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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets A World Re-Composed MICHAEL FRIEDMAN _______________________ World The princess strung the creature along. It's an old story. Moonlit nights by the lagoon. A nonevent. This summer I spent a lot of time just thinking. The world has many peoples, some are dead. Who was the first man on the North Star? Wasn't there a dispute about that? The guy had difficulty with decisions. A search party approached. The lone wolf backed away from the precipice at the last possible moment. Anthropologists brought civilization to a small pocket of the Congo. Then they died. The princess poked at the embers glowing deep inside the creature. Let's move on, before things get too personal. [531]
Lecture The telltale tapping one hears deep in the forest is the wood¬pecker at work. Timber. Thus, the instability of the text is the necessary underpinning of one's approach to the tree, leaves always in flux or falling, just as, for example, you are not the person you were when you first got here and fell into the abyss of my obsession. I called and you weren't home, so I called some¬one else instead. She was home. I would propose, then, a dis¬course that foregrounds and valorizes this instability. [532]
Birds I was typecast from day one. But at the same time I'm an original. Or was. She watched me like a hawk. Finally I said I was going out for a pack of cigarettes. Many years passed. The head honcho got on the blower to h.q. My type could be summed up in a word: crummy. Meanwhile, high above the city, a whole squadron of hawks appeared from out of nowhere, startling stockbrokers and messengers alike. It wasn't pretty. (I'm always saying that.) [533]
Being The Other appeared opposite us on the big screen. Then she exited stage left, tongue in ear. Unilaterally, she decided to eighty-six the foreplay. There's no quick fix for being tarred with your own brush. It was standard operating procedure to listen to the songbirds in the meadow. Sparks flew all along the widow's walk. I lifted my veil. Flotsam, zombie. Headstones in a row. There are plenty of things we don't yet understand, take UFO's, or platform shoes. Dusk, an observatory in a cornfield, you get the picture. Other had seen me arrive and now it was time to move on. [534]
Flower In law school, I once proposed a seminar on date rape—from the male perspective. Where the bee sucks. Evil has a gentle scent, nipple, breast. Each case should be approached on its own terms. Oh dark lady, reveal thyself! Or don't, if you feel that strongly about it. Who wants to think about their own death, anyway? Cortege spied through keyhole. A prominent Wall Street lawyer was found dead in a transient hotel in the Bronx frequented by homosexuals and hustlers. Gale force winds leveled Sea World. When they opened the tomb, Jesus was gone. I can't remember everything, but some of this happened in much the way I'm describing it now. [535]
Forest Downriver the jam broke and logs floated free. It's a myth. Later, you pay in spades. When it's time for you to pack up, you'll know. Comfort is relative, reading in the branches. You are no Mr. Fix it. What are the origins of the rituals we take for granted? Ditto. Was it fabula or sujet? Nebula, pine needles. If it's broken, fix it. We all have our unbeliefs. Keg party at the edge of town. Twisting silhouettes, one of them the monster's. [536]
Species How did the species originate, anyway? It's been so long I can barely remember. Birds travel from island to island with things in their beaks. Sound familiar? The next morning I returned to my apartment. Did I miss my cue? When the music stopped, I made a beeline for the nearest chair. Natural selection, his excellency has a point. Essentially it is a numbers game. Effective Monday, all is vanity. [537]
Desire An adolescent girl pretending to be a boy becomes a woman. It's a useful metaphor. Like buried treasure. Along the way, [ecstasy] [joy] [more of the same]. Jenny Candler (blonde, freckles) charged me 20¢ to watch her pee. The Indians beached their canoes and disappeared beneath the thick forest canopy. Clod of earth, bunch of twigs, why didn't I think of that? In the crow's nest at night, high above the deck, the lonely "cabin boy" lets her hair down. The sea below, a quiet dark pool. Later, pirates return to a remote island for a tearful reunion with other pirates. [538]
Wave Mother shot the tube. Do I have to draw you a picture? The prisoners dragged their balls and chains. I'm sorry that things didn't work out between us the way you would have liked. Shell beach, saline. It's a long, slow climb to the rock pile. I've placed your things in storage and enclose an invoice. [539]
Star The sun is a star, by the way. At the crest of the hill, we pulled over and "parked." Green mansion, blue angel. There's a difference between getting laid and taking out the garbage, ask anybody. I feel sexy, though, flipping through Details. But you can feel sexy and still be in big trouble. Not again. The sun approached the Earth with a certain panache. Then we pulled up anchor. So there you have it. [540]
Michael Friedman, born in New York and raised in Manhattan, was educated at Columbia (B.A., 1982), Yale (M.A., 1983) and Duke (J.D., 1986). Since 1986 he has edited the poetry journal Shiny. Friedman is the author of seven collections of poetry, Celluloid City (Potato Clock Editions, 2003)(a collaboration with artist Jim Ringley), Species (The Figures, 2000), Arts & Letters (The Figures, 1996)(with drawings by Duncan Hannah), Cameo (The Figures, 1994), Special Capacity (Intermezzo, 1992), and Distinctive Belt (Mary House, 1985). Friedman's first book of fiction, a comic novella, Martian Dawn, is forthcoming from Turtle Point Press in the fall of 2006. His work has been anthologized in Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner, 2003) and has appeared in American Poetry Review and New American Writing. In 2000 Friedman was an adjunct member of the faculty of the MFA writing program at Naropa University in Boulder. He now lives in Denver with his wife and two young sons. He is a partner in the Denver law firm, Lottner Rubin Fishman Brown & Saul, where his practice focuses on financing and real estate. The prose poems here were selected from Michael Friedman's Species (The Figures, 2000). Some of the poems appear in an earlier, smaller collection, Cameo (The Figures, 1994). "Lecture" was included in the anthology, Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner, 2003) (David Lehman ed.). |
