Frank Lima's idobelieveidobelieveidobelieve
Dateline: 6/1/99The New York Times heralds The Return of Poetry! for the umpteenth time in the last ten years (May 30, 1999, “There’s a Resurgence of Poets, and They Know It” *). This one, by Jesse McKinley in The Week in Review, is better than most, particularly because he gets some actual lines of poetry in it -- by Mark Strand, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, and Saul Williams.
A name you won’t find, but should, and will, and soon! is Frank Lima, enfant terrible in the early 60s, first of the Puerto Rican street poets to emerge, protégé of and collaborator with Frank O’Hara. His most recent book has the same title as his first, Inventory, separated by over 30 years. Before Inventory (1997), his last book was Angel, published by Norton in 1976 & now out of print.
The reappearance of Frank Lima after twenty years, emerging from substance abuse, jail, rehab, drawn out by the magnet flame of poetry, is to be taken as a sign. Poetry is not simply the tossing out of a long net to haul in Future, but honoring the Disappeared who have made Present possible. Other US poets in this particular pantheon: Larry Neal (1937-1981), D.C. founder and spirit of the Black Arts Movement; d.a. levy (1942-1968), sainted poet of Cleveland, visionary of the small press movement, personification of the 60s; the Ozarks’ Frank Stanford (1948-1978), whose epic the battlefield where the moon says i love you (out of print) is due to be republished by Lost Roads Press, which he founded with C.D. Wright; Steven Jesse Bernstein (1951-1991), master of spoken word nastiness, the Burroughs of Seattle Grunge. Please send us others.
Frank Lima survived -- he has also and improbably become a gourmet chef of the classic French style. We welcome him as he has always been with us. October will see the publication of his new book, idobelieveidobelieveidobelieve (Hard Press), an amazing, hilarious, sprung spontaneous reworking of The Bible. I am filled with the anticipation of how Lima’s leap will upset the sanctimonious religionists, drill lungs in the pretentious poetasters, while existing in the most totally ecstatically spiritual state since Blake. We are honored to be the first publication to allow you a taste of what is clearly destined to be a classic work.
--Bob Holman
Jesus’ First Draft
of the Sermon on the Mountain
Brethrenby Frank Lima
Listen to me
You are relatives and bagels
And I am one of you
You are the economic power of prayer
The balding ladders of the future
Let us set our watches by the big Rolex
It is my new line
No pun intended
This watch is really a fish
With many hands for the different moments in your lives
The second hand is a live little woman
In a garish rubber dress
With a thin co-dependent smile
She will heal you when you are broken
By middle age impotency
By giving you her flesh
The watch will inhibit senility
Tightening your scrotal anadem
And what is left of you will be
The sutures of your future
Your Rolex will join your third bypass
On a stroll through the intensive-care afternoon
You will see me dive-bombing into your soul
Like the Luftwaffe
With soft avocado medals
With nipples as dark as fire
In the leaky chambers of your heart
As you fade from sight
I am not the last piece of bread in your dry mouths
Or the fetus in your soul
Or the loaded gun that thinks of God
So I stand before you with a fistful
Of pits as green as my Father’s sperm
And I will share his magic salt
With your lips on His sacred nudity
He is the matchbook
You sent to the cleaners in your pants
He is the whale’s penis
And I am the Lord’s engorgement
Shining like a dog’s tongue
Ready to lick the stars
In the mind of God
More on Frank Lima:
- A complete table of contents & selected poems from Inventory are online at the publisher's site, Hard Press.
- Lima was interviewed by Seth Rogovoy for his BerkshireWeb column “The Beat” in 1996, for an article entitled “Poet Back from the Edge,” which also includes his poem “The Cedar.”
*You'll need to register (free) & set your browser to accept cookies in order to read any article from The New York Times on the Web -- but we think it's worth it.
