Two poems by Anthony McCann, selected from the book, Father of Noise

 

Skywalker Ranch

I was struggling to embrace the new technology
when quite on accident I drained the harbor, dredged the locks,
and devastated the local economy now finding myself
still trying to yolk this motor, runaway outboard
in a burrowing fury.
O my heart, manic mudskipper, surging in mud.
Writing these lines I am overcome with fatigue and despair as if
the temperature had risen suddenly and I,
inner pioneer and amateur pharmacologist, were sweating
true bricks!
I give up, get off my knees, take off my lifejacket.
Because no one lives here anymore, except security
and the gardeners. I am the world's last actor,
I have to inspect the "winery." Add some more dust
to the bottles, peel more paint from the barn,
sodomize the ingrates. Do you have a raygun
or perhaps a stick of commemorative gum? I need to pretend
that I'm under attack from the air.

 

Father of Noise Ceremony

It was the end of fingerprints, fingerprints
As we knew them.
Is what the ceremony said. It said
It was impersonating us.
So began the season of forgetting.
All was painted blue:
The clouds, the space between the clouds.
Our cities went, we watched them go, becoming sky.
Who is The Father of Noise?
Is what the voices said.
It was the death of romance, romance
As we knew him.
With his horse dancers, with his hundred mouths.
Who is the Father of Anything?
Is what the dancers say, they said
We were impersonating them.
And blowing air out through their hose.
But at the end of something, something
Had finally happened.
It's how the moaning started.
And now we are its mouth.
Our bodies go, we watch them go, becoming land.
These are not my fingers, we say.
And we put our faces on our pillows and drown.

 

 

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