Alamo Theory. Josh Bell

      

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      The poem "Our Bed Is Also Green," which appears in the print version of Alamo Theory, does not appear in this e-book due to formatting issues.

      Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

       This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.

       This book is the property of Jillian Marie Weise.

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      Contents

        Title Page

        Note to Reader

        Dedication

      1  Dollar Dollar Bill

      2  Alamo Theory

      3  Josh II: The Return of Josh

      4  Vince Neil Meets Josh in a Chinese Restaurant in Malibu (after Ezra Pound)

      5  Where the I Comes From

      6  If Not Princess, Then Warden

      7  Pensées of the Sucker MC

      8  The Last Critique

      9  Here Are Some Problems I Have with Your Wife

      10  Vince Neil Accompanies Josh to Luncheon with Scholars, Poets, and Others — Gets Cell Phone Number of Grad Student Sitting at Far End of Table — Orders Cheeseburger, No Tomato — Borrows Josh’s Cell Phone — Calls Grad Student Sitting at Far End of Table

      11  PSA

      12  American History

      13  Your Prime Minister Speaks

      14  One Night in His Hotel Room, Vince Neil Reads Aloud His “Open Letter to the Men and Women of Malibu, Who May No Longer Love Me as They Have,” a Nice Bit of Writing about Which Josh Offers Very Little in the Way of Criticism

      15  The Films of Tony Scott

      16  We Will Begin by Placing You in This Bag

      17  Blue Safari

      18  Penultimate Letter to Your Wife

      19  Sci-Fi Violence

      20  While Josh Sleeps, Vince Neil Recites His “Love Song for Flight Attendant on Continental Express 1147, to Austin, Texas”

      21  Alamo Theory II

      22  Here Are Some Problems I Have with Your Wife

      23  What It’s Like Outside

      24  Notes Toward an Imperial Poetry

      25  One Shies at the Prospect of Raising Yet Another Defense of Cannibalism

      26  One Day, Alone on the Houseboat, Vince Neil Changes the Name of Everyone He Has Known, Knows, or Is Like to Know — Male and Female — to James

      27  Yep, I Said Camel

      28  The Record

      29  The Creature

      30  Vince Neil’s Report to the Malibu City Chamber of Commerce, in Which He Refuses, and Finally Agrees, to Make a Journey to the Underworld to Visit with the Known and Unknown Dead

      31  Complaint

      32  Alamo Theory III

      33  Hidden Lake

      34  Superwhite

      35  Vince Neil’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, as Transcribed by Josh, in a Crowded Hotel Bar One Afternoon, Being a Poem Spoken in the Future, During the Upcoming AWP Conference of 2018, in Tampa, Florida

        Acknowledgments

        About the Author

        Books by Josh Bell

        Copyright

        Special Thanks

Dollar Dollar Bill

      One more Jacobean kiss

      and you’ll wind up related to me.

      One more emotion

      and I’m coming for you, like a sparrow.

      Set your phenomenology

      on the windowsill.

      Filthy, meet Family. Family,

      I want to get marketable again.

      In the meantime, what are your thoughts

      on a completely male garden?

      As little closure, maybe, as there is

      a permanence? This being, also, the time

      of the wandering Miss Americas.

      Loose thumb-bones, rattling

      in a mint tin. One more emotion

      and both Dakotas will explode.

      One more condition

      and I’ll be exiting my relevance.

      And what was it, finally,

      so dead about him, Family?

      I think I just saw a fox.

      Yes,