21 BOOKS, RELEASED – BOOK TWENTY ONE: MAYBE WAVY (2009)

OLGA

Do we think about impressions: No,
they are ready made. Tonight I told Olga
that walking down the street, shots rang out,
one night, long ago. I followed, without
a thought “Let’s go” I said to my companion
at the time. “Let’s follow them.”
“You’re an idiot” my companion
at the time said; I thought is was
fine.

I didn’t tell Olga that my companion
at the time had beautiful breasts that night
wrapped in ermine provoking thought
and an attitude that you could slice
like a ripe Vidalia onion.

“But there’s a one in a million chance that
you would be shot!” is what Olga said who
born in St P., prefers to say that she was
born in Leningrad, you see

“I like the odds. But shot? I think not;
There’s also this thought:
‘When you wish upon a star’ and also
“so what?” &c. in the same town
we research another time. Here

2 years before: the Police Museum
on Biscayne and saw two slugs
removed from the brain of John
Dillinger, leaving the theatre

2 days ago: Stephen Jay Gould told me
by way of a book that he read me that he wrote
that the woman’s brain is smaller than man’s;
according to physiological research, p.s.
The same evening, I confess
I told Olga that it was a woman
that invented the soul

“Your soul, maybe” my companion
at the time said “And soul music”
said Olga from
St. Petersburg,
whom I told a piece of news:

“They’re moving Lenin’s body soon,
and for keeps,”it wasn’t long at all
before Olga said

“People should know
their history,” yet still it is
Leningrad,
Leningrad, in her sleep

and she likes
New York, she likes New York, NY

In the alley near where two shots rang out
two years ago and I dreamed a children dreams
two days ago, two men play
the bongos now and there is a
Jamaican Party, very loud
there too and it is
just like New York

Sometimes I think about ‘companion’
and how it almost looks like ‘campion’
which is spanish for ‘champion’; isn’t
that what all companions should be?

“Think about it.” I said to myself
though not at the time

Right now this time a hug would be
well just fine
with me I ask Olga while she
works away at the onions, chopping
& chopping here in the south, so full
and so soulfully unstopping


(December 3, 1993)

21 BOOKS RELEASE PARTY will be held at The Looking Glass Cafe on October 24, 2009, Saturday evening, at 8:00. This event celebrates the first release of 21 individual works of poetry and prose by the poet Ricky Garni, whose work has been only been available in scattered anthologies, print and web publications unto this time. Mr. Garni will read from many of the works on Saturday, and will have a single copy of each book available for sale at the event...