The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas

Lorenzo Thomas, Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Laura Vrana

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• ISBN:
  9780819579003
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía

Lorenzo Thomas (1944-2005) was the youngest member of the Society of Umbra, predecessor of the Black Arts Movement. The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas is the first volume to encompass his entire writing life. His poetry synthesizes New York School and Black Arts aesthetics, heavily influenced by blues and jazz. In a career that spanned decades, Thomas constantly experimented with form and subject, while still writing poetry deeply rooted in the traditions of African American aesthetics. Whether drawing from his experiences during the war in Vietnam, exploring his life in the urban north and the southwest, or parodying his beloved Negritude ancestors, Thomas was a lyric innovator.

Chances Are Few

MY OFFICE

I’ve spent the last 10 years

In other people’s offices

Learning the alphabet of nods and eyebrows

And pursed lips, straining for the purse

Legs crossed in easy confidence

Confident nervous gestures of assurance

Approved blue suits

And sudden dreamed-up lies to be delivered

A net of thirty days and sixty days and ninety

Insanely stretched past promise into years

Next week, for certain

Floated haphazardly on possibles

As slight as handshakes,

Firm as agreements of subjective verbs

And got nowhere.

This happy corner, sucking up hard-boiled eggs

And Polish hots

The seidel sliding down the polished bar

Clatter of friendly pool balls in the margin

Not exactly somewhere, but a certain place.

A regular’s dark hair and polished eyes

Glow in the glasses lined before her face

Smoking and berating the muzak

“Jack, when you gonna get some country music?”

“Country Charlie Pride?”

Outside, it’s as bright as the important phone call

I always pretend to await

Setting up the lunch meeting at Stouffer’s

Linen napkins and hope’s frozen green peas

Set up another round of handshake laughter for the pictures

“Hey sweet thing, when we gonna have that date?”

The barmaid pouts a 1940s frown—

It’s Arnie (reaching now to slap me on the back)

A gleaming brazen polyester clown,

Tuesday seems longer than the day before

Since I began to organize my life around My Office

I stay a little later every day.

A little rain hangs fire in the clouds

Next trip, I think I’ll bring the wife

I

The Fine Clothes of Year before Last

No one

has ever

given me

an even break

but God

—Percy Mayfield

INAUGURATION

The land was there before us

Was the land. Then things

Began happening fast. Because

The bombs us have always work

Sometimes it makes me think

God must be one of us. Because

Us has saved the world. Us gave it

A particular set of regulations

Based on 1) undisputable acumen.

2) carnivorous fortunes, delicately

Referred to here as “bull market”

And (of course) other irrational factors

Deadly smoke thick over the icecaps,

Our man in Saigon Lima Tokyo etc etc

THE FINE CLOTHES OF YEAR BEFORE LAST

Only fit now

For the garden, the carwash,

The ritual of stinking for four days

To solve a problem

That stinks to you to high heaven

And just in general stinks

Sweating and sleeping

In these shabby clothes

An almost Biblical humility

Remember the pretensions of these slacks

Outmoded now by cuffs

That once were fashionable

Now only blows to style’s ego

The shirt’s stiff vanity

Long ago frayed into a makeshift coverup

For Saturday mornings’ inopportune doorbells

That scheme to steal the self-bestowed rewards

Of a week’s toil and Friday night good fortune

A shirt so homely and contrite,

Those days were brave. The only peals

It dares to answer lately are the phone’s.

Original function almost completely faded from memory

Superseded by last month’s soft stars:

The sad blue one featuring Bette Midler’s lips

The dashing gold with Mondrian motifs

Haughtily synthetic carefree exaggerations,

slouching on hangers,

These treasure their trips to the cleaners

Like sad husbands playing at wit in distant cities

Like old fools with young girls anywhere at all

While old stud gets funky

And goes straight through the wringer

With rags...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• A Note on the Texts
• Early Crimes
• Dracula
• The Bathers
• Fit Music
• Slum Days After the War
• Euphemysticism
• Jambalaya
• Sound Science
• Chances are Few
• Dancing on Main Street
• Additional Poems
• Statements
• Acknowledgments
• Index of Titles
• Index of First Lines
• About the Author and Editors