How Little I Know

By Jonathan Gans

The poems in this collection are divided into five pamphlets: Gods, Romance, Fantasy, Humanity, and Animalsthe preoccupations of the past decade. The more deeply one listens to these outer voices, Gans seems to be saying, the less one really knows. If knowing consists of a body of knowledge acquired through a life where there is little opportunity offered or taken to listen, the body of what we think we knowlet alone understandbecomes minute indeed. Here are poems written below the static radar, meant to be read aloud. Also published by Xlibris: 49 Poems: Where Are You Leading Me Now? (2005)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453533154

Jonathan Gans

Jonathan Gans is the author of two previous collections of poetry, both published by Xlibris—"49 Poems—Where Are You Leading Me Now” (2000) and “How Little I know” (2010). He is an elementary school educator in Big Sky, Montana where he lives and teaches among wild animals. He is not a saint, nor does he know any. Except this one.

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Copyright © 2010 by Jonathan Gans.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2010909892

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4535-3314-7

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4535-3313-0

ISBN:   Ebook   978-1-4535-3315-4

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To Katherine, with respect, admiration, and deep gratitude for our twelve years together and all that you brought out in me.

CONTENTS

PAMPHLET I

GODS

Plea Bargain

Loofah

Tire

The Yoga Instructor

Not A Thing At All

AUTOPSY

Homecoming

Brazil Beach Bottle

The Book of Grades

Changeling

From the Center of the Bowl

Schylla and Carybdis

Beside the Painting

Hotel for the Blind

Screen Door

Luis

Us and Darwin

Signature

Luis’ Blanket

White Ocean

The Baptised Rat

Perfidy

PAMPHLET II

ANIMALS

Moth

Alabama

The Woodpecker and I

Shade

Antarctica

Potential

The Dancing Crow

Afternoon on the Sofa

Anteater

Locust

True North

Crocodile

How the Goat Gets What It Needs

The Weanling Lamb

The Small of Life

Agape—the Gate

The Door in the Grass

PAMPHLET III:

HUMANITY

The Prisoner’s Musk

Ruin

When Men Talk

Shine

The Colonel in His Garden

Log Lifting in Snowfall

Menchero’s Thumbnail

Snow Man

Making Love to the Deaf

Proof of the Past

Cup of Water

The Life at Dawn

The Laundress Takes Up Her Pen

Umbria

Zero

The Turning Thought

Arm’s Length

Reckless Behavior

Success is No Mistake

Conclusion

White Science

Torn Down

Basra / Marcos Island

Nails

A Way

Heaven Taxi

A Life in the Distance

PAMPHLET IV:

FANTASY

Ulysses Housekeeping

The Stone Bed

Yard Work

Tourette’s Syndrome Protocols

Detroit

Errands in Soul City

Boat Show Miami

Stroll

Anomalies

36D

Hot Properties

Puttanesca

Breeze

Our Life Next Year

Carbon

Liaison

Love Pilot

KNIFE

Night in the Swamp

Echo

Flood

PAMPHLET V

ROMANCE

Turquoise

Distractions

Tell Me

Medicine

The Geologist’s Lover

Gardener

The Good Witch

Sea of Errors

Night of Warm Cotton

Smaller Things

SEASONING

TRAIN RIDE SOUTH

Cocktails

The Cupcake

Interrogation

STORY, LITE

Moon Spray

Reception

While the Tea Cools

PAMPHLET I

GODS

JB GODS 1.jpg

PLEA BARGAIN

Take me to your room, your bed

Your quarters where you sleep in a small cell

Down the hall from the false gods’ dormitory

For you are THE God, are you not?

Do you make love with the victims of fate

Who have fallen outside your peripheral vision

Just before they die and transmigrate

Back to your laboratory?

Oh, Divine, why may we humans not have graceful sex?

Down in the streets

The wind blows clean the city

And another wind behind it blows

Fresh junk from down the block

The sanitation crews are well employed

To sweep and bag and cart away

But there is no away they find

It’s been a stretch to extend my hand to greet you

You always seem to be holding a tool

For instance, a long handled spade

To turn over earth and lay aside

May I too discover what lies beneath each clod

May I too bury my embarrassments

Under the corner stone of a garden shed

How hopeful that abandon

of enfolding seeds in soil

LOOFAH

One time I showered with God

To save water

You know, he surprised me by remarking,

I didn’t really create this stuff, this water

No, it was an accident, he slurped

Ducking his red and curly head of hair

Under the warm massaging jets

Things got hot from the friction of creation

And I had to find something that would cool them down

So I went to the fridge and there was one Mother Egg

The wife hadn’t saved to boil and devil with her mayo

Mustard and curry so I thought

This might be useful and cracked it open

Over one of the poles the white stuff

Spreading over everything

Filled in every nook and cranny? I asked

Scrubbing His back for a change

Started out as all ocean, and went from there

You just set it in motion and walked away?

I left the development part to a higher power

But I have to say it’s really taken off

Why just the other day

(toweling off his red and spiny, cactus skin)

An agnostic hiker in the Bridger Mountains quenched his thirst

At a cleft in the rocks from an icy trickle

And for one long moment on his way to the top

Paused, refreshed, and believed in me

TIRE

These discounted minutes add slowly to an hour

The tires on a discarded trailer in my woods

Round on three sides but dead on their haunches

Like the mind in middle age that broadens and hunkers down to earth

After the eyes have seen so much they droop with baggage

Walking through dead leaves in late autumn I promise

To take at least one eye on vacation, skirting the smoldering volcanoes

Their ash cloud irritants until the hub of the eye the iris

Weakened from all its leading movements over waves

Rests prone on the firm flesh of wind scarred sand

There have been uncounted times the bracelet of the pupil

Was awash in tears that rinsed the rusting rim

Over young lives spent cheaply, death dealing bad bargains

Decades in prison pissing bad DNA, come now to the October vision

Colored from the tannic acid of fallen leaves

I dispatch a boy to the distant end of a road through the woods

To begin his seemingly lifelong task of heaping the damp

And airless mounds into the gray wheelbarrow

I see even from this quarter