Douglas Piccinnini, Beautiful, Safe & Free

 

There, in my mistake. I ampresent. The present
lifted over itself. A daylike grout
in the tiles suddenlybrittle suddenly breaking
down this pattern. A dateyou remember
smeared in the pages of acalendar.

That was pleasure once. Sure-fit,needled
existence and as thenerve brough forward
a yellow seam in thesilence. Silence thrust
its burning face to theglass—
that kind of domain. (“AWESTERN SKY”)

NewJersey poet Douglas Piccinnini’s [see his '12 or 20 questions' interview here] third published book and second full-lengthpoetry title, after Blood Oboe (Richmond CA: Omnidawn, 2015), is Beautiful,Safe & Free (Palm Desert CA: New Books, 2023). The poems that make up Beautiful,Safe & Free, including the sequence previously published as thechapbook A WESTERN SKY (Greying Ghost, 2022) [see my review of such here], are constructed through notational accumulation: short lines, phrasesand sentences are clustered together to form shapes of meaning and purpose,composed along the frayed and dusty edges of American civilization. “day afterday mine silage / stuffs the animal vassal,” he writes, as part of the poem “CASHFOR GOLD.” Piccinnini composes his poem-clusters out of scraps and fragmentsaround placement and uncertainty, declaring where he, the narrator, is situatedin this montage of contemporary America, through all its devastation, contradictionand absolute beauty. “one is a mind in refrain shelving the days,” he writes,to open the poem “FLOWER SHIELD,” “as the throat of where you’ve been speaks //as the once between of boundaries / becomes particular to retain an abandon [.]”Piccinnini’s poems appear to skim across an endless surface but instead revealsuch depths as can’t be fathomed, offering echoes of Canadian poet Hugh Thomas throughhow the accumulation of ellipses can provide a perfect outline of anarticulated absence.

INTERROBANG

as if—stuttering
a percentage of glyphs
inflates you like aflower

in a loveable number
zeroed—whole—round

fit into you in what
like a splinter

milked from division

like an anthem jerks up—
to follow you everywhere

in every mask you slip on
to make meaning