Lindsey Boldt
New York, October 2022
I keep thinking: how to know the self out of habitual context Holly gifts me a tiny monster truck: “The Crusher” The Crusher turns my hand into a giant The Crusher wants me to recognize my size The Crusher says you’re not so different from yourself New York is an overwhelm I hope to ride Stay within yourself, say the athletes this collection of cells I left all my crystals at home so this tiny truck will have to do ____ Bernadette Mayer Louis Zukofsky Lorine Niedecker Joanne Kyger BP Nichol P Inman (I am reminded of a certain mental twist & spark I missed Joey hands me books, reads poems aloud on the couch something I needed to remember something I’m remembering now precision & illegibility that feeling: a momentary unknowing awe) ____ lollygagger dawdle ____ Full of love for fellow man missing the stop out of shear joy (something about the soothing power of miniatures) I keep saying all I really want out of life & realizing I’m not doing it What would it actually take? If I didn’t understand myself as a victim an oppressed subject If I didn’t have the worm in my brain If I did but it was bigger badder running game ____ I’m a sleepy lass half dozing a real messy potato ____ Always with the lyric I or you Does she want to switch it up Does she have a curiousity or want to Bah. Not everyday can hold the thrill of a free tequila shooter, Miss Boldt Not everyday is a massive Uzbek buffet Grab hold of your psychic straps & lift Can I do a deep and untidy hideaway Well clearly, yes, as has been my recent years The real question is can I do something else or the question I’m really asking is can I hide and accept my hiding can I hide and call it enough Here I am confronted with all the choices I didn’t make—do I still stand by my men My unmet ambition greets me & I lay down ____ Here I am a small creature out of my burrow hippity hopping as rabbit slowly trundling as hedgehog down the garden path (I could be) a shining blade unsheathed O’ Excalibur! Behold my brilliance And you my dear, who is a woodland creature too —how do you survive in the wide world What pulls you along ____ Miniatures! The Musical ____ To make a salt lick of my own lip hello sick fingers jotting the space inside this rabbit warren dirt walls & hanging root hairs allow me out — May I soft soft baby no cloak ____ Next book needs a Daniel Johnston epigraph — maybe name your child Winnie but pronounce it whinny Live! from the cubby hole radio radio I use the word conditions to signify a politics it’s short-hand for a lot ____ You’ve come to be the gold standard how did you come to be here ambition in every direction lay down I watch you court power turn your face to its light ____ Critter: The Lindsey Boldt Story field mouse scurry don’t have that hot Jaguar hurry ____ Having a Rum & Diet Coke w/ You (for Maxwell Heller) Going the wrong way on the A train while you’re in Canada feeling the fantasy I picked up the laundry! was going the right way but got off this is the bewilderment I’d been asking for on the page & in life to feel yourself as a poet & also quickly turn away, to understand this knowing to be a gas, never a solid, a turn & miss it kind of glimmer while you exhibit a twirl I want to know you better & better Is your life a solid object? Mine’s a gas critter creature critter creature rat & mole rat & rat mole & mole Joey & Holly asked me who is Calvin & who is Hobbs (order & chaos according in their philosophy) in my relationship w/ Steve & I said we’re both Hobbs this & many life choices end to end the decision to write the poem but first the decision to read so many you can the decision to surround yourself w/ the similarly afflicted & yet still watch others defect over the years—for what? a different life thinking you don’t have a choice justifies the series of choices not to waiver & turn away Robert Fripp & Brian Eno’s “Evening Star” on the A train, still ____ Max & I invent a song about how cold it will be in Canada in anticipation of his trip to Collingswoid, a tiny college town where he will perform 2 shows of 3 numbers each the song really calls for a sousaphone it’s that kind of razzle dazzle oompah pah ____ I’ve had far fewer dreams here perhaps because I am living as opposed to waiting so stimulated my brain really does ____ John Dowe miniatures on 141st & Lenox John’s friend Kay’s crocheted blankets one for AIDS one for Cancer I buy a tiny rainbow piano made of popsicle sticks & receive a wooden ink pen made of match sticks as a freebie Lou Johnson on the A train to Brooklyn suitcase btw my thighs ____ NY art book fair style report (for Bahaar Ahsan) so many coverall jumpsuits in one place middle parts & sleazy mullets leather accoutrements giant denim coats all shades fun colored & printed high waters many iterations of my own genre bright red totes so many totes the fading gasps of the dad hat the rise of the long billowy gathered skirt—a luxurious celebration of fabric & space (a favorite look of mine from middle school) ____ Scene: Karaoke night. On stage someone opens their mouth & the sound of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s piano piece “The Homeless Wanderer” comes out. ____ Self as rarefied object a relationship in which one can be & is encouraged to be full/whole self—coddled? & allowed to be strange makes the idea of leaving that shelter even temporarily (hello, this trip) petrifying (in the sense of freezing & hardening) Of course there is adventure, danger, thrill but I am grateful to have been (& be again) a beast a fluff of air within a shared burrow perhaps with others I could be different a different fragrance a medallion or miniature turned in the light by a different hand momentarily & dropped, maybe to crack on the tiled floor ____ The news is bad—republicans leading in mid-term election polls. At what point do you try to escape? Has that point already passed? Please, can I move back to ever bigger queer progressive sanctuary city bubble thanks ____ Reanimate like sponge critter under the tap sponge critter in pill form unfolding dissolve the pill casing to reveal the self alligator elephant kangaroo squirrel allow me likewise to unfurl (gulp) reanimator reanimatrix re-an-i-man-i-acs (yeesh) coalesce into form or elsewise spread to exist both actions necessary if one more familiar than the next a different action space ____ An overwhelming feeling of tenderness towards humanity on the G train amidst more people than trees I begin to sense our species' shape and movement, contour no big thoughts about how or what to do just that we exist as a flow like lava or mud I like to feel myself a drop in the falls ____ Children squirrels and birds in Mccarren Park ____ When I sleep on a wet head I get good Edward Vedder hair this is my lot in life lucky in grunge ____ I would never want to be prescriptive about something like gender but I do think it should be fun (a slide whistle) woooop — woooop of course the dangers & complexities are endless but ideally: play ? ____ Lots of e-bikes here in the city especially in Harlem thought you should know ____ Can you see the thinking or does it all come out as fluffy basics if you knew how to be charming, maybe you’d sound like this too what if you trusted me to be a thinker, deep & purling under here but true, I am a feeler first. You got me there. ____ Kid sister amongst the boys: plays, teases, moshes, riffs Across the table, invites ever more intimate questions from girls sluttily reveals her inner life, more and more ____ This signals a turn in my poetics when I start writing about other people powers of observation turned out using selfie mode to clean the teeth knees slung over suitcase bubblegum pink oversized blazer worn over Babar tee army green quilted jacket & shaggy mullet fiction writers do this as a teen I trained myself to notice fine human detail on the bus & recorded conversations using my father’s Dictaphone, like a creep two long thick milkmaid braids leopard & real tree print denim culottes come on people ____ For such a brilliant writer, Steve could be a more elaborate texter ____ a simple shift watching hands button a blouse toggle the keys grip the knife handle watch it rock ____ Back in the old hometown, I am an illegible text. ____ I guess I do treat the poem like a confessional but I’m not catholic so I don’t know what that means not really Real World Olympia Real World New York Real World Bay Area Lemme tell you something
Lindsey Boldt is the author of Weirding, Overboard, and several chapbooks including Titties for Lindsey and There Are No Cops in America and the Streets are Paved w/ Cheese. She also writes, directs, and performs plays for San Francisco Poets Theater and teaches workshops on that strange art form. She is the editorial director of Nightboat Books and calls the Salish Sea region and The Bay Area home.