Ian Ganassi


QUIET DISASTER


The second one always comes up first.
It must be a law, something like gravity.

A life of desperation as quiet as possible
And still to sing—people don’t like blues

In their mashed potatoes. The snow curtained
The mountains, while I sat in a hunter’s shack,

Unarmed, watching it come down.
As long as there’s a fence, we will wonder why.

But we’ll clear up the larder and the mystery
In the morning. The billfold opened onto a world

Of the same two-syllable laugh over and over.
We had heard that laugh before—in fact it was iconic.

And speaking of lies, walk this way. It’s always
A flaw to wear yellow in a blue actual.

The tornado hovering over us like a giant vacuum cleaner;
Neither mercy nor restraint in the space it spins.

Regardless of your in-or-aspirations, it’s the end;
The horse or donkey we’ve been beating is already dead.

It’s not only “good intentions” that pave the way
To madness. The devil is in it too, directing traffic.

A belief therein, that is to say. Regardless, if it is, it has to be—
Never mind the shade of night, the gleam of day.


 
The Open Plan


There is each man as he sees himself,
Each man as the other person sees him,
And each man as he really is.
The sirens make it seem more urgent than it needs to be.

Each man as he really is
Doesn’t stand much chance with us.
The sirens make it seem more brutal than necessary.
“Hi everybody, guess what, I’m dying!”

In the face of death, we don’t stand much chance.
I found love on a two-way street.
“Hi everybody, guess what, I’m dying!”
Someday my toad will come. 

I found love on a two-way street.
In the face of death, there isn’t much to say.
Someday my toad will come.
Illness is a brand of poverty.

In the face of death, there isn’t much to say.
But ascending the gallows makes it definite.
It focuses [the] mind wonderfully. No matter what
You have under the bed, illness is a brand of poverty.

Ascending the gallows there’s not much to say,
Except maybe to pass the time, comment on the weather.
Whether or not we can bear the song,
Look straight ahead, don’t deviate.

The sirens make it seem more urgent than it needs to be.
Each man as he really is, is impossible to imagine. 
Do we really want to finish the song?
Illness is a brand of poverty, for richer or poorer.



Sea Hunt


We can’t do anything about
The way time dissolves back into a hazy permanence,
Distortions of memory frozen in place.

Lloyd bridges got wet, fitting
His gear, while the sharks milled about
In a disorganized fashion, until the lights came up.

Memory is unreliable, to say the least,
Time dissolves into a pack of white lies.
Eyewitnesses are only as reliable as their memories.

And what happened? Little or nothing
Would seem to be the status quo.
Give me a break while I eat my lunch.

We grope for the facts like blind mice,
Even when we have opportunity and motive.
Sometimes all we have are eyewitnesses.

Out the window we could see the dumpster.
Thanks for straightening that out for me.
Did you think something more profound was going down?

The bloody water, roiling with sharks, is under
The bridge by now. It’s time to forgive and forget.
His son inherited his slightly twisted mouth.

Water under the bridge, distortions of memory
Frozen in place, unable to change their minds.
The mind gets fatigued with the rest of the body

But it compensates pretty well—you may forget your dog,
But your prom date was unforgettable.
And you always remember to take out the garbage.
							


Mistakenly Yours


It’s probably not his fault, so it stands to reason we
Should rescue him. But what if it’s a snowy night, below zero

In his rented room, icicles drooling out of his nose?
By humility I do not mean doubt of his own powers.

He was shaking in his boots, waiting for the Mafia to show up.
But compassion must be well-considered; you don’t want to die

With him if you can help it. I believe that is his humility.
But let’s not leave it there to rot. Soda masochism, heterogeneous

Elephants, soda crackers, became W.C. Fields. Check out this unique
San Francisco sculpture. If you look at it long enough, It might disappear.

A greater love hath no man who mistook his wife for a hat.
Yes, I got it already. Don’t throw the brickbats out with the bathwater,

Or beat me over the head with them. On the part of the biological
Imperative, allow me to offer my congratulations. Now let’s try

To hoist him out of here before the bad guys arrive. “I don’t know
What headlines you guys are seeing.” And well he might not. What trails

And streamers is he running now? Like leftover cat food sitting
In the sink too long, I knew I should not have undertaken it.



Sousaphone


A new life with a harmonica on the balcony.
The dancer as Satyr: half Apollo, half Dionysus,
And something familiar—crystalized honey,
Perhaps, or something like it.

The hail, snow, wind in summer and winter,
I have the boots for it,” he said, “but I’m missing the tie.”
Did the starting gun kill the sprinter?
Well, we knew something had to go awry.

Remember Fred? It was someone else’s death he died.
The captain stood on the burning prow,
Looking for the directions how
To use the fire extinguisher and wondering why.

The amusing marching numbers he kept in a valise in his head.
Mounting guard with a microscope.
“With that little thing we’d be better off dead.”
Looking very hard for that twisty green dope.

Many of the dioceses of yesterday were rotten to the core,
Making secular-demonic plans with the Easter Bunny.
How many quotations are needed to keep the professor warm?
(Speaking of clergy.) A few thousand would do, they signify money.

Do you have the job you need in order to hate it?
To remember one’s firings is pleasant— when you’re at leisure.
“Work” was never my strong suit—always late, full of mistakes ….
A bicycle depends on the weather.

The avocadoes never get ripe, and the melons don’t cooperate.
In this town even the homeless crack heads are snobs.
We’ve got the cameras; all we need is Sharon Tate.
And whatever you do, don’t fall down on the job.

Ian Ganassi's work has appeared recently or will appear soon in numerous literary journals, such as New American Writing, Survision and Home Planet News. His first full length collection, Mean Numbers is available in the usual places. His new collection, True for the Moment, is now available online. A third collection will appear in June of next year. Selections from an ongoing collaboration with a painter can be found at www.thecorpses.com. He is a longtime resident of New Haven, Connecticut.

 
 

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