David Dodd Lee - The Nervous Filaments

David Dodd Lee’s The Nervous Filaments is just out. I’ve known about this book awhile, and I’ve been waiting for it eagerly. So now here it is in my hot little hands. My little pink paddy-paws. It's excellent. It's really, really good. I'm wonderfully envious of the gesture, the sketch-like surety of it.


Here are a couple poems to illustrate:


LOVELESS, THE GRAVEL


Here is your
story, in my

horizonless competence,

a nevertheless fine
kettle of

mockingbirds

I could see ambulance spelled
backwards

I could see the eels spilling
out of the horse’s head

a crawdad sits in a cold
pool importantly praying

(cumulous nimbus)

and here is your
story

coming from a different direction

a couple of shaved ideas


+


THE PYRAMIDS


You were born with a moral sense

which is why they dry colored leaves
swirling in autumn
bring tears

one by one they burdened the enormous blocks
closer and closer to heaven

a wick of blood for your name

you can see it in the bubbles in this rum and Coke

I only felt a peculiar sense it was something
like an island, the Cape

the softest murdering
reason has invented

the way the arm breaks off

buried in the ocean floor

the sound of money
reproducing itself
in a vault under carpet in the northwestern-most

bathroom

They have a floor but no eyes

you boil them alive

who wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown