Noah Falck
Crossword Aesthetics
This series of poems is, structurally, a collection of moments. The cumulative effects of the moments are inspired by the changing experiences people have with their own time. On a larger scale, the poems build on the idea of everyone taking their own path through the world. Some will take the bike path, some the freeway. But I tend to focus more on the moments when these two different kinds of paths share the same time and space. These motivate and stem from my daily surroundings, the often overlooked, and mundane happenings.
I have always been intrigued by the fragmented image, poems that lead you in one direction but leave you somewhere you never dreamed of. And it is fragments that fuel these poems. Each sequence plays off of another. This permits the reader to read the poems in any order they choose similar to the way one sporadically fills out a crossword puzzle.
from Life As A Crossword Puzzle
1. Down
Outside the sun short-circuits,
the grass becomes a complicated mess
and the boy studies
the lines on his father’s face
before shifting awkwardly
in his plastic yellow lawnchair.
4. Across
A story of a man traveling with bodypaint in his briefcase, of winter sounds varnishing the air. As he dreams in complete beginnings, words of the day maneuver with stark energy between unseen stars. Tomorrow the mistakes of snowflakes will collect like a breeze of pretty orgasms, somewhere within the amendment of nightspots and the ocean’s learned repetition, is the end. The part of the story where rooms of desktop visionaries discuss topics as scandalous as the cleavage framed within the television set. The man travels still, interrupting sunlight, through the next seven sequences.
7. Across
He has such an unusual look
for someone who lives in the suburbs.
His pastel face could have come
right off a museum wall
or the back of a moldy milk carton.
To be sure people don’t recognize him
he wears his beard like the King of Spades,
tangled with suspense.
Though his haircut is probably the outcome
of someone with multiple pairs of scissors
snipping frantically along with the White Album.
It is not meant to be a joke
when he wears his sunglasses at night
venturing off to the closest motel parking lot
dressed like someone
who commonly uses the word checkmate
even while snapping photos
of people exchanging room keys.
10. Down
How behind the steering wheel
the sunglass frames of a beauty
radiate? And how her window
half-rolled-down brings the wind,
a gentle story of lilac eyelashes?
How the red light
reminds her of the moons
of Jupiter? And the green,
the chorus of the ocean?
How she looks when
the sun beats upon her forehead?
How her bracelet rearranges itself,
and her earrings, love to be noticed?
How the street, covered in ancient gum,
all empty-flavored, and the sidewalk,
myriad with stepping shoes,
and even the sky knotted
from one end of town to the other?
And noises appearing in the air like pollen,
tattooed with smells
that resemble unrobed women?
And the tires like portable occasions
leave the cement as well as they arrive?
32. Across
Cleavage made its way into every American living room. Saturday night was a vantage point inside the mind of every breathing boy and girl. I sat like the cashier’s extra pennies and fell in love between Twinkies and short, seductive swigs of Mountain Dew. The principal was handcuffed to the goal post. So we took drugs that made us feel like snorkeling. My dad taught us manners we would never forget. The first open umbrella blew away in the wind. There was nothing to do but hide behind mini-marts and expect great things. Mom changed her hair and brother changed everyone’s eyebrow angle. There was the mascot’s ass-crack, the cheerleaders’ hips, and dad with his revolutionary habits. There was a strange universe between every pimple. No bus stops or taxis would take you to what people referred to as “the city”. My parents and I took turns growing up. We got another dog, knocked down a few walls, shopped for souvenirs two blocks from home. We left our bottles at the edge of the golf course and ran like Comanche Indians through the forests. Dad kept an extra handkerchief in his sock. My neighbor moved to Nevada with all his problems strapped in the seatbelts ahead of him. The girls I thought I loved walked barefoot before me. America could never have been any smaller. I was afraid to get a haircut. It was always vacation, our long noses shooting towards the sky, sniffing for something we did not know was there.
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