The Adventures of Liana Finck

Liana Finck’s work appears in The New Yorker and Catapult, and on her Instagram feed. Her first book, A Bintel Brief, was published by Ecco Press in 2014.

Madison, Monk, and the Opposition Party

There is an inherited dispute no one disputes.

Even if it’s a fable — we agree to disagree.

There was once enough agreement about disagreement to agree.

In school I pored over James Madison and Thelonious Monk.

Both Madison and Monk understood essential tension:

the variant shapes that are X and N and O; and our dented

and shiny horns of mutual frustration. And more yet will.

This: how I came to speak for myself.

Now I stand among the rocks. The rocks are stony and proud in their way.

Blunt and mute (or partly so). Sometimes saying things like: Hold me — and go.

And hold me, and stay. So I go; or hold on as long as I can.

The rocks are never obvious, this: their appeal.

We take photographs, but they start to slide out of the picture.

As the page and the slanting handwriting there is always more than its texture.

The day passes. The rocks remain. For the moment, lunch makes a difference.

Monk is mute and Madison is voluble on factions; I listen to both.

I write this out on an oak table; someone made it.

It is a plank I use for eating, talk, collage —

the table is under it all, but I cannot circle back to it now.

That work is done — now: our turn.

NOW is the thing that no one doubts. The rocks are another thing.

Who wants these? They are here, but they are another thing.

Nobody seems to want them, so: the rocks, the rocks. It’s not a clear.

Give us the rocks then. We’re all-in with the rocks.

Thomas Devaney is the author of Runaway Goat Cart (Hanging Loose Press, 2015), Calamity Jane (Furniture Press, 2014), and The Picture that Remains (The Print Center, 2014). He is the recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for poetry and teaches at Haverford College.

The Poetry Section is edited by Mark Bibbins.

What day do you think it is?

Here is some good news: It’s Thursday. I say this is good news because this week has been so long already that you have no doubt lost all sense of where you are, spatially, inside of it, and you have been so beaten down by its endless oppression that if someone were to tell you it was Wednesday — or, God forbid, Tuesday even — you would simply nod and put your head back down and go about whatever terrible business it is you go about in our time of ceaseless toil. But no, it’s Thursday! Only several hundred thousand more hours until the weekend! Here’s some Italian-school deep techno for you to enjoy.

★★ Kindergarteners huddled conspiratorially under umbrellas pulled low over their heads. The rain was tolerable, walkable, requiring no waterproof shoes. Cigarettes and dog turds and other things on the sidewalk got soggy without washing away. The showers held on longer than the forecast had said they would, then left behind an evening covered with small, grimy puddles.

To tide you over before the commute.

Something worthy to think about that no one’s going to quiz you on later but you will feel good about having considered anyhow.

This one maybe a bit more abstract or evergreen.

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From one of your favorite good writers.

This is a good sentence. So is this one. Probably even this one. Some devices I may not agree with but will let slide because they count as “style” or “license.” A personal anecdote that might usually get cut from most writing but doesn’t in this case because the writer describes it so uniquely that it is worth preserving, just for the turns of phrase and creative language.

More of the same. Easy breezy voicy beautiful. Possibly even veering off-topic. But with someone who drives with such control and deft steering, why not take the long route? You can’t really see the parts that I cut, but that’s because they weren’t necessary, and since you can’t tell anyway, well, there you go.

Et cetera. Some humor, some poignancy, mostly just accessibility and lots of examples grounded in observation, reality, experience, rather than speculation or mood or instinct. Showing not telling. Showing so specifically down to the level of a mote of dust. Clever connections you hadn’t expressed but have felt all along. Doesn’t it feel good?

Possibly about TV or music or a new or even old book.

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By a certain artist.

Not a laugh exactly but more like a sigh of recognition.

Something I read that I think you should read too.

Introductory sentence. Or two.

Excerpt from the piece that distills the point but also makes you want to read more of it.

Hyperlink pointing to the rest of it.