Issue 36: Chris Nealon

Bro Code

Well ... maybe you were right

It is a weird time to feel like all men are brothers

But I remain committed to my sentiment

And to say it’s muddied by eros explains nothing at all

Straight men always seemed so alien to me, opaque –

But so did I

And with age comes – mmm,

Is there a German phrase for, “getting over yourself?”

I’ve been trying to get free of grumpy-old-man-face by smiling mildly all the time,

especially at strangers, possibly in a senile way

Breaking the rictus like my forebears tried to write free verse

Ezra Pound going on about “breaking the iamb” lol

You can’t break a center of gravity

                                                                     *

Sometimes the language of male greatness can make you feel crazy

Like I don’t know, I still think “I think somebody better put out the big light” is about

Elvis Costello wanting to kill the woman who’s not into him, am I nuts?

Maybe he never thought about it that way, misogyny is like that

Maybe I’m a self-righteous prick

Or worse, a critic

I remember going to a play on a date in San Francisco in the 90s and afterward the guy

asked me what I thought – when I finished telling him he was like, “whoa, are you a

director or something?”

I know I should bite my tongue when it comes to my aesthetic judgments but I just care

so much

Or I used to – I can feel myself taking a break while I try to get a better concept of

judgment

Men singing along to songs written by women, women singing songs written by men,

Wedging ourselves into melodies from the long and winding road of heterosexuality –

It’s gonna take a little less morality

It’s gonna take a lotta love

                                                                     *

The night we met was a bit of a wash, as first encounters go

First and last, in this case –

I mean the reading was fun, even knowing you were in the audience

Geoff and Alex knocked it out of the park

And we all danced in the theater afterward, I remember “Down On My Luck” went over

especially well

The random factor was a bit cranked up though – that kid heckling Geoff, then

interrupting me to ask who Peter Culley was

Of course I was happy to explain, spreading the word about Peter is a service to poetry

That seemed to satisfy him – actually more than satisfy – after that I couldn’t get him

off me

He kept saying “I have very flexible hips”

Meanwhile people coming up to me – “You must meet Jeremy” – and me thinking oh,

dear

And indeed your only words when we were introduced were “I know who you are”

Perfectly evenly stressed: molossus plus a spondee? Very subtle pentameter?

I’ve never had the word “frosty” leap so readily to mind

Well that’s on me – my review was unsparing, though I don’t think unadmiring

You were gone in a flash and then that boy was in my lap

Awkwardness and eros, what was up that night?

Maybe it was Vic Mensa, scorchingly hot, playing in the background

Maybe it was sparks from styles clashing

But here I am, reading your poems, peeling an orange

                                                                     *

“placid honied

obstreperous

indigenous too

fetlock naphtha

threadbare jawbone, vestige ...”

Margaret Thatcher may have taken a bite out of you but man you slaughter AI

“The document raises questions about the nature of self-specification within the

universe of discourse,” womp womp

Me I always hear you gaming with whatever phonic center of gravity we’ve built across

the ages, and how it holds together wayward graphemes

I mean -id -ied -ous -ous -bare -bone in just five lines! but also all the little reversals, id-

di- ni- in- re- er

Not to mention tha- threa-, -idge -idge

It’s like your poems got denser and denser until they came out the other end and

became a party game, hilarious sonic waterslides

If we’d managed more than eight words (I said, “Hi, I’m Chris”) it would have been fun

to talk about that,

And much besides –

Like the enthymeme, sneaky arty version of the syllogism, initial proposition missing, a

kind of inaudible in media res or headless torso

For Aristotle it means we always start our encounter with art by asking, what is this an

example of? and end up wondering, what was that experience ...

Good art at least, and riddles are good art –

Schuyler thought so too, and he loved the double “-ll,” like you

Which makes you brothers, in a way

And that’s the mystery –

Prynne for coterie is Prynne for everybody

Chris Nealon teaches in the English Department at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of five books of poetry, including The Shore, which was a finalist for the 2020 National Critics’ Book Circle Award. His latest volume of poems is All About You (2024). He is currently completing a book called The Concept of Capital: On the Politics of Marx’s Logic.

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