finding the wonder in the everyday.

Amanda Deutch is a poet and interdisciplinary artist. Her poems have been published in the New York Times, The Rumpus, Cimarron Review, and Cosmonauts Avenue, among others. The author of six chapbooks, her most recent chapbooks are bodega night pigeon riot (above/ground press, 2020) and Surf Avenue and 29th Street, Coney Island (Least Weasel Press, 2018). She has been a writer-in-residence at The Betsy Hotel (Miami) and Footpaths to Creativity (Azores). She is the Founder and Executive Director of Parachute Literary Arts. Deutch’s poems can be found at www.amandadeutch.com. More about Parachute Literary Arts can be found here: www.ParachuteArts.org