WHITE WHALE REVIEW |
Alec Hershman
jollyboats
-after Clark
“Years were things.”
—Michael Palmer
1985: Amniotic Translation
The remnant begins: Woke this morning to the Mr. Coffee spitting hard water. From the window the click of the stick-curtain and the delicate neck of the excavator. On the way to the hospital a man was selling candled eggs.
Alec Hershman
1986
The high-chair is a light-house.
The boats in the harbor, fat and happy.
No one recognizes yet
the silver levitation
over ripening floes—
we believe in the lanyard
and my father’s fluid affections.
The cleft palate never cleft
it never closed.
Alec Hershman
1987
Monotony dots.
When you leave, he says —it won’t be the voice
you came with.
My father
in the rear-view mirror,
the highway advancing on his hairline.
Alec Hershman
1988
Crickets host a floating crib.
Through cloud-break
the muzzy animals
leave their mobile,
call to follow—
their trailing manes
The sky, they say
is singing.
Thus begins my canter.
Alec Hershman
1989
The little pitcher runs his lip. In the new community
no fences.
Adults occur to me as windows do. Then turn off
Every light in the house.
Count to three, never four.
I am a troubled child.
Alec Hershman
1990
Water stains make faces
in the drywall the slight drum of a nail.
A pool cue introduced to sliding glass a starfish, fixed.
Through the basement, the pond in shallows.
Some years are only knees.
Some of the gulls come unglued.
Alec Hershman
1991
To whistle brings a string of bees.
Boys are older boys.
A pelt means you keep it.
My little red pounds for blocks.
Alec Hershman
1992
In the kitchen sisters come and come,
a compress to cool the wilted one
who balloons, who balloons.
Kelp matted to rock, the honey-brown hanks
wed a forehead.
And all night the there theres
Of the sisters,
chuckling like doves.
Alec Hershman
1993
—go the dead to their water-table,
heart-possum
sleeping with the bronchials.
Glen through glen
the lake moons-up
to wipe its own perimeter.
My mother
gathers her skirts
and kneels, a staircase on water.
At the landing I’m eight.
At the landing I’m a slipper-bird,
davening in the surf.
Alec Hershman
1994
What do you want to be was so many schoolyards blown-over
with dandelions the yellow of which.
Removed.
Told to open door number three.
Sang you’ll never know dear
through the box-fan—whispery ingress.
So what it was the tiger.
Alec Hershman
1995
Mother dowsing,
thin as kite-string.
We live nowhere near water.
In the myrtle I grass my only friend,
fugitive as a leaf.
Alec Hershman
1996: A Sales Associate Is Offering My Mother Gloves
while I’m a pocket growing hands.
Among the mannequins
cahoots are unavailable,
so I make them up.
Garments part
piece by piece, self-pebbled
by the taken things.
Eye-shine,
for the glance of a man—
through a palm-opening
the smallest gesture of my moth.
Alec Hershman
1997
Between screen doors.
A stranger comes on graph-paper, wants to know
What’ve we got to eat?
She lets him in, to hold—
Then, his pocket ripe with eggs,
she lets him go.
Alec Hershman
1998
At school I have trouble at home.
There are throaty boys between bells,
the delicate ears of urinals. A pause
before laughter.
Once, before lunch,
the dull glitter of a cop car,
the passing-period of a prince and the sound
of the door, unlockable.
Alec Hershman
1999
Practice saying after the accident.
Where I fell: a canyon—
Where I’d land: winter: face a spray of frost,
my arm erased by ice.
Alec Hershman
2000
dart → balloon.
halogen bug litter
in a carnival booth.
Boys added to boys,
amass a flock of runners.
The messaging
more knee to knee
in the brief language of shorts.
Alec Hershman
2001
Meanwhile, the debutantes click like cue balls, press against men barely men. They bottleneck a turn-style. Hand to mouth in the economy of compliments. I play poker with the guys, up-gussied for the ones with eyes for chips.
Alec Hershman
2002
-ship
with strategic prefix.
The limits of roommate.
I mean—
he says,
and hangs it there.
On the door knock twice.
Alec Hershman
2003
Let’s agree like whispers down a hallway.
Someone calls me, baby.
Someone points.
***
I drink from the mouth
where the river surrenders.
Even a glacier is a rolling thing.
Alec Hershman
2004
Doubt is the space between versions.
Concentric blues: swimming pool, lake.
Leg of salt.
Leg of haste.
How we got there,
gas light blushing on the dash—
Alec Hershman
2005
Because if you wait a little longer you won’t be hungry.
Idle boys in idle light. Candle-wax driven up by a nail,
and instead of fortune cookies we have plums—stained lozenges
of paper for pits—the one that slips between my teeth: Don’t stop listening,
we’re about to tell you what you want to hear.
Alec Hershman
2006
In the stop-flock of back-patters it was said: who wouldn’t trade a thought for congratulations? Hands held like ties between river scrims—the water off to nowhere, and in each of us unrolled the churlish thought of shooting down the stage-director.
Alec Hershman
2007
Mr. Dead-in-my-tracks.
What was said prior to the kind of laughter where it doesn’t matter.
A police officer scoops me like a highway off-ramp.
To learn as much as I am taught.
The intestinal sound of thaw-water underfoot.
Alec Hershman
2008
In the center of a post-card: the center of the sea.
In dream I wed the mountain.
***
The rock upon rock of our talk.
Alec Hershman
2009
Where I thought they’d follow
the circuits weren’t.
Parks and departures.
Where I asked and
“For a cue!” he replied.
Too fast.
Expectation was a wall
where the door should be.
Alec Hershman
2010
Some things stay: a zipper
at my ankle.
The man
was heavily inscribed
himself—his skin was litmus
who put with me
what I paid him to put:
the part that goes missing—
the part that can’t be taken off—
Copyright © Alec Hershman. White Whale Review, issue 2.3
