The Bird of Hermes

The Bird of Hermes

Brandon Lazovic

Reaching toward the sky

As Icarus flaps his wings overhead

Grasping at the sun

The wax begins to melt

Feathers fall to the Earth in clumped chunks

Making splashes in the vast sea

The biggest splash of all penetrates its depths

All he ever knew was the blue sky

Beautiful, yet unmarred, empty

The sky was the limit for his dreams

But it was fool’s gold, he soared too high

Reality grabbed hold with its foul grip

Pulling him forever downward

No fluffy clouds to buffer his descent

No winds to cushion his fall

No Benevolence to save him

Upward was a feathered silhouette, similar to his

It watched at a distance as he crashed into the sea

He thrashed about in the waters, gasping for air

The current and waves thrust themselves relentlessly

Forcing him into the cold ocean depths

Clinging for dear life he returned above surface again

And again

And again

And again

Gasping for breath

Flailing his aching arms to the sky above

Wishing to soar above the world

Having a mere taste of freedom

But his thread had been cut

And with the same scissors of fate his wings were clipped

His efforts were in vain and he sank into the sea

With hand outstretched towards the sky

The same that had immersed him in warm embrace

Now shunned him, taunting him with its brilliance

The sea overtook him, the sky becoming darker and darker

His hand still reaching above until not even the light pervaded the ocean abyss

The bird of Hermes is my name 

My wings were clipped to keep me tame

But falling to Earth seems so inane

Is clipping my wings really humane?  

Fiction Packet Summary

Fiction Packet Summary

Brandon Lazovic

               

                So this week’s blog will be about the short fiction packet that we are reading. This packet contains content from various authors, each story about a page or so. I’ll only mention stories that stood out to me since there are so many. Each description though is going to be a little short considering the length of each entry. The first story in the packet is Survivors by Kim Addonizio. This story tells the tale of a gay couple who have been together for quite some time. The main clincher is they are arguing about who is going to die first. The cause is somewhat hidden, but the first sentence refers to them counting down to their last T cells. I feel as though it is a reference to AIDs, considering they are gay and the AIDs virus kills off antibodies and other cells in the body as it spreads.

                Next up is Colonel by Carolyn Forche and the thing that stood out about this story is the fact that this colonel cuts off peoples ears, stores them in a sack and just litters them upon a table to show potential enemies not to mess with him. The shock factor is definitely what made the story stand out in my mind. It’s pretty gruesome in a simplistic way as it doesn’t really go into detail about the ears.

After this is Walking the Baby to the Liquor Store by Michael Van Wallegxen. I found it kind of bizarre as this father takes his child to a liquor store to spend time with her. The child adores the liquor store and when they get home they even take a drink together. But of all the fixations a child could have, why a liquor store? Maybe it’s his own fixation manifesting and that he is actually the one who adores the liquor store and is using the child as a crutch and an excuse to go. But that’s just my own personal explanation.

                Resident by T.J. Beitleman describes a man named Esterowicz who used to fly kites in his youth. Years later as he becomes older he contemplates life, a hermit who moves from town to town. He comments on the wind as it’s a main point in the short story. My thought on this is the allusion that the wind is actually a sense of freedom, as he blows with the wind and moves of his own volition from place to place. But the kite that he used to fly as a child restricted him as he was the one who ground it down so it couldn’t fly away. As a child he didn’t have the absolute freedom that he does know as an adult, hence why he doesn’t fly kites anymore. He is the master of his own destiny in a sense.   

                The Letter from Home by Jamaica Kincaid was really interesting to read. In the beginning it discusses this woman’s daily chores, but it enters this stream of consciousness format. What really caught my attention was the way everything was described; brief and not too descriptive. Towards the middle of the story the description of certain things started to take on a cause and effect aspect which was interesting to read/pace. But as the person thought about things each train of thought would lead into another train of thought. For example, “the earth spins on its axis, the axis is imaginary, the valleys correspond to the sea, the sea corresponds to the dry land, the dry land corresponds to the snake whose limbs are now reduced.” A large portion of the story is like this and it’s just interesting to read it in that perspective. A few portions of the story are normal and it leads me to believe that they are significant and have a purpose to why they were written, but to what effect I’m not able to discern.

                But what was her Name? by Dawn Raffel caught my intrigue. It’s vague in a sense, but basically it describes the life cycle of a woman. She is first born into the world ‘by some trick of oxygen,’ then is forwarded to being an adult in the kitchen cooking, having born kids and married. It jumps again, this time to her sitting in her chair as an elderly woman, grown senile. “A man she as raised delivers a slipper. Look at him! He wears the groom’s robe. Her fingerbone will not release the ring. “Father?” she says. She sees her breath. She has white in the bed of her birth. The past had taken hold of her—the heart’s last sleight.” She’s grown senile, mistaking her son for her father. She soon dies, remembering the past. People say that the last thing you do before you die is see your life flash before your eyes and that is what she did, seeing her father from the past, long dead. Regarding the story I enjoyed the way it was written, it made me think more in depth about of the story.

                Morning News by Jeremy Stern was another story that interested me. The main gist of it was that a man with his wife received bad news. He thought about life and how he would spend his last week, or month, or year in life. He imagined a final meal atop the Eiffel Tower, but ended up buying a sixty inch television in a warehouse. The main message is to not take life for granted and live in the now rather than the past or the future as well as to appreciate what life has to offer from day to day.

                This packet is interesting to say the least. There are several fiction shorts that are definitely worth a read, but overall most of the stories are different from each other in topic, diction, vocabulary, syntax, and the overall message they are trying to convey. Some of them are very peculiar and strange, but I feel as though that’s their draw point. The diversity of the packet as whole made it a worthwhile read. 

Red Russia

*Just to clarify for this assignment we had to follow a guideline (20 specific things that we had to incorporate into our poem) so if it seems a little funky that's why. Anyway, enjoy!*

Red Russia

Brandon Lazovic

Some days seem to me strange, almost a dream

They fade into memory like the Holocaust

Yet are always there, bursting at the seams

Visions cross of Putin addressing Moscow like Faust

As the Ruski’s march down Red Square

They shout Smert' vsem, chto protivopostavit nam (Death to all that oppose us)!

The guns in their hand quiet and controlled

I float above, awaiting their next move

A man named Laz stands amongst them yet alone

A future leader, waiting to pursue the truth

His red handgun holstered, waiting to speak

As it screams in the cities with a silencer

He crosses himself, muttering Pust' Bog miloserdiya (may God have mercy) under his breath

The gun whispers to him to continue on without fear

He continues on with his gun, without hesitation, causing death

His house is warm, the taste of bourbon heats his insides

He thinks to himself, Bary derutsya - u kholopov chuby treshchat (when the rich make war it’s the poor that die).

The golden bourbon clouds his thoughts

He imagines his wife, young and beautiful

The touch of her skin is delicate

He smells her perfume, his love for her infinite

Shots are fired in the distance

He could taste death on her lips, she was listless

He stood there as the snow fell, flaked with red stains

The Red of Russia. 

City Eclogue Summary

City Eclogue Summary

Brandon Lazovic

                For class this week we had to read City Eclogue by Ed Roberson. It’s a collection of poems by this author and is divided into several parts, the first of which is the chapter City Eclogue. In the beginning of this chapter the poems are ‘normal’ (as far as that goes). Something I noticed was as the poems went on the spacing between the words and sentences got more irregular. Since the title of the book is City Eclogue, it felt to me that it was done purposely to convey that the city was overcrowded and that nothing was quite routine. The sentence structure and thought process became more vague or limited with each story as well, only highlighting key words or phrases. Also there are many key things repeated in each poem, such as the planet, mirrors, eyes/sight, and the city of course. I’m not quite sure what they allude to, although maybe it’s supposed to elaborate on the scale at which we live (ourselves being tiny in comparison to a city or the world). As for the mirrors and eyes, my guess is that we see things everyday and it becomes normal to us. So much so that we take it for granted and live in the present as opposed to acknowledging the past or preparing for the future. The perspective also changes from more of a top, general view of everything to a more personalized view of an individual person’s perspective of the city, from the slums to the rich parties that some may have (as told in the last poem of this chapter).

                In the next chapter, Beauty Standing, it begins on a comparison to cities and oceans. The world is being polluted and as cities are built on the land Roberson states in one of the poems, “they are made   into land people pour into to colonize   as artificial reef is sunk next to dying corals on the sea floor   such as housing,” further emphasizing that as artificial cities are being made the natural beauty of nature is being destroyed. Throughout the chapter pollution and corruption are touched upon, talking about the pollution that cities emanate as well as the division between people (the rich and poor, the segregation of race, black being the prominent one). In this aspect a few poems follow a regular person who isn’t making enough money and is influenced to blame problems on blacks and even politics (as all politics try and focus on the values of people according to one poem). Most of the poems make the point to rhyme and the flow of words and the way they are worded doesn’t seem so fragmented and hectic, but rather makes it seem overwhelming in a sense as you read as it allows you to read quickly with a build up to it.

                The chapter after Beauty Standing is called The Open. The beginning of this chapter is extremely bleak, talking about fires and embers everywhere and a city basically burning down. As it continues all it speaks of a city in ruins, bleak, the history of it worn as the ambers settle and the years drag by. Death and the dead is commonly brought up throughout each poem, describing people as ghosts. This could allude to both the death of people as well as the death of culture in the city, the city becoming a ghost as most people move away in search of better things. One part of the very last poem in this chapter reinforces this, “ He wants to walk away from this. This rough odd luck how many in his make up brought---walking away from rope   irons    the capture--- up through him    his hair   the glide to his feet   the tendency to go fu’thuh in life   Somewhere a couple decent pair of shoes.” Things get bad enough and people leave in search of a better life, for a decent pair of shoes to wear on their feet. Not for wants, but necessities that are taken for granted amongst most people. Some can’t though as they are caught in bondage. This could be meant in a physical sense, but I feel as though it is more of an emotional sense or a financial sense. Everyone is too poor to leave, they have nothing waiting for them anywhere else and so they are caught in an endless loop of poverty.

                Next chapter is Ornithologies, and it’s kind of short compared to the other chapters. Basically it describes nature and almost praises it for its beauty and its peacefulness. It displays people living with nature in their city and the peace it brings compared to the busy lives of people in the city as their days converge on a time schedule. There really isn’t much else to say about it other than it’s a stark contrast compared to the chapter before it, maybe a prologue in the novel that the city is. Or maybe it’s even what the city became after the corruption and pollution that preceded it.

                The second to final chapter, Her Movement By The Moment In Occurrence, displays various human emotions, from love, primal instinct and survival, hate, and wishing for no emotion at all. It shifts from person intimate human contact to various geographical spots far away from civilization, from the Northern part of the globe to the vast blue sky. It contrasts between nature and human thought and how one is free and pure (nature) while the other is corrupted and destructive as well as ignorant (humanity). The final chapter, Eclogue, continues on, questioning human thought and if it is very far seeing and if we think beyond just the everyday norms that we come across every day. We do not as we kill the planet with our cities and way of life, destroying nature and the bounty that comes with it. “What can we say of our own that stand in Newark say   so far adrift from a chance to was   that the dirt on her feet cracks into sores the skin of her soles   and steps her in one more shit infection she has to kick, one more occupation of her body by her monkey rulers she will have to throw off into space   off her back   burned out but clear of starring habit.   Of her destroyed sun   say it endows the landfill   on which to build a new development   “We are the stuff of stars,” Sagan says.” In this context is seems that ‘she’ is the Earth and that all the terrible things happening to her are the effects of humanity, the cities that we produce, the pollution that is spewed about, and it slowly spreads from a little speck of dirt on her feet to sores and infections as it continues to grow.

                In short, a City Eclogue is a very diverse book of poetry. Each chapter correlates to a certain message and there are many allusions to be found in the book, from God (both Greek and Christian), to death, shadows, ghosts, culture, water/rivers and oceans, and a whole slew of other allusions. The main message is that the cities we live in are demonized, horrible environments that do nothing but harm ourselves, the way we think and act as well as the environment. The way the poems are written are thought out and different from one another in several aspects, and the main message is clear but has a depth of complexity to it that isn’t quite apparent in the first hand full of poems and the book conveys it to great effect.