The Martian Martian Poet and Green Groupie

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Someone had untied the five segments of the stuffed goldfish, so the five pieces lay about the African blackwood table like assorted shapes shining in velvet and satin. It had eyes made of corduroy, a pink tulle section, a hairy belly because of the lamao, shining like tinsel. What hung from the lighting fixture now became a table centrepiece that belonged and looked good on a surface.

—– It’s made from someone’s poem, Martian offered, anything to inject history into conversation. One line from one poem from one poetic sequence actually. The sequence about Dada and a Chinese soothsayer, the poem about an Issey Miyake parachute dress and dual-line stunt kites and royal jelly touted to heal everything from arthritis to Alzheimer’s—the line—. let’s see, here’s what the artist wrote, Martian stood up to hold the tag against the light—“A ginger cat is preening itself like a goldfish against glass.”

—–  The head looks like a shark, Green said, resisting to simply being agreeable.

—–  And the tail looks like a rabbit. And the rest of it, parts of a shoe and sock. I really like it. But I have a better poem. Green, no bigger than a bottle of white-out, leaned against the second segment with the clover prints, softly shimmering in the diner’s low light.

—–  Let’s hear it, Martian said.

—– “A ginger cat sat on a mat and ate gingerbread.”

—– That’s it?

—– That’s it. It rhymes better, Green said, arms crossed, then akimbo.

—– Plush is lush. Makes you feel like cotton and flannel inside. Martian squeezed the third section with the dorsal fin against his cheek, waiting for a squeak like a pip. Actually, your poem IS better than mine! It’s more, well, absurdist.

Martian thought of Kafka’s The Mouse Folk or the other story Kafka wrote from the puppy’s point-of-view. He liked the cat given an anthropomorphic aura, moving beyond the simile to situate the one-line poem in the particular, mining Seuss, his cat-in-the-hat  rhyming  genius. Suddenly, all of the diners took on their own creaturely aurae, such pervasive positions that made them look like the food confections on their plate. Devas Ashrama was known for its inventive a  la carte offerings like pilaf rice deeply baked in a white clam sauce or the soy burger topped with caramelised onions and wasabe mayonnaise. The music was always loungy, all the chairs were tall with headrests. There were even separate rooms for bhakti yoga, raja yoga, and jnana yoga. But nothing fancy, beige walls, kept clean.

—– And using Steinian half-repetition with “gingerbread”, the “bread” extension underscoring the notion of hunger and feasting and me feeling a bit like banana bread for lunch. What with the Gingerbread Man and his heroic escapades, and the ginger cat in Puss in Boots (read: Shrek version), you’re adopting some funky intertextuality, Green.

—– I’ve always wanted a ginger cat and Mom put rum in our gingerbread—.

—– Julia Kristeva would give you three nights free-stay at her chateau, all meals on the manorial house, breakfast in bed. Martian was insistent that the poem had a future.

—– Mom served it over the Mid-Autumn Festival instead of Christmas, Green continued. Good business, she said. We eventually sold it at fairs, had quite a following for three years, until the mooncake companies started innovating.

—– Julia Kristeva, Martian said, and a chateau.

—– Can Goldfish come along? Green seemed to prefer to take things along for the ride rather than talk about them, suddenly distracted by the Chinese family insisting spaghetti was Chinese, and their Italian guest saying it was best left a matter of papal infallibility.

—– Plush is lush, Martian said, already heady with conceptualising more antecedental moves for his other poetic installments. The fourth segment felt more solid in his hand, as if stuffed with a heavier polyester fibre, still dry-washable. But he needed to plastic-wrap it, freeze it overnight to nuke the germs and allergens and dust mites.

—– “gingerly gingerly scared cat and marbled mottled world”

The words fell over each other like sparkles, like Venetian glass.

—– What did you say? Martian tried to seize the language in the air, left fingers in a flutter, his right fist a loud thud on the table.

—– “the baked clay in cakes in cups ginger ale down down down gulp”

—– No messing around here…. you did a Stein again, Green.

—– Goldfish agrees, Martian. Green said this, nodding twice, adding two more nods for vigorous effect, like green lights in a queue, a retinue, carbonating. He was picking out the lint from the fourth segment, an interesting canvas, matte but covered in lime polka dots, in some vintage Japanese fabric, the diner altogether looking like the set of Great Expectations, the one with Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke.

—– You’re really good at this, Green, these one lines, these one-line poems. Have you heard of Michael McFee and what he wrote on this? Martian was twiddling his thumbs as if some iridescent spark might ignite, to throw a bulb in Green’s open direction. McFee calls it a spiritual exercise. A prayer approaching the wordless word, that’s what he said. And a strangely impersonal act.

—– “mottled moss lone stone”

—– Yes! Yes! That’s what McFee called it! The one-line poem a stone, not a mirror. The most chiseled kind of epigrammatic writing, that’s what he said!

Martian was gone, trajectory-bound and eking, the diner now a greasier side of grassland. Green was cradling in his arms the set of paired fins, still chenille and fallen off Goldfish’s head, looking less threatening and more like a manatee or a dugong, always waiting for a hug.

—– You’re squeezing the life out of it, Green. It looks like a mermaid wanting to get free, trying to get out of an oil spill.

Green never minded the non-negotiables, but now a ring of mice folk had gathered at the far corner of the room, a coterie like a posse, nibbling on rice and pasta left out for them.

—– “maybe a plush pet ginger cat purring under the christmas tree—”

—– “—colorado pine or stone pine—”

—– “—funky funk fun—”

Green looked back, the green of his eyes widening, a forever deeper citrine.

Author’s Note:
In the late 1970s, Britain witnessed the emergence of the minor literary movement Martianism. Promoted by Martin Amis, its idea was to make the familiar strange through the use of humour, finding its way into both poetry and fiction, the latter best seen in Amis’ own novel Other People: A Mystery Story (1981).

Prat-a -Porter

—– I wouldn’t ever wear anything with a brand showing except at a club! Who wouldn’t? The doorman takes one look at you, calls you over, so you cut right through the queue, and he’ll let you in free. And us girls? It’s Ladies’ Night every night.

We called it Nightlife Nepotism, the few places where being a girl helped, and no one got prissy or holier-than-thou about it because hell, we’re clubbing!

I dolled up with particular meticulousness that night, shaved my pits and legs extra-close, chose to go with a loose chignon, and slipped on a simple Nicole Miller bubble dress that made my Twiggy-skinny legs look even skinnier. The black made it understated but the bustline of tight sequins gave it the party lift it needed.

—– I’ve stopped using my Lagerfeld and Escada, I told Mystery in all seriousness. And tragically, Thierry Mugler’s Angel, which is my absolute divine fave. Because Frank has allergies. Any scent makes his throat bloat up and he might die from anaphylactic shock. It’s also for Frank I’m wearing L’Oreal’s Nude Beige and Esta Lauder’s Lip Creme. Want to look as Mod and Plain Jane as possible because Frank likes me au naturale, and that’s as au naturale as I get.

*******

Mystery left her heart in Telc, Czech Republic, but found me here in Never Never Land. Mystery also never abandoned her small-townish good-girl charm which is why she hid behind her pseudonym, which I kept telling her doesn’t help her image one bit. Mutants have alter egos. Mystery liked to dress up, went through phases like a Miss Universe Parade of Nations, one night it was Miss Colombia, the next it was Miss Guam, the last time she found a pseudo-kimono at the Salvation Army.

That night, Mystery decided she wanted to be Miss Tibet, a title which I insisted just doesn’t exist, but she said Sonam Choedon won it this year, and who was I to argue?

I liked Mystery because she was more Miss Innocent, and I looked like Ana Beatriz Barros next to her. With stilettos, I towered a little over six feet, which made me one of the tallest girls at the bar, and certainly on the dance floor when the Headbanger Goths parted the crowd with their lack of boundaries and sheer bodily violence. I was one of few who accepted them for who they were. I did this by thinking of them as my Solid Gold dancers. As for me, I’m known to be a languid tease, known as the Shimmy — all the action was in my soft gyration, slow-moving hips, my tummy tucked out, and long arms dangling behind me, so my coat hanger shoulders could show themselves off.

*******

—– You smoke like Iman, but you have Veronica Webb’s big eyes and crazy lashes, a guy at Genus Jones told me. He was leaning on the bar counter with his Snowball, which I felt was a tad lightweight.

He was built and beautiful, but he was Gay, or at least Metro-Bi. It’s the way he took me aside by my elbow, and cupped his hand around his mouth and whispered his compliment to me. I’m just saying he looked good but he wasn’t Fair Game, wasn’t Mission Possible.

—– Anyone can tell, I told Mystery who doesn’t like my quick judgement of people. Anyone can tell, I repeated because I knew I was right.

The way Frank walked into a room, everyone looked twice. It wasn’t just that he wore Hugo Boss, even to inconsequential dos like a visit to the artist studios along St. Benignus Street.

That was a lovely afternoon, and those were the best done-up studios I’d ever seen. I didn’t know artists lived like that, could afford that Maria Theresa chandelier, in jet-black, the one with the small lampshades and big crystals that clinked when they touched each other. This wasn’t a massive floor of cement with twenty artists holed up in cupboard spaces. Here, it was like a penthouse, and no floor had more than two artists living in it at any one time, and probably only because they were a couple. Each loft even had a balcony that overlooked a small river, more like a fairy tale brook actually, thriving with freshwater life instead of the dead ecosystems in the upper northwest towns. The fish in it were huge, probably because they were being fed canapas and cold cuts from the every-night gallery shows.

I especially liked the studio filled with the Catilina Chairs, which clearly weren’t meant to be sat on. They were so precise and delicate, you wanted to display your jewellery on them.

Frank nodded his head when I said that, in an approval that made me beam.

Frank was beautiful because he appreciated beauty, knew how to talk about it.

—– Jonathan Edwards doesn’t apprehend beauty through reflection, the way we’re doing now, Frank said, he wants immediacy, a more direct experience of sensation. It’s the heart that brings to light the beauty in an object, not our heads.

We decided to try the Jonathan Edward theory on one of the artist’s sculptures, really a fireplace mantel but the artist called it a, well, his name for it was “altare negativa”, a combination of Italian and Latin meaning “negating the altar”, and both words in full lower caps just for emphasis.

The sculpture was pretty in how it tried to return to basics. It had a small base, that rose sensually in disproportionately small and large curves. It didn’t seem to say anything until it reached the top, where there was a small hollow, a hole I presumed was to pour water in, and a sort of oil lamp protruding from the head like an Olympic torch.

—– It’s beautiful, Frank said, appraising it immediately with that quick-critic demeanour I had come to expect. Look at how primal it is, how it contours like the human body.

—– It’s surprisingly utilitarian in its architectonics, Frank said with his finger on his lips both as a gesture of deep thought and to hush any comment I might have had waiting to erupt. It accommodates its spaces traditionally used for ritual sacrifice and negates it through rendering them purely aesthetic, not functional. It politicks in negation, denouncing certain acts of sacrifice as acts of violence.

Frank’s voice began to quiver, a half-pitch higher and excited.

—– Y’see, the altar, no, the fireplace, no, the non-altar has already imbibed within its making the elements of earth and fire and water. Now all three of those elements are denied participation or representation in the completed work. The very materiality of the vessel is now at such a glorious height of artifice because the medium has become the message—. the piece has become purely symbolic, do you see?

—– Groovy, I said, checking for scratches on my Anna Sui emblem on my tee.

—– A nifty idea, I said, looking up.

Frank spent the next half-hour reading the pamphlet on the altar, about how it transcended its own absurdist being and accompanying tropes, and hid a smaller vessel within, how the oil lamp was really a burning basin, and how in the repository, one could place anything or nothing, but truth is I personally preferred the postmodern fire hydrant from the Search and Rescue Exhibition at The Toy Museum.

There were crepe peonies everywhere, smoking in a bed of dry ice, and they were real pretty, like they were made just for me.

Author’s note:
Prêt-à-Porter, or Ready to Wear (1994) is a black comedy written and directed by Robert Altman, filmed in Paris during its Fashion Week.