AD HOC

HAYDEN BERGMAN

B L A Z EVO X [ B OO K S ]
Buffalo, New York
Ad Hoc
by Hayden Bergman
Copyright © 2023

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

Cover Art: name here

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-439-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023935344

BlazeVOX [books]
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Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

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The theme of a work of art cannot be a truth, a concept, a document, etc, but only, once again, a myth.
From myth directly into poetry…

—CESARE PAVESE
One

To wound the tender ear with cutting truth…

—Persius

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Sunday Best

The adjunct preacher!s in the pulpit, hair parted and kept still
from many Sundays waking earlier than sin
to wield a boar-hair brush
and rake it through a mess of fine split-ends, a routine born of faith in all
the smallest industries.
In a new gray suit he speaks in tones he!d call piano —
— Jonah!s in the belly of the great big fish,
and it seems twice a year this story is retold and told, since burdens, burdens, burdens
they do come, oh yes,
the preacher says,
they come —
the churchman sets to listing things that Jonah might have seen:
a pulse and throb of waves of acid sloshing in the dark.

In the first few pews the boys are silent, all motions and mouths,
hands below the backs
of benches as they pass
a smartphone back and forth that plays a silent clip —
— a woman after really taking one —
her insides prolapse on a loop, her twisted face the answer to men!s inquiry of pain —
unknotting his voice
in pianissimo, he thinks,
the preacher says that Jonah has been vomited ashore —
— the smallest children run excited to the pulpit for what!s next,
a chance to show off what they!d learned at Sunday school that morning,
a song, a list,
the new side of the book and things were great,
till they forgot the letter sent from Corinth up to Rome.

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The Well-Nigh Illimitable Nature of the Theme

A mare lived alone in a one-acre corral across the highway from an open sweet-grass pasture,
with a flatland creek through its northeast corner. We stood on our side of the fence,
looked her swollen neck and easy-swishing tail — in her body, grace composed its home.
It was April and the sky was heavy with the load of hail and rain. She galloped to us,
pushed her head into our hands, chestnut body quaking, breath chaotic, blooming with anxiety.
It!s okay, we told her, We do it too,
in the rain, the endless lashing.

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Opening Holes of Escape in the Tight Fabric

Dirt settles into mounds around our feet,

hard-contrasting with the boom-pink
color we imagine for our bones — yes,
it!s like that, images standing in
not for the thought but that thought!s tenor,
jackrabbits twitching at the entrance
to the hutch, taking wordless breaks,

and the great blue herons, common

in the creek, flash their shock-white bellies
fine with all of this, all of it, with the dust-devil
circling, whipping, hauling the deflated
dust away, taking to give, again, proportion
to the land described.

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The Rural Skatepark Presents Itself Prior to the Abstraction

Mallows gather at the edge of the drainage ditch, and the grackles group,
while the sun slow plays a sinking game
and I lie down on this blue-yellow crush of grass
and swell with its acceptance —

— in the bowl across the park,

skateboarders stumble from their rides, quick bodies flash from grace before they rise
to the rim once more,
dip below the brim —

— air —

now back into the bowl, forms rolling back to harmony, all of them shirtless,
buoyant with the wind!s affection
for their armpits, not thinking
of the last fall or the next —…,

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You!ve Got the Right Idea

My mother kneels down on the first step of our spiral staircase, built from steel, I!m told,
by my relentless grandad, the twisting heap
a necessary flourish,
a helix that allowed for dizzying up-and down runs, up
and down, up,
and down.

Momma was flat sick of all the heaps of blue jeans stained Bermuda green
after afternoons spent
playing on the next-door neighbor!s lawn.

One hand on
my shoelace knot, my mother speaks so I!ll remember:

The rabbit runs around the tree

Around?, I said,

around, she said,

and down into the hole,
pops out the other side.

Bursts of foster
in the transom window, light for my incident strings — it wasn!t like that,
though I do remember running, or, at least,
feeling that I wouldn!t fall —

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Ad Hoc (I)

The down-street girl texts me to see if I can call in sick — my dad is gone this afternoonnnn :) —
too bad I have to work
in a field of busted hay bales, walking through crop straw
piled dusty to my knees, sifting chaff
for broken wires to pick up for the tractor, so it can swing on back around, try again —
— I squint
into the all-day sun so hard it seems my eyes will become elegies
with nothing else to watch but that new river,
ambitious, distanced from an ocean.

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It is Brief, But So Essential That It Can be Maddening to Locate

Grandma flicked a deck of fifty-two from a Lake Charles casino past her thumb,
mimicking the noises in the night.
All day we worked deep-sixing grandpa, and now the day was gone, so we sat in the dark
to play a game of five-card,
hoping that his soul was somewhere else, not stuck inside
the shallow box of lacquered cedar.

Uncle cut the deck and grandma dealt, growling, deuces wild, as she snapped her wrist.
The bet went to my uncle, check, then to my second cousin, check.
And then it came to me: check.
Grandma!s eyebrows lifted from her eyes. Three dollars, she said, and pushed twelve quarters
to the center of the table. The bet
went to my uncle, fold, then to my second cousin, fold, and then to me, call. I threw
three ones on the table. The family
and lookers-on raised their heads and voices. Grandpa would’ve been howling to her right,
you ain!t got nothin!
so I told her, you ain!t got nothin.
We both drew another card, hoping we would dig up luck, some glossy gift buried face down
in the deck. Neither of us did.
We played the cards that we were dealt.

Cards to chest she said, you first, and so I slapped mine on the table: triple aces.
Grandpa would have told her, give up
while you can — but I didn!t say that. She laughed, exhaled, and showed her hand:
full house: three tens, one king, a wild deuce to pair.
She leaned forward, pulled the pot to her side of the table, threw her arms around the cash
and change and straightened up her back.

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Due to the Price Increase on Emotion Do Not Expect a Revelation

Freud tells a momma joke to a gnostic, who slaps him for ill-speaking of his girlfriend. Laughter
as a theory of relief from the lyric obsession with desire, as a signal
to the one grey cloud among the gallop, letting it become our focus in anticipation of electric
joy joy joy.
Idiom our language now, shot through with winks, side-eyed glances, a general longing
for the person we could leave you for, a specific beckon to the steam hammer, to its crush.

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Ad Hoc (II)

In the hollow of a grain silo in the empty part of June,

the temperature graphed
in sweat on my friend!s face and mine, our bodies smooth as young oxen,
indications how fresh blooms
marvel at the world, we swept wheat dust into gatherings,
hauled them in buckets
up a ladder, dumped them out the door we left open for the sunlight, yes,
but for the work, too,
so we could see our hands and booted feet at the occasion
of becoming aches
through the pressure on our backs, the yoke of work
our way of crashing to salvation
hour by shared hour — our hands on the cracked and splintered brooms,
we talked of what the down-street girls might do,
and the women,
when we ourselves were older and our bodies had grown up to be
the same size as our tools.

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Bull

Men recline in polyester chairs

to let the only haircut man in town, Raymond, clip gray tufts onto the tile floor —
the pile grows to be swept up and tossed out, later,
when the sun has angled through each corner of the shop — for now,
conversation swirls toward
the cities and the riots seen therein on last night!s news — they must be solved, here,
this morning, while each man sits
higher up than usual, and thinks himself a judge or license of import —
they talk themselves into the plot
to quiet down the silence that they live in, outside of what!s breaking on the air —
Raymond twirls them to shave their neck,
and talk turns to what they!ve all been up to: bought me tickets to the game in Dallas,
prepping trucks for weekend trips to out-of-state casinos,
cleaned the maple leaves out ma gutters — they!re liars, full of cancer lurking in their mush,
their bodies overused
and bent like penny nails — nearly finished now, every man avoids
his own face in the mirror —
Raymond flourishes the capes, soaps each neck for the glint of a razor!s edge.

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There is Much Confusion Between Land and Country

Men in camo and square boots pace through the aisles of the gun show,
just in town from Dallas and Fort Worth,
since the leaves have turned to rust,
and the dove are southing:
whitetail,
ringneck,
mourning,
follow their threatening paths —
each would-be hunter holds, with shallow breath, the polished stock of a new shotgun,
ready, finally,
for the discharge of desire —

The kids from the local high school marching band are here, selling boxes of World’s Finest,
one dollar a bar,
buck fifty for the crispy ones, two bucks for double-fudge —
the war vets that’ve come chip in,
some even buy a dozen, since they’re sick of hearing spittle pour clean through the rusty,
worn to pieces trumpets
that the kids play work-a-day renditions of Taps on each Veteran’s Day
when the whole town gathers at the flagpole on a morning that is shatteringly crisp
like a branch just breaking,
when men of war show up to mourn,
to practice a respect,
and the first-chair player, a girl with hair pulled back painful on her head,
will stand in the still,
blow out the song in notes and intermittent breaths:
*

***

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