The Skin of Meaning. Keith Flynn

      

THE SKIN OF MEANING

       also by

       Keith Flynn

       Poetry

      The Talking Drum (1991)

      The Book of Monsters (1994)

      The Lost Sea (2000)

      The Golden Ratio (2007)

      Colony Collapse Disorder (2013)

       Prose

       The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz, and Memory:

      How to Make Your Poetry Swing (2007)

       Recordings

      Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992)

      Pouch (1996)

      Nervous Splendor (2003)

      LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre (2011)

      THE SKIN OF MEANING

       poems

      Keith Flynn

       Red Hen Press | Pasadena, CA

       The Skin of Meaning

      Copyright © 2020 by Keith Flynn

      All Rights Reserved

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.

      Book layout by Wesley Griffith

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Flynn, Keith, author.

      Title: The skin of meaning / Keith Flynn.

      Description: First edition. | Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, [2020]

      Identifiers: LCCN 2019050350 (print) | LCCN 2019050351 (ebook) | ISBN 9781597098489 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781597098434 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

      Classification: LCC PS3556.L875 S55 2020 (print) | LCC PS3556.L875 (ebook) | DDC 811/.54—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050350

      LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050351

      The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Allergan Foundation, the Riordan Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

      First Edition

      Published by Red Hen Press

       www.redhen.org

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Many thanks to the editors of the following publications in which these poems first appeared:

      27 Views of Asheville (anthology), “Et in Arcadia Ego”; American Journal of Poetry, “Baby Boomers”; American Literary Review, “Caravaggio’s Carnal Gospel,” “The Agnostic”; Asheville Citizen-Times, “Coffin Not Included”; Best of the Fuquay-Varina Series (anthology), “A Girl Like That,” “This Rock is Gonna Roll”; Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight (anthology), “The Invisible Bridge”; Black Renaissance Noire, “Gaslight: Inauguration Day,” “Look For Me In Liberia,” “Louis and The Wolf,” “The House of Dance and Feathers” ; Bluestem, “The Bookmobile,” “Thoughts on Easter While Digging a Grave”; Cave Wall, “The Silver Surfer”; Cimarron Review, “Blue Mountain Panorama,” “Like A Buddha, Paul Motian Says,” “The Glory Façade” “The Mountain That Eats Men,” “Wall Street”; Colorado Review, “Le Papillon,” “The Exile,” “Writer’s Block”; Comstock Review, “Robert Johnson’s Milk Cow Blues,” “Snow is ghostly . . . ,” “The Hidden Life of Ants”; Confluence: Far From the Centers of Ambition (anthology), “The Kick of Infinity: Paradoxical Architecture”; Cutthroat: Truth to Power (anthology), “Democracy”; Ecotone, “The Force of Compassion”; Enchanted Voices Literary Review (India), “Nostalgia as Entropy”; Five Points, “Glenn Gould in Carnegie Hall, 1962,” “Like a Buddha, Paul Motian Says”; The Freeman, “The Searchers”; Hampden-Sydney Review, “Villon”; Hunger Mountain, “Stylish Violence”; Iodine Poetry Journal, “Prayer,” “The Skin of Meaning,” “World Boogie”; James Dickey Review, “Context,” “Dear Reader”; Minnesota Review, “Louis and the Wolf”; North Carolina Conversations, “The Exile”; Plume, “Putting,” “The Long Black Road,” “Tranquility & Tremolo,” “Salvador”; Poems and Plays, “Ceremony”; Poetry East, “Great Blue Heron”; Poetry in Plain Sight, “Great Blue Heron,” “Robert Johnson’s Milk Cow Blues,” “Snow is ghostly . . . ,” “Why Pluto Is No Longer a Planet”; Poets Respond to Race (anthology), “Look for Me in Liberia”; Portland Review, “Jack Spicer,” “Running with the Bulls”; Red Truck Review, “Broken into Light,” “Love Among Cannibals”; Shenandoah, “Portrait of the Artist as a Spark”; and Southern Poetry Anthology, “Nostalgia as Entropy,” “The Silver Surfer”.

       For Denise

       the bravest person I have ever known whose skin is my own

       CONTENTS

       ETYMOLOGIES

       The Skin of Meaning

       Why Pluto Is No Longer a Planet

       Et in Arcadia Ego

       The Force of Compassion

       The House of Dance and Feathers

       Prayer

       The Glory Façade

       The Exile

       The Bookmobile

       Retail

       Putting