New York, 1911, George Bellows

maleness – funked up jazz and body – darkness – necessity: a Bellows poem's gotta burst thru boundaries – surrender to such ploys as illustration – desperation from frustration at never getting it & delight at the discovery that everything can be made to work (a little) – sense the ambient lateral sound, horizontal waves of it – layers and layers of sound – city sound – the vast insinuation of New York – this fellow Bellows who rags at the light with a sweat-soaked brush – the towel as implement – wrenched out of the boxing ring and its blood and stink and smoke into Union Square, wiping up the air – the ready dare of rhyme about to want its say again,

the way again – to stanzas
forming, phrases breaking –
enjambments waltzing oddly
into dance steps from the city’s
grisly slide – back to the ride –

the thing that takes you with it –
the singing quaking jizz of yellow-
belly-Bellows who did not get hit
would not get hit could not get hit
but learned to spit on canvas

just as if he had: one wants to rhyme
with ‘glad’ and ‘sad’ – some far more
radical delusion and diffusion –
one sits here in one’s jockstrap
listening to Brahms and Joni Mitchell

and admitting nothing but ambient
lateral sound, moving in waves
horizontally – layers and layers
of sound – the vast and pounding
boxing ring insinuations of that

yellow-belly-mellow-fellow Bellows,
and his preternaturally accurate
New York. Pig turns to pork: Prose
poem turns to cut-up meat:
flop down with Mr. Bellows: eat.

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