THEUNDERWATERTYPEWRITER

MARC ZEGANS

13 Clouding

14 First Watch

15 Suspension

16 Salt

18 P(un)K Poets: Too Fucked To Drink

22 In Turns

23 The Reunion Of Darkness

24 Woodshed

28 Of Irish Descent

30 Salvage

32 Finely

33 Poems For The Ego

36 Sunken Contents

37 Laundry And Grief

38 Fall River Girl

39 Drawing

40 Lotería

42 Ephemere

43 Broken Sandwiches

44 The Underwater Typewriter

45 Perchance

47 Night

49 Seeing

50 Shake

51 Becoming

52 To Shore

54 Gittel

55 Dropping

57 Broken Lines

59 A Part

60 Doubling

61 Anacoluthon

62 The Poet’s Chair

63 Notch Road In February

64 Coffee

68 By Which

69 A Common Occurrence

70 Requiem For A Spoken Word

71 Inflection

72 Out

Contents

73 Horseshoes

74 Inversion

75 These Days 

77 Three Milagros

78 A Hipster Retires

81 Of A Door

82 Trip

83 Bastard’s Song

84 San Diego

86 Leaving

87 Sheets

88 Chutes Chaudières

90 Passing

91 Walking Out

94 Incantation

96 Unclasped

97 Running

99 Hacking

100 Trimming

101 Almost

102 As She

104 Starting

106 Catch

107 Finding 

108 One Flight

109 Breaking The Muse

110 Of You

111 Withdrawal

112 Defilement

113 To The Waves

115 Old Keys

116 Somerville

117 And I Knew

119 Him

120 Only Safety

122 The Outgoing

126 Virginia

127 What Is Hers

128 Upright

130 Final Impression

132 Paradise Drive

133 Bascom

135 Acknowledgements

13

Her eyes, turbulent as milkmixing black tea, barely askingfor a promise that will not be given,wash and shudder in dream and sorrow.

Hope against truth quivers her copper irisesand I doubt for a moment my place in all this,but then I remember, and know that I am at fault.

Clouding

14

I dreamed you just now, exploring the mossedwreckage of an ancient wooden shipraised up a thousand feet or moreby groaning winch, and chains stained at each linkthe wood of compression ribbing gouged hullsuch density between the ring-lines

bowed and jointed, sealed by wood pitch, tracelessresolved by gaps to form unfitted“A ship still? Is the bell still ringing watch?”I know then that you will take my handrun your fingers long its aging creasesknowing too well the sound of eight bells,

and scan its badly stuttered lines, findingcharted there the route of second passage.

first watch

18

At round end of no corner barMe and Ripper backs to stageGrab filthy glasses in plasticPolynesia, tilt bottom shelf

Exhale and converse.

Behind us, shirtless, gobbedin maggot wriggle, Jelloadmonishes black and stinkingpogo crowd to be Republican

Never thinking

that one year hence, kill the poorwill find happy embrace in redstates more scared of welfarethan war, and tuck sunny Ron

In Washington

where healthy school lunchis six french friesand ketchup, not rotting is a vegetable.

I remember the cop carsburning that Dan Whitenight, but more I rememberthe sidewalk outside Twin

Peaks, corner of Market

Home to freaks, long beforeSan Francisco urban chicand ENG, new to me pushing and shoving

Starting a riot.

P(un)k Poets: Too Fucked to Drink

P(un)k Poets

19

That’s the story never toldabout that San FranciscoBut I saw the news crewsSpiking rage, as spilt Milk

Mayor of Castro

and de-centered Mosconewere shoved aside, TV slapat gay pride, and twinkieexcuse, kernel of conservative human rights, now running

thirty years in low-tax CAwaiting for the day when limited Governmentwould metastasize.

II

Short eyeshas becomeshort linesfrictionlessthe times demandWilliamsnot Whitman

a pressure constant hard clashwords shorttext wordsun-vowel no spacefor air

P(un)k Poets

20

fk u

the times demandWilliamsnot Whitman

Shall wegive way

capitu-lateor do it early.

The timesdemandWilliamsnot Whitman

Spondee onSpondee

consonant diamondsbent lightfacet play

a flash

The timesdemandWilliamsnot Whitman

P(un)k Poets

21

III

Is it our work now to surrender long lines, to Howl no more, clicking faster, clicking faster, clicking faster, till lettersare too much, too much information to see; till we pixel click our way in a vaster, faster space of small screens isolatedbut accessible?  Is it our work now to surrender long lines, to turn the dirt on Allen’s grave, to give less and less and sendmore and more and more?  Is it time to drop the analogue growl of John Lee singing Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Howl, Howl, Howl, Howl, a different kind of howl, a wolf moanin’ at midnight?  Is it time to gate that mouth, to muzzle the grit, to jointhe raft of bits?  Is it time?  Is it time? Is it time?  Is this any more a question? Can time demand? Can there be a momenton a virtual raft? “A moment?” Not moments!  Not any moment!  “A moment?” A moment to move, time justified?  

“Nooooooo!” Howls the clown prince.In a world without foundation, not even timenot even these times, not even this momentcan announce anything. The times don’t give us an historical curl. We cannotsurf anymore to shore on “the times.”  This time, it is on us.  The times demand nothing, but what will we demand of ourselves?

“I love yr work!” “Incandescent”Bob Holman Lillian Ann Slugocki

“Marc Zegans’ stories and poetry will transport you. His words read like music... It’s a gorgeous read.”

Peg Simone

“...visually lush and carefully crafted, the mark of a poet who is deeply attuned to the undercurrents of the world...The Underwater Typewriter isn’t merely a collection of poems. It is an assembly of artifacts dragged from the depths of human relationship and heart, laid bare to turn, to witness, and ultimately, to love.”

Meghan Guidry, author of Light and Skin and librettist, The Little Blue One

“The Underwater Typewriter is a stellar work. Rarely does anyone combine Zegans’ formal sense of space and syntax with such underlying passion and profound percep-tion. For me it rivals John Ashbury’s “Flow Chart” and Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems.” It’s a game changer in terms of form and language, one that will win over ‘many hearts.’ Read it!”

Lo Galluccio, past poet populist of Cambridge, author of Hot Rain and Sarasota VII.

“Childlike and adult – heart-wrenching and cruel – sensual and distant – remembered and present, in The Underwater Typewriter, Marc Zegans weaves opposites into poems that feel like a breath held in excitement, wonder, longing and expectation – I swim in his words and somehow feel comforted when I recognize every single typewritten word as my truth.”

Erin Cressida Wilson, Screenwriter Secretary; Men, Women, Children, and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

Advance Praise for The Underwater Typewriter

Advance Praise

“Marc Zegans is a punk-poet and a poet-punk. In The Underwater Typewriter he is as equally at home in the city gutter as he is on the high seas, chronicling tales of mor-tality from deep in our past to deep in our present. Zegans possesses a keen under-standing of history, but also writes with the eye of an anthropologist, the ear of someone who, like my mother, can listen to multiple conversations at once, and the story telling skills of a griot. I like it best when he pulls the pin on his typewriter and uses it like it’s a grenade. One such poem, “P(un)k Poets: Too Fucked to Drink,” works as an elegy not only for San Francisco, but for all American cities gone to anodyne seed.”

Michael Stewart Foley, author of Dead Kennedys’ “Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables” (33 1/3), professor of American Political Culture and Political Theory, University of Groningen

“No clichés…. No subtle walks through the park sniffing daisies…. No bullshit... Marc shocks his subjects with electric intensity of remarkable descriptive imagery while diving deep into unfiltered waters, getting beneath the currents of human interactions to lock eyes with his subjects before fetching his underwater typewriter. Each poem through the 133 pages is tightly crafted with laser-light jolts of focus without compro-mise. Marc journeys unleashed through unchartered waters from East to West coasts with the hardened intimacy of a lover and a dreamer without remorse, able to reflect his natural gift of crafting a poem.”

Brian Morrisey, editor, Poesy Magazine

“The Underwater Typewriter—Bay Area poet Marc Zegans’ optimistic and ambitious new collection…is a lyrical chronicle and how-to of salvaging valuables from the murk, honoring and saying goodbye to that which cannot be recovered whole, living well and meaningfully in spite of lost loves, youthful health, family mythologies and cultural innocence. It is also a mature perspective, as deliverable only by one who has lived long enough to know first-hand the pressure point of a manual keyboard or the satis-fying clunk of a hard return.”

Carol L. Skolnick, writer, Santa Cruz

“The Underwater Typewriter reminds us that the physical body is lost and helpless on the edge of mortality but that the soul will not give in, no matter what. Zegans is a master of the stolen moment; Lovers in different states of melancholy, reminiscent of Neruda’s The Captain’s Verses, the dangerous days of real hipsters fighting tyranny and spilling real blood, the forever onward push of the natural elements against man’s lan-guishing fragility. Through language and rhythm, he is able to capture these memories and images before they evaporate like smoke in a room. Or coffee steam up from a chipped mug. It is a collection of laments, but somewhere behind the voice of a wise sage with a really good pen, lurks the humor and optimism of a young man in spec-tator shoes who waits for these kinds of deep slashes to smarten him up. It makes you want to read poetry again. And to pay attention. And to live in one big gulp.”

Nichole Dupont, writer, editor, fighter

“In The Underwater Typewriter, Marc Zegans uses a bracing surrealism as an edifying weapon, a strategy that unifies many disparate themes into a cohesive and unifying per-formance. In the manner of Revardy or Appolinaire, these poems are deceptively inti-mate, as the narrator sits in his abstract webs, and with deft precision uses his language to shake the reader’s preconceived notions. The best poetry always illuminates the hidden commerce between unseen things, but Zegans’ work also has a constant emo-tional honesty that does not truck in obfuscation or ambiguity; it is a poetry that strives to reduce the misperceptions that arise every day between cultures, genders, geogra-phies and families. From the shards he shows us a deeper focus, a deeper understanding of what it means to be a contemporary citizen of the world.”

Keith Flynn, editor of the Asheville Poetry Review and author of Colony Collapse Disorder

“In The Underwater Typewriter, poet Marc Zegans plays the seductive merman, inviting us with the casual wave of a flipper to join him beneath the surface of the ordinary world, where treasures untold wait to be discovered in the shimmering waters. How fortunate we are to have a guide of such intelligence, courage and compassion.”

Charles Coe, author of All Sins Forgiven: Poems for My Parents

“…spunky, sparky…a fractured, fragmented and spirited collision of image and energy.”Simon Warner, editor of Howl For Now and author of Text and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture

Advance Praise

� e Underwater Typewriter by Marc Zegans

ISBN-10: 1938349296ISBN-13: 978-1-938349-29-4eISBN: 978-1-938349-36-2Library of Congress Control Number: 2015942439

Copyright © 2015 Marc Zegans

Th is work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

An earlier version of “First Watch” appeared in Ibbetson Street 34, November 2013“ephemere” fi rst appeared in Lyrical, � e Somerville News, April 16, 2014An earlier version of “Anacoluthon” appeared in � e Wick, Summer/Fall 2010“requiem for a spoken word” fi rst appeared in Lyrical, � e Somerville News, July 24, 2013“A Hipster Retires” fi rst appeared in Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene, January 9, 2012“Somerville” fi rst appeared in Lyrical, � e Somerville Times, January 18, 2012

Layout and Book Design by Mark Givens

First Pelekinesis Printing 2015

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