Sunday, June 19, 2022

Rodney Phillips

Image 1 of 1 for A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing 1960–1980: A Sourcebook of Information. Steven Clay, Rodney Phillips. Granary Books and the New York Public Library. 1998.


 Birdseed

It looks like the china disk with the little lip
is filled with a watery sadness, twigs, and pebbles
and tiny blue flower petals (God, I have already begun
describing myself, not what is outside the window).
Somewhere I have read that Being is Need. That's the way
   it is.
With me. Yuck, like a bunch of cable TV lines, all rubbery
like alien thought, or in my case like a birdseed trail
to some pansy plot. Through a tin culvert the little mice
are sluicing in delight. Eyeing the wall in several colors, I find
it most peculiar that I am the only one here. The record player
(whoops!) should be emitting something loud, like the
   Beastie Boys.
I know all their names now (not the Beastie Boys) but
theirs, everyone who is just about to hit the big time. I bought
this special issue of Spin in the Austin airport out of despair,
to learn about them. Out in the sunlight someone
is painting all his furniture black, piece by piece.
And what have I seen? Figured out? Have I flown
into action? Plagiarism is another end of appropriation
and cousin to clinamen. After these and some other
   connections
and cancellations: elations. This is a happy poem, is it
   not? After
the beloved object is, of course, another object again.

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