Bob Perelman

oon as possible and for free.

Aliens have inhabited my aesthetics for

decades. Really since the early 70s.

Before that I pretty much wrote

as myself, though young. But something

has happened to my memory, my

judgment: apparently, my will has been

affected. That old stuff, the fork

in my head, first home run,

Dad falling out of the car—

I remember the words, but I

can't get back there anymore. I

think they must be screening my

sensations. I'm sure my categories have

been messed with. I look at

the anthologies in the big chains

and campus bookstores, even the small

press opium dens, all those stanzas

against the white space—they just

look like the models in the

catalogs. The models have arms and

legs and a head, the poems

mostly don't, but other than that

it's hard—for me anyway—to

tell them apart. There's the sexy

underwear poem, the sturdy workboot poem

you could wear to a party

in a pinch, the little blaspheming

dress poem. There's variety, you say:

the button-down oxford with offrhymed cuffs.

The epic toga, showing some ancient

ankle, the behold! the world is

changed and finally I'm normal flowing

robe and shorts, the full nude,

the scatter—Yes, I suppose there's

variety, but the looks, those come

on and read me for the

inner you I've locked onto with

my cultural capital sensing device looks!

No thanks, Jay Peterman! No thanks,

"Ordinary Evening in New Haven"! I'm

just waiting for my return ticket

to have any meaning, for those

saucer-shaped clouds to lower! The authorities

deny any visitations—hardly a surprise.

And I myself deny them—think

about it. What could motivate a

group of egg-headed, tentacled, slimier-than-thou aestheticians

with techniquies far beyond ours to

visit earth, abduct naive poets, and

inculcate them with otherwordly forms that

are also, if you believe the

tabloids, salacious? And these abductions always

seem to take place in some

provincial setting: isn't that more than

slightly suspicious? Why don't they ever

reveal themselves hovering over some New

York publishing venue? It would be

nice to get some answers here—

we might learn something, about poetry

if nothing else, but I'm not

much help, since I'm an abductee,

at least in theory, though, like

I say, I don't remember much.

But this writing seems pretty normal:

complete sentences; semicolons; yada yada. I

seem to have lost my avant-garde

card in the laundry. They say

that's typical. Well, you'll just have

to use your judgment, earthlings! Judgment,

that's your job! Back to work!

As if you could leave! And

you thought gravity was a problem!