Men in the Off Hours Anne Carson

No Anna no I don’t have any excuses. And yes yes I love you very much. As usual, she astounds me: TV men (Sappho, Artaud, Tolstoy, Lazarus), Audubon, and yes Anna, the paint does take the shape of a bird. Yes, there are several ways of snowing.

A college professor discovers that she is in love with her student. But does a person really discover such things?

There are two flat poems. One on page 22. The other on page 25. Please view the following poem with caution. Step over the strangeness and find a picture of yourself on the other side. Here, “hands, feet, vowels, hair.” There “whispers.” There “agony.” And then, and then… flat thunder, something sawed apart, some kind of music. There. Yes Anna, I am your under-reader. Yes Anna. I will make these decisions once and for all the hundreds of times I haven’t bothered.

Flatman (1st draft)

I was born in the circus. I play the flat man.
     My voice is flat, my walk is flat, my ironies
          move flatly out to sock you in the eye.

Hands, feet, vowels, hair, shadow, feelings of community,
     strings (you do see) all flat.
          The epic model I guess I’ll

pass over, Homer likening stalemate in war to a carpenter’s
     chalkline. My flat world cost only $2 to view
          at first, later this price like others went up.

Brute natures and angels in transparent draperies all alike
     enjoyed the show. Flowers fell
          transparently off them as they entered my tent

where air was of course planar. In some other world they
     could have stayed organized but something about me
          cast their placards down (flat, yes):

Brechtian. See a flat rat escape that one-dimensional skull.
     And then, and then, what whispers there.
          Your agony, mine, in the fully consensual design

of this play of light—you crowd of missing ones,
     return the ball to me! whispers, whispers and her voice
          (she never arrives) froze on the knock.

Flat thunder, all my heart, you might use Brahms behind it.
     Dull, whitish, deadly as a carpenter’s chalkline.
          Not Beethoven—Beethoven I cannot flatten.

 

Flatman (2nd draft)

If you see this card half out of my pocket you know
I am in on the bidding.
Don’t wait to feel it
on the pulse: I was

evacuated May Day from an explosive island
where I had made my home.
Sulfur dioxide thick in the air,
microgravity readings worrisome,

twilight hard to distinguish from other times of day—
I had got blasé about the ash cloud when
fiery hail began hitting the pool.
Suddenly it was night in the kitchen.

As I am now at hand with my card in my pocket
you know I did not put God in my debt that day.
Here is the thing though:
I do not organize well anymore.

“ My little Force…” as Emily said.
Barest panoramics imply internal difference
Where the Mountains Are.
Or were.

But
be assured my shamefastness,
though pungent, is complete.
And I can pay.

Please. Can we keep out personal socio-cultural histories to ourselves tonight? Because the kitchen's dimmer switch doesn't work anymore. The cats are crawling into the oven eyes in search of mice. Did you lock it? Did you lock it? Rest assured, I'm in the kitchen with my little book and my little light and my little annotated ears. I listen to the other room's music. Sirens and dogs gnawing on aluminum cans. Brooklyn. I’m looking at the plainest way to say I have forgotten. The simplest excuse. Darling, do you see the flash? The ash crusted on the windows? Where the mountains were? What did it?