Dennis Hinrichsen
[dominion] [Dream in which My Father Comes Back as Dr. No]
for years when I dreamed of him we just pounded each other—you can do that in a dream—hard fists pummeling flesh—noting the haptics—me laying in the blows—relishing bruise—no style points there—I was just pure rage—unprovoked—though it doesn’t take too long to dig through family shit to find the cause—how my parents offered baby brother baby sister so easily to the man next door—he fed them booze and horseshoe pits—dizzying whir of shuttlecock on endless summer nights—and then—in secret—abused—nearly every kid on the block below the age of five—that’s what the shrink told my brother once—years later—other children now adults telling same story same man—but it was the 60s—that was mother’s excuse—we are sexy and freewheeling with our gin and tonics and Virginia Slims—he can help baby sister go to potty—how she belted out her best Shirley Bassey when Goldfinger came out—now there’s my father standing at the end of the sidewalk—in a black Nehru jacket—his face emaciated—bone white as bat guano—as if all the alcohol in him had burned off and had cured him down to living matter with something important to say—I know I know—I’m telling myself something here—what could it be—the dream never says—the dream is mystical—as living is (more life to come I hope) and death—I don’t get it sometimes but it’s mine—here it comes now—with villainy in it—the villain as priest—Goldfinger—Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klepp—that Beast of D Avenue—Cedar Rapids Iowa—I’ll have to do that thing I did when I just finally relaxed—said ok—this is cancer—opened myself completely to the surgeon’s blade
[tin]
O coming days of spinal health and sad incontinence—drought-infested pockets of the body—pre-cancerous cells ticking like dirty bombs your partner keeps touching to feel the grain—the sandpaper skin—sandpaper sky—tactile—constellated—its mythos death—a moonless connect-the-dots—therefore fear in the head that keeps pulsing stroke—night sweats—insomnia—active brain—television 4 AM churning endlessly yesterday’s endless laundry—maybe that’s why nostalgia tastes like tin in the mouth—between the teeth—you can’t go back—you go back—the pure uranium of longing digging up those sweet bodies—no decay in them yet—the tricks of memory so quick they are digital washouts—deepfake selves in a wreckage of clothes—back seat—aqua Mustang—some dead end country road—it’s winter—you start the engine to crank the heat—hear a song or two—then back to lips and tongues—I am listening to six young women talk outside a coffee shop now—they are watching me type—they want to be in this poem—in real time—not that other place with a late model Ford in it that rusted out and was sold by my father for junk—they would like to pose awhile with their styles—their ironed shorts and even tans and open-toed sandals—their painted nails—and add their perfumed white girl funk to this Saturday vibe that has cool air and some invisibility in it—and a tray of bones
[Thou Whole] [Thou Feeling Creature]
after Michael McClure’s “Ghost Tantra 49”
this is my ghost tantra—no!—tantrum—that’s what spellcheck does—
operative now
in best friend—he is beat
poet this May morning reciting
to lions
at some interior zoo—the roars
and GRRRRs rising from deep body—a messy dada-lectic—
loops of noise
so even the lion in me paces—he is alone
with it—maned and fanged—my own brain in tandem—
inventing
devil-speech to fill the gaps—mists
of consciousness that salve—conceal this (his)
dying—
he longs to see me—he does
not—each day another silken trail after rain—performance
of embarrassment
and forgetting with
Depends—he cannot trust body now—cannot own
brain—
how pieces of it drop out of the sky like spent
birds when we speak—rags of broken-winged
litter—the words
still words but burnished with excess protein
maybe tangled neurons cut with the Niagara gorge
(where he swam)—
father-anger residues—how we each wanted
to cold-cock rotten bastard nurture where it stood—then
chair ballet—
phone-worry—toe tap—pill pill swallow—
he is hungry yet again needs to piss is sleeping—
O thou whole
and feeling creature—my cry
ecstatic lashes out with jet sound now over ocean
and cloud
deck—ailerons edged in sunlight—they too
silvered—knifing at whatever shear adorns them—
cutting
wind from wind—the hydraulics in them
same blood-pulse as in your face or my arms or that
coil of time
that ignites when I leave and
you nap and whatever livingness that will happen next assaults us
Dennis Hinrichsen
Dennis Hinrichsen is the author of ten full-length collections of poetry. Dominion +Selected Poems will appear in October 2024 from Green Linden. He lives in Lansing, MI where from 2017 to 2019 he was the inaugural Poet Laureate.