iceland

no way
no awakening
my hands at reykavich
hesitant on the rook
my friend tells me
he's getting
a new voice
my lover searches
bravely for surfaces
there is a number
to these observations
the story is delayed
but I don't know why
all the out-of-town faces
disappear and reappear
like diffused light
I see someone else
in the mirror
I hear automatic tympani
in my telephone
I remember Gary's novel
is in my ex-wife's typewriter
upstairs in the small room
I use for this work

but
who's breasts do I imagine
in my hands
tonight
you know

Bobby Fisher played a major league chess match in Reykavich, Iceland in the mid 1970s. He won, as I recall. The friend with a new voice was Steven Alfred Dolgin who was once a good friend of mine. Although he only sporadically lived in Springfield, he was a part of the Scarritt scene if only in effect. His girlfriend, Mary Ann Demas, who he fought with on a regular basis, came around quite a bit and she also wrote some pretty decent poems. Also, Nancy Isaacs, who lived down second street with an old friend of Dolgin's came around to talk about him with me. She had a definite yen. We talked about sex quite a lot. A charming girl, really. Of course this poem is primarily about Alison Gaughan. Gary's novel in the typewriter refers to Gary Davidson's remarkable piece, Stuffed, probably the most successful of the novels written in the Scarritt scene in the 1970s. I have a manuscript of it in this very room. Only proper as I did help to type it up. Well, art is hard and love sucks.