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Mitch Highfill lives on a beautiful out of the way street in Brooklyn that has both sun and quiet. I went over to Mitch’s a few weeks ago to do what I have been wanting to do for a long time, record him.
Mitch is a generous poet with an imagination that leaves much to the imagination, and I mean that in the best way, poems that are concrete and abstract at the same time, sights and sounds I can savor as I read along, or like a puzzle disassemble and put back together making it my own, a for real creativity shared by the reader, the poet, and the poem.
Allen Ginsberg once told me that when people give you a book they’ve written, open it up in the middle and take a look. I opened Mitch Highfill’s 5 in the middle. Here the third section of the book begins. It’s called “Koenig’s Sphere,” and I decided to type out a few poems from there to put on the blog. As serendipity will have it, when I recorded Mitch, he opened his book to the middle and began to read some of the poems that I’d typed out so as Mitch reads, you may read along.
The video begins with “Tea Time at Tehama.” Tehama is the street Mitch lives on in Brooklyn that has both sun and quiet. All of the other poems Mitch reads from 5. Enjoy.
I
In tug of war
the players wait
for the red flag
to drop between
them, hands tight
on the rope, eyeing
each other, nervous
and like the locked
door of the church,
green wood against
grey stone, quarried
in Long Island
a while back, before
their knees locked,
weight gently tugging
the line away from
the center
3
Ill-fitting shoes and bad
attitude prevail, miniature
sheep dog sniffing parking
meters from here
to the corner of the known
world, a place where
people wear their loyalties
on their t-shirts, logos abound
not one thing without text
and image, the job is yours,
you can start today
…………………………….wear these
8
Paint over the flaw.
Big trucks cast big shadows.
The melodramatic shadow
hard to settle for this many
years later, and like
a Merrie Melodies toon
from the 40’s, we row
across the kitchen sink in
bottle caps. Dated,
but charming.
12
Standing and swinging
swinging and standing up
down from the upswing
up for the down
size downsizing
the owl carving
from K-Mart.
80 degrees and rising.
14
Rowboats hurry smack
in the middle, birds around
something clean and clear.
Snowy egret on one
leg. Chinese checkers
on a peg board. A dice
cup in a gondola. Lazy
watercolors of beaches and
sailboats matching the blue
of the couch—what art is for,
I guess.
18
Try that with no arms
or legs, and in your head
what you’re not supposed to
feel, taking snapshots at
the fountain, another
original idea—flutes
into headphones, zebra
stripes and white concrete.
Excuse me, sir, do you have
a light? Yes, I am only
light, different organs flicker
different frequencies, even
my crutches vibrate slowly,
hands on hips, fingernails just
security guards at the well
of touch.
The final poem in 5 is called “I let a song go.” It’s the perfect poem to end on.
I let a song go
out of my heart
out of my hands
out of my arms
out of my bed
out of my door
out of my night
through which
the hands of the clock
go round and round
in front of my open
eyes.
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5 is published by Lunar Chandelier Collective Press. You can check it out here:
https://www.lunarchandeliercollectivepress.com/product-page/five-mitch-highfill
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photo by Christopher Funkhouser