Dennis Hinrichsen Poetry

DENNIS HINRICHSEN

[schema geometrica] [KALAMAZOO 1972]

—once I was a boy in the time of assassins &

Bremer was there // having sat all day in a car outside The Armory //
George Wallace in town // Kalamazoo 1972 // so Weidman
yeah—weed-man) & I hiked over to the other side of town—
I may have been a communist then—I don’t know—I thought
guerrilla theater broke up the world so beautifully—(execution)
(in army fatigues) (perfectly pantomimed)—the rally already
a dumping ground of stupidity // chunked bodies of men //
smell of beer (Bremer near the front // aisle // left //
so that if Wallace passed // leaving // & he had the nerve //
he could shoot) // & then all that glorious shout down //
rage & righteous shouts back // quasi-religious rants //
mostly Baptist // it was the age of assassins //
I thought a guitar line could save me // notes as tightly packed
as bullets // the way two years earlier I had seen The Frost
at The Armory—fifth or sixth time by then—Wagner
hitting a note so cleanly Terry couldn’t shut the fuck up
the whole ride home about that perfect E // I didn’t know
what an E was but I loved it // how it fell into the ear

& sparked the body lyric // body raising its fist back to the air

[schema geometrica] [Portrait of my Second Birth as Scripted by J.G. Ballard] [Dir. Nicholas Ray]

—this is my car-crash womb // 1968 //

where I was born a second final time // trauma a garden
I keep walking through every spring—or better—
some island beach it is so desolate there // Ambulance One
two boys dead // heads bashed in // bleeding
everywhere every last droplet of blood //
one boy alive on the engine cover holding for balance //
Ambulance Two the same // two girls dead // another
howling same pitch & timbre as parent-parent-burning
down chorus later—birth sound cut w/death sound
so I knew the bodied hollows // the plugs in the heart //
rooted brain // emptying lungs // —O threshold in the dark
now lit with florescence how many alternate lives
breeding then I could not follow // sorrows so deep
you had to bury them & then bury them again // no language
for it so you just polished the shock & played w/a knife //
50 years of this // a low voltage pulse indicating intelligence
as if from another planet that is [insert car crash here—

insert flowers] everywhere

Dennis Hinrichsen's most recent work is schema geometrica, winner of the Wishing Jewel Prize from Green Linden Press. New poems are appearing or forthcoming in Abandon Journal, The Cincinnati Review, On the Seawall, The West Review, West Trade Review, and Witness.