supercheesegirl

I got this from the library at the same time I got Erotikon, but this book I loved. I finished reading the last two poems today. Some of the poems were a bit long for my taste, and Levis tends to run to overly long sentences such that I sometimes had to go back and figure out what the subject was, but--this book was tantalizing. Beautiful. Too big to grasp, but still within reach. Really, really wonderful.

I'm going to type out one of the shorter poems, one that I absolutely fell in love with.

Photograph: Migrant Worker, Parlier, California, 1967

I'm going to put Johnny Dominguez right here
In front of you on this page so that
You won't mistake him for something else,
An idea, for example, of how oppressed
He was, rising with his pan of Thompson Seedless
Grapes from a row of vines. The band
On his white straw hat darkened by sweat, is,
He would remind you, just a hatband.
His hatband. He would remind you of that.
As for the other use, this unforeseen
Labor you have subjected him to, the little
Snacks & white wine of the opening he must
Bear witness to, he would remind you
That he was not put on this earth
To be an example of something else,
Johnny Dominguez, he would hasten to
Remind you, in his chaste way of saying things,
Is not to be used as an example of anything
At all, not even, he would add after
A second or so, that greatest of all
Impossibilities, that unfinishable agenda
Of the stars, that fact, Johnny Dominguez.

- Larry Levis