Wild Ale: Pomes

By Nathan Tluchowski

In this collection of poems Tluchowski meditates on the act of writing and offers musing on love, junk, drink and domestic squabbles. “Wild Ale” shines with dynamic and outrageous pieces of Ars Poetica (poems exploring the art of poetic composition) and dances with both musical language and the spoken word nailed to paper.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664143166

Book preview

I

under barroom tables

people grow limbs

to reach each other

I’mma sit down and

write me a poem

something merciful,

something beautiful,

something bloody;

something with sawdust and grit.

the publishers will have to take it to auction

and when the price gets too high

they’ll start swinging, screaming,

ripping sports coats while they wrestle

on the ground.

and I’ll sit back and watch it all,

as pink and as giddy as a pig.

I’mma sit down and write me a poem

something so American it’ll scream crazy eagle and soar

straight out the typer, through the already broken window

and right into The Times.

something so spectacular it’ll make anyone who sees it

go blind and deaf and mad     with love.

I’mma write me a poem to ruin poems,

burn it down with my fingers and my sticky keyboard.

I’mma write me a house in Venice

where I’ll take my sweet time with a rich red wine,

drag slow drags on my hundred-dollar cigar,

sit back at my solid gold typewriter

and laugh.

one day

one of us will sit down

and write that poem

until then though

this

will have

to do.

write each poem you can for

fear your mind may wilt

I stand at my window, writing.

drinking yellow flowers with my wilted

bottle hand, rehearsed in its metronomic

lifting. smoke flowing from pores. days

flowing with wine. easy hand, easy chest

lifting, swaying, erecting

each ink monument to self

with such care their effortless feathers

beguile. we have cheapened

each experience so delicately. forsaken

each love or lovely primrose soul

with diligence. tomorrow I have lived

with the death masks and well lit gargoyles,

been grotesques swaying on a pulpit of books. existing

by intuition alone. and today I have found love from

the scratched and beating floorboards, the drunk and singing

drains. I piss into your same sepulcher

stain myself instead of the crying wood.

pin each page of halfhearted sentiment, up

with our clothesline skins, binding.

and with the wind

it all

goes.

A Mingonian on Mingo Junction

George Washington once slept here

when Mingo was a sort of slur

for indians who migrated eastward

away from their tribes.

now I stand here

watching the Ohio river moving.

I don’t see Washington’s canoe. just

slow water juxtaposed by cars zipping

down route 2 on the adjacent West Virginian bank.

I stand in this small village

once famous for its thriving industry of steel

which is neighbored by a small city

once world renowned for its whorehouses.

well, the whorehouses went swiftly

into death some decades ago

and most of the steel mill went slowly after.

I can see the rusting shell of it

outside my window,

with its many spires and chimneys

which look like dinosaur bones

when the light is just so.

and while there is a sad,

overgrown thing of a monument

to a place where Washington once slept,

further on North up the river

where the most famous whorehouse stood

there now sits

the sewage treatment plant

and a parking lot

for the county jail.

I’ve never had a room in the jail

with as good a view of the river

as I have now

but I suppose they do exist.

The Astronauts of Ohio

I’m stood in front of the mirror

tying my most half-hearted windsor knot.

she’s sat on the couch

pouting into a bag of very stale potato chips,

staring at the small, 17 inch television screen

and she asks:

why do you make me suffer?

"why do you make me live:

without money,

without food,

without love?"

"why don’t you go out

and get a

better

job?"

"you’ve got the brains for it.

why do you want to live this way?"

"why do you want

me

to suffer so?"

I brush a bit of dog hair off my chinos

listening to her, acting like I’m not.

and I remember being very small

and wanting to be an astronaut,

watching the shuttle launch

and tracing its path into the stars

with my paper airplane.

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