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Escape from Combray

By RICK SNYDER

UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE

Copyright © 2010 Rick Snyder
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-933254-51-7

Contents

Postpoem....................................9Canzone.....................................13The World Below.............................15How Are You Doing?..........................16Graveyard Poem..............................17Evanesces...................................18Gold Sounds.................................19Pigeon Feeder...............................21Solitude....................................22Double Ear..................................23Before Class................................31Walking Home................................32Pop Poem....................................34Spring Idyll................................35Escape from Combray.........................36Unwritten Poems.............................37Solo........................................38Poem with a Bridge..........................40Poem for an Aunt............................41Sunday......................................42Hagiography.................................45Grace Before Dinner.........................46In Praise of Eros...........................47Pastoral....................................49Treasure Hunt...............................50Decoy.......................................51Erasmus.....................................53Requiem: Remains............................56Errand......................................57Buying Camels...............................58Light Into Darkness.........................60Sky Blue....................................61Untitled....................................63Excuse......................................65Poem from Memory............................66The Memory of Whiteness.....................68

Chapter One

CANZONE The streets widen on a windy day The sidewalks are packed with people walking home in trench coats that are sandstone taupe or teal The traffic cop alone wears a polyester suit drenched blue Her silver whistle shines shrill in the raw wind leaving me stranded between the steel buildings and stainless sky surrounded by strangers in putty and bone none of whom is Dante Alighieri touching my shoulder and telling me to relax There's nothing we can do until she blows again and allows us to proceed to the museum where Maureen is waiting THE WORLD BELOW Life was easy for the heroes. A little confusion, and the indifferent messenger would descend to recite their fate verbatim, leaving them to comply with another savage war or starlit voyage, in which it always paid to kiss ass, and good things came to those who listened. Things like eating a lot, drinking a lot, and screwing a lot. All of which leaves me a little more awake than usual, reading onward into the underworld, where no matter how dark it gets, I can still hear the train rattle to Logan Square, think about someone who hasn't called, and know I'm going to be tired tomorrow. HOW ARE YOU DOING? As much as you deserve it, I wouldn't wish this Sunday night on you- not the Osco at closing, not its two tired women and shaky security guard, not its bin of flip-flops and Tasmanian Devil baseball caps, not its freshly mopped floors and fluorescent lights, not its endless James Taylor song on the intercom, and not its last pint of chocolate mint ice cream, which I carried down Milwaukee Ave. past a man in an unbuttoned baseball shirt, who stepped out of a shadow to whisper, How are you doing? GRAVEYARD POEM How good is it to drink cool water from a paper cup, standing alongside a blue-tinted jug that claims to hold 189 liters- sober and well-fed, not even dogged by ideas of what I could've said when- here, in a fluorescent lunchroom lined with silly posters about ATTITUDE, COMMITMENT, CHANGE I am happy- in a strange city, at 4:15 in the morning. EVANESCES A clean slate of late winter sky the morning's animal-like tenacity above the bare branches above the historic church we stop at after breakfast admiring its innumerable pigeons before returning to lie down in this room awash with the roar of traffic the sickness of the city's grid pouring forth until the unseen cars are like particles that continue or collide GOLD SOUNDS Having become the type of person who will walk to the Shell station on a Friday night to buy a KitKat and be made happy by this I pocket my treasure (not wanting to start any fights) and step along the tectonic walk of Fullerton Ave pausing outside Lowell-Berteau Plating where the clank of metal follows the hiss of steam which follows the clank of metal rhythmic and percussive the man-sized metronome banging time into the night following me down a side street until at last it's no louder than the sounds of crumpling paper and foil

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Escape from Combrayby RICK SNYDER Copyright © 2010 by Rick Snyder. Excerpted by permission.
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