Hamburger Valley, California

By David McGimpsey

Canadian poetry, well done, with everything, to go. Hamburger Valley, California is David McGimpsey’s funniest and most compelling collection to date. With his unapologetic love of popular culture, he presents an elaborate lyric postcard, which explores, from a most unprivileged seat on the cheapest bus, love and (somebody else’s) fame. McGimpsey challenges the bonds of place in a global (American) economy — with personal warmth and characteristic wisecracking — daring to dream of escape not only to an impossibly meaty Southern California, but to the sous-sol of the poetic heart. How can we best celebrate the Los Angeles subway? What’s Wayne Gretzky doing in retirement? What fantasy stems from a British soap opera star? How is life like aging daredevil Evel Knieval? What did Mike Pearson say to LBJ? Who the hell is Vili Fualauu? How does cutting classes lead to absurd fantasies of Toronto? What will happen in the next millennium? What rhymes with Liberace? McGimpsey answers these questions in a way that will make you think you always wanted to know the answer. The daring, hilarious title poem, though, is the pièce de resistance: it braves every aspect of hamburger lore as a response to what Shakespeare called, “the plague and sighing of grief.” No quick snack, Hamburger Valley, California is a poetry lover’s grand buffet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ECW Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2001
• ISBN: 9781554902354

David McGimpsey

David McGimpsey is the author of five collections of poetry including Li'l Bastard which was named one of the 'books of the year' by both the Quill & Quire and the National Post and was shortlisted for Canada's Governor General's Award. He is also the author of the short fiction collection Certifiable and the award-winning critical study Imagining Baseball: America's Pastime and Popular Culture . Named by the CBC as one of the 'Top Ten English language poets in Canada,' his work was also the subject of the book of essays Population Me: Essays on David McGimpsey . He lives in Montréal.

Book preview

sunshine.

1

O Porco Mio

How can I live knowing there’s a fish called crappie?

How can I contemplate the spider’s delicate noose,

the manta ray skimming the seafloor, the weed-eating goats,

when Donny and Marie are yet once more on TV?

I’m a little bit tubby, I’m a little bit unemployed,

though there was the time I worked the photocopy stall

on the unpopular side of the Riverside Mall

and got canned (they say) for making helicopter noises.

How could I go on without snooze button technology?

Without the deep back-up of anti-stumble meds,

just in case I ever want to step elegantly off a jet

after counting the crests on the wide-like-me sea?

I double cream, take out the instructions and sleep on my side —

despite the whirly musics and the unsolid bits

I may get to use the moneys from a prestigious scholarship

to finance (I hope) the greatest Sasquatch hoax of our time.

Ashley Peacock Rubber Room

The lover crashes through the room

wearing plaid

but avoiding other baked bean, East-end accents;

bumps into a makeshift card table,

provoking the scorn of players

who’ve been all the way to Belgium and back;

sees a local is holding a pair of sevens.

That’s the way it is most of the time.

The lover starts out ineffectually,

all strange accelerations and unexplained floodings,

umming and ahhing, misquoting old sources —

even Canto III from The Rubicon of Omar Curtis Armstrong;

but, used to using words like gobstopper and brill,

the lover laments an elaborate pseudohistory,

sharpens the cleaver,

separates chuck from loin,

hangs up his blood-smeared apron

and halfheartedly defends the oeuvre of The Brat Pack;

so, the Emilio Estevez pose.

The lover isn’t practiced like a radio doctor

but he imitates that tell it like it is lilt,

talks with a slightly pressured tone,

rushing out last thoughts

as if at any minute the station will break

for ads from a man who calls himself Crazy

for fronting a company of mattress retailers and blender czars.

The lover doesn’t act quickly

but strangely thinks love spasmodic;

moves like an overused human subject in edible-chemical tests,

like one who’s spent days challenging

molecules in a preservative

found in radish-flavored chips

sold only in Asian specialty shops.

The lover believes in change

and, therefore, is ultimately pro cult;

powerless in the face of the cult’s understanding embrace

of another world

where babies do not cry out

as they cart mother robots off to the robot colony.

The lover asks the same questions,

so often the words lose definition.

dolphin assignation,

forever science,

rabbit flag,

rocky incognito,

tomato solstice.

The lover becomes an assembly line —

an assembly line in a hungry continent —

cranking out electronic toys which dispense mild shocks,

toys that may or may not be responsible

for spreading a fatigue-related virus

that only affects part-time University instructors

(hence its colloquial name, "The Lucky