POEM UPON VIEWING THE 1920S AND 30S IN A SLIDESHOW ON FLICKR

First, they were black & white, with

a certain unwashable dustiness

to them. If you look in books, they

are dead in books,

etched or sewn, posed so the slightest movement

uncaptured wasn't nostalgic. (Alive,

as there is life outside

of them). In decades

they are seconds. Women are still

wearing clothes, everyone is jacketcoating

along some block or another while

there is a war somewhere. The kids

are reading the scene in which

Alice and the Mad Hatter and the March Hare

and the Dormouse have gathered

for tea. Still, the whistle of everything is

the cackle of sparks from

neon in alleyways, the squeak of heels

and fluffing-dresses.

What I don’t understand is this:

Who is the “Lost Generation?” On flickr

there is a slideshow with an “American Music”

to it, the flipping of slides like the

sighs of a saxophone in all these moments,

now in color. You can spot Nick and Jordan in them.

Gatsby and Daisy in the yellow rolls-royce killing Myrtle

is imposed on every image, every photograph.

Now the Library of Congress, who organized

the presentation, is reviving them. Everyone “cool”

is dressing like them. They are turning the

pages of their own books, and someone will

have to take pictures of the old photographs looking

at their young selves again. Perhaps this is what is “Lost”

in them: the numb freeze after

a shutter-click, the warm faces

that burst forth from darkness.

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POEM BECAUSE ITALIAN TYPOGRAPHY

"So many convolutions and not enough simplicity!" -Kenneth Koch

In Italy I wasn't sure how to put words in quotations, called guillements, looking

like internet lane-changers and arbitrarily placed near the "6" button. How the "Word Wide" Web is truly

                man's greatest metaphor!

Often times, I wish I could write, become a punctuation and let ripple the sound of

words, thoughts, images (concrete/not) - and I remember, I say: Josh, some countries are

commas, Greenland, for example. For example Greenland is much more than a giant

white pun made by the Vikings who discovered it. And Malawi is fun to say but much less fun

to be in. And some would even say the dust has finally settled on Jerusalem (though they are wrong). I had

                to ask the clerk,

who charged me boatloads of euros to sit and stare at a screen, how to work this mismatched

keyboard. What are they doing in Italy? First it was sparkled water, I thought only grandparents drank that,

and now this! I've had enough. My 2€ an hour is not worth your guillements, stranglers of

a punctuation mark that they are. I can no longer buy books in an international store for fear of their

                stabbing emphasis on

speech. In Hebrew quotations marks and punctuation don't exist much and the reader is

left to make the proper pauses. That seems right and fine to me. Pretty soon I will walk into

Starbucks, so awfully Italian with grandés and ventis, and find that they are using guillements. I will say

                something in a low voice, and buy my coffee,

and give culture a bad look, and walk away.