Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies

Back matter, Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. vol. 12 (1993)

Anstett, Aaron

ONE SECOND TO THE NEXT
Aaron Anstett
It’s dangerous, how little the world 
convinces me, and then how much, falling 
around my feet like this. I wonder if Inspector 
308, who approved my pants, feels like I do, 
jumping one second to the next 
with the candor dropped things have, 
coming unstuck. If 308 is a work station, 
one worker per shift, my chances are tripled, 
doubled. When it was my job to verify the number 
of satellite and missile parts per package, 
circuit boards, computer chips, shrink-wrapped 
in blue plastic, I made it through the day pretending 
I was curator for an archaeological dig 
on Saturn. I might have been. The parts 
were brought to my table by a blinking, 
remote-control robot. It took the counted 
parts away. Some of them could be in space.
Later, I painted houses, and told myself
I was leaving a record, that I wasn’t just charted
in taxes, but in the houses, which were a proof
of how I’d moved my hands. The woman I loved
was moving west. She helped wash me
when I’d come home covered. There’s a bottle
of beer and a matchbook in front of me
on the kitchen counter, and like I was saying
about the world, I don’t believe this ember’s this orange
at the end of my cigarette. I don’t believe I’ve been
145
let out under the trees down there, looked 
in the car lights for my house key, then watched 
the brake lights go from here. If I loved a woman 
who called from her house near the railroad tracks 
when trains were sounding, I’m sure she’d do it 
so I’d hear them closer on the phone. 308 
must love someone. I love a woman who comes from 
Studio City, California, and talks about movie backdrops 
constantly, or I want her to. It’s dangerous how I want 
a landscape that still and collapsable, 
a horizon we could dismantle and stack 
anytime we wanted, right now if you asked.
146


English

One Second to the Next

Robbins, Doren

AGAINST ANGELS
Doren Robbins
Somebody asked me 
but I’m not going 
to argue about 
the topic of the soul—
deduce or repeat 
inductive facts 
for its evidence.
It is what
the Alsatian poet meant 
when he wrote of 
the “precision of 
the indefinable.”
And I have risen 
in the plain rinse 
of that precision 
before, and before
that. But my reason 
or imagination has 
no depth for angels.
Not Lawrence’s angel
102
which he thought was made 
when a man’s soul 
and a woman’s soul 
unites. And not Rilke’s
angels—their beauty— 
which he believed 
was nothing but 
the beginning
of a terror 
he could just 
barely endure.
I think there is
something somewhat 
neurotic about 
the prestige 
and rarity
of angels. No,
I will stay 
plain—a sparrow 
among herons
and sandhill cranes.
And I would be 
cautious of angels. 
Constantine the Great,
for instance, contracted 
leprosy after dreaming 
of an angel pouring 
water on him.


Against Angels

Arreaza-Camero, Emperatriz

Cubagua, or the Search for Venezuelan National Identity

Notes on Contributors, Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 12 (1993)

Lopez, Alfred

La Patria y el Tirano: José Martí and the Role of Literature in the Formation of the Cuban Nation(s), Past and Present

Brendan-Brown, Sean

THE LOGIC OF DESIRE
Sean Brendan-Brown
Wet concrete, coal-smutted dark, phlegm of drunks 
soft underfoot like slugs, impure drugs striking all the beautiful 
things you swallowed them for lurid, retched—skull-white flower 
boxes,
collapsed saxophonist fetal around the instrument case, black wingtip 
to tip with the dark heavy cop shoes—wastes out of a bandbox—he’s 
dead
you say leavetheoldmutherfucker but when the wagon comes 
he dances a jig with the saxophone, singing into his wristbone:
Imitation teaches language, evasion, perversion, survival, 
killing, which fork impales the lettuce, when to applaud, 
defensive driving, rhetoric, ambition, whom to rival, 
faith, disbelief, the Great Chain of Being from God to clod
Forty-seven miles of train escapes you into a Wonderland of unseeing 
where things lay down to die like they're supposed to into the humus 
human—skin jaundiced orange of pumpkins, face winesap-red, hair 
worm
brown. Where the landscape is an air-locked trough the grating tooth 
rumbles and ruptures, and the angels you called quality control 
experts steel-
seated naked and demure in refrigerated dark for identification but 
when you
enter sadly and brush the soiled wing tips they shriek and sing:
104
Imitation teaches language, evasion, perversion, survival, 
killing, which fork impales the lettuce, when to applaud, 
defensive driving, rhetoric, ambition, whom to rival, 
faith, disbelief, the Great Chain of Being from God to clod
Drugged dreamer, someday you won’t wake entirely: the logic of 
desire,
the geometry of withdrawal: braincrashed into saecula saeculorum, 
amen.
Broken sparrow in the cat’s mouth, 
its dying eyes rolling through the tooth-cage 
triggers your first morning mayhem. Your eyes, daydream lacerated 
go blank on Jesus needlepoints and HOMESWEETHOME 
hieroglyphics.
The rest of us read about you or see you at 11 o’clock or step over you 
on the way upstairs with meat & vodka: chalked hand puppets of 
blood,
Naugahyde slashed into the shapes of nations—TANTALIZER: 
bridegroom of the soul, scarlet pinned butterfly 
slipping down four walls. TANTALIZER:
Brother welcome to today.
105


The Logic of Desire

Secor, Nanette

YGGDRASILL, THE MUNDANE TREE 
after an illustration by Bishop Percy, 1847
Nanette Secor
A map of the universe, 
a bonsai in a paperweight.
And under that, a mine,
its dust-kicked, and sand-spit men.
And, at the foot of the mine, 
a tree, and under it, 
the empty air.
The worldly tree strikes rock and springs 
from rock. Snakes coil along the black - 
flint path; the cuckoo’s envy sounds 
ring out predictably. I’ll wager, 
you’ll see land before us all: 
the Holy Roman Empire in a boot.
Forgive me for not seeing this before: 
the tree of heaven, the snow-globe upsidedown, 
the bright sunshowers, flotillas of mimosa 
falling. What springs from rock returns to stone.
Don’t listen to negativity:
and you will find of your own accord
your happy desert isle
beneath the sea, swordfishes
leaping from the rock,
each mundane joy anomalous.
A tree, which is not death or life, 
or land or sea, is floating under us 
as bright as light.
142


Yggdrasill, The Mundane Tree, after an illustration By Bishop Percy, 1847

Not a member yet