Enter the Wagon
"Emotional content," repeats The Master,
correcting a youngster's kick
I don't want to be all "Confucius said,"
but the mysterious fluids find
expression--no vessels, bubbling
up hatches in the floating slums.
I know, you've cop-lighted me
for my Panther profile.
The monster trucks sparkle.
The surround sound kicks in.
On Canal rig horns chug.
These were briefly some of my piles.
And an attitude to grind them.
Lytle Shaw grew up in Ithaca, New York; studied architecture and literature
at Cornell University; then attended UC Berkeley, where he is completing
a dissertation on Frank O'Hara. Shaw's chapbooks Flexagon (ghos-ti-,
1998) and The Rough Voice (Idiom, 1998) were done collaboratively
with the artist Emilie Clark, with whom he edits Shark, a journal
of poetics and art writing. His other chapbooks are Low Level Bureaucratic
Structures: A Novel, and Principles of the Emeryville Shellmound
(Shark Books, 1998). His full-length poetry collection is Cable
Factory 20 (atelos, 1999). Shaw currently lives in New York City.
