The following section is re-produced from 36 Exposures, a new book collaboration between Hoagy Houghton and Dominic Jaeckle, published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe. To purchase a copy, go here.

Hoagy Houghton and Dominic Jaeckle

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June 2nd (Veronica Lake, River Phoenix & Walden Pond)
An extract from 36 Exposures

We peer over the brim of a generative contradiction
and consider the conditions of success/ Like Royal
Crown weathered by Coca-Cola the odds are stacked
against us

……Like Veronica Lake
……Walden Pond
……and River Phoenix

You are subtly making up
your hair in the storefront glass
the clean surface sits still like an estranged object
that could now run under your moniker
we’ll name the shop after you and
work out what we have left to sell

That’s me you say, catching your own eye in open palms,
but knowing full well that I’m looking straight at you
…..you pull
a face that looks more like mine

…..Every resource is pooled in here
…..we pick out some
…..groceries pick out some
…..wine

 

In the glass we’d play with the negative impress of our
better qualities and angels the way that I would relish
the expressionism of a bad TV set/ how, having regular
access to a bad colour model as a child/ I’d ember and
ocean its wonder/ educate my line of sight/

…..—football games on red earth with green faces/
and Rothko/ Motherwell/ and Kline/ and I imagine
the things other people would’ve purposed this
wooden table for before I’d given it some employ

……Turning the wood/ like a gross carpenter as we walk
……the block and dovetail silhouettes/ merging with
……some variety of tree—matter for matter

……A Post Oak/ Live Oak
……A Bur Oak or Shumard Red /

And I’d heard that seasonal growth should stretch out
the limbs for any distance from 3 to 24 or more inches,
so I stretch out my arm and imagine pulling ideas out
from beneath the following lines of your hand/ here and/
……here

Knowing you’ve a safe pair of palms/ we cut the difference between the right and left/ age lines and arcs/ this one looks to simply remake or reframe a tree/ to burn one down and build things from the things between the idea of a garden and its furniture/ this one is a kitchen/ and a perfect version of another country/ childlike/ and playing with our food/ and so perfect that it didn’t need be entertained as anything other than a good idea or a fog of memory/ like a well-oiled pen/ or a smoke aiming to be a version of a timekeeper/ and then/ just a pair of hands, again/ tools/ and nothing more/ and common prayer/ mouthing the shape of season/ in the hopes of a little change/ and drawing a line through/ to/ smaller coins/ and the absence of our commonality/ or a run of green arms/ waving wild/ and looking to a throw of birds/ or a near mirror/ as evidence of radical change/ of an hour animated with real and palpable ambitions/ just like this one

So, the candle burns
as though
we’re a sunset

……in person
……no song

and running with candle wax over three or four
blunt fingertips and
touching the table-top

Repeatedly signalling some things and again
and again, we withdraw others with an equal
earnestness

Tar and feather, you are a
grackle; reminding me of
someone else

 

…A TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIKE, or rattled like mustard seed/ or ghosts in sunlight/ we talk to the table we talk over/ and chew/ and I don’t know the tree these owe to/ but both of these tables owe to one of my two grandfathers/ so I’ve been told/ and there’s one I’ll work on for now/ and another for the longer days/ and we’ve moved the latter to its stable point in the garden so it can get dressed up like I’m keeping minutes/ and pictures of Germany/ and Texas in bloom/ but that owes to the other name/ and so I think of other countries when I sit either here or there/ and there or here/ and I remember the game that we used to play when I was young/ making believe we were both children/ and we’d speak at length to one another’s shadow/ as we’d walk the length of road from there to here/ here to there/ and then try and recall what our shadows had given their time and talking to/ there to here/ walking back/ the being and doing/ and ambition and veuve/ and the memory of it is a fucking zoo/ and you’re pulling impressions of animals/ which were and are unusually convincing/ all hyena and horse/ and the ways in which my mother still runs with a conviction that/ lying down in an occasional field of enquiry/ she can and could talk to livestock/ in long noises/ both moving them and being moved/ and that was always credible/ knowing that all noises are disputable/ and to speak is ever to engineer the promise of a sustainable silence/ a kind of a death/ but the animals had a credulity that they’d carry/ and her conviction probably came from you/ and I think of that as I sit here/ shadow reading/ a pedagogical technique in which learners shadow their interlocutors/ that is/ repeat what others say/ either completely/ or selectively/ or engage/ in conversational interaction that, in the main, tries concern itself with the ‘what’ of what is being said/ where language learners try to ‘speak along’/ in common claims/ and sing/ and imitate the sounds they hear rather than trying to understand what is being said/ as we count the page numbers/ varieties of herbivore and cow/ four hundred and twenty six/ or seven/ eleven/ or sixty two/ first out loud and then in a lower tone/ and finally/ silently/ and together/ (and of sound mind)/ we move/ opportunistic/ like a quick disease ever asking/ Where are my zones of proximal development?/ Where do you want to live?/ and as mutually constructed by two/ an insurmountable/ extent of meaning/ run by two/ readers at work/ shadows in play/ two palms that what talk to each other/ and while they deploy a text through multiple repetitions/ summaries/ retellings and a collaborative tête-à-tête/ designating another idea to repeat/ to each other/ and read along/ in both immediate and delayed conditions/ like a ride along without consequence/ chasing simply/ a decent view of a city at night/ the city at night/ and they are marking the text for stress/ and they listen/ for emphasis/ or spotlights/ god lights/ goodnights/ for each other/ and making good on love/ testifying to it in thicker syllables/ it’s a belly feeling rather than a belief system/ and they have to start and finish at the same time/ and aim to grow fat/ together/ and this works well after some exposure to the rules of pronunciation/ connected speech and intonation/ and waging/ profiteering/ on occasion/ but I was spending money I didn’t have/ and the mineral properties of the family were shifting/ just like they did when my grandfather was a quarry/ and my father, flat water/ my mother would fight objects and materials in land/ whilst my brother would comb his hair/ and my sister comb the beach/ my grandmothers were minarets/ not symmetrical but calling people/ often and giving names to things/ and I felt like a mine/ no diamonds/ and it’s Sunday/ like its six kissing cousins decided it should be/ and this is where we are/ talking/ here/ under bad constellations/ and there is wax all over this book/ an index full of all of our distractions/ leafing the floor/ and pacing the bar/ we turn our attention again to awful things/ Hide in aurora/ in vapor and smoke/ And if things needed be looked at another way/ participation was the only word I wanted to think about/ The romance of it/ the burr of a temporary partnership/ a conversation rather than a marriage of convenience/ and a want to look at my table differently/ and I knew that every ‘I’ would contradict all of that/ but I was nothing but a contraction of that ‘we’ at any rate/ A contradiction in part/ The small wonders of the word/ reversed in a mirror/ and we’ll all talk a lot in June/ A lot of what we talk about is important/ an assortment of flags/ Some of it triggers a little reflection on a future or two/ being here in another decade/ or so or not/ and wherever else/ And the month begins/ and it ties itself to things/ in fits and starts/ and we feel like we could wrap ourselves in something again/ unflagged/ That/ or at least carry on for a little longer/ I’ll stick with bedsheets again as a favourite symbol for a time/ A quilt/ or a blanket of feeling/ A collage of fabrics tethered into a little landscape/ A still life/ for a little longer/ and mountains and plains and things/ And we’re fighting/ or else need fight for something/ as throws of birds bind the squares of the quilt into some make-believe concord/ or something sound as a song/ an eagle/ abyssal/ driving the noise of a sedan/ or a Detroit/ and we’re painting little pictures on the sides of things and naming them after moments of empathy/ feeling/ And as the colours start running a little/ it’s a picture of a child in an enormous zoo/ they’re running, running, running, running, running/ a sprint of aurora/ and of smoke, again/ or the spray of a wave/ and en route to an erstwhile dinner/ of ramen/ and cheap wine/ cruising for simile 

………

 

…RAISING A GLASS

And my memories of water are multiple/ and I enjoyed
thinking through the significance of water as some kind
of model or metaphor for a consideration of the various
weaknesses of my research/ It was better than any
kind of bellwether/ any impetus to work for money or
meaning/ to pass the hand slowly below the waterline/
a palm’s breadth below the surface/ and push against
its gentle pressure/ It’d push back/ Always/ and reliably
and solidly/ it’d always had a little ambition, the water/
the weight of all of this water against the back of my
right hand/ Émile Durkheim suggests that when people
spoke of a force external to themselves which that they
are powerless to control their subject was scarcely God
but social organisation/ but something else was turning
something else on/ at the waterline/ working with that
push only to turn it off again/ and this canal feels like a
kettle hole lake/ a great depression in an outwash plain/
formed by retreating glaciers or draining floodwaters/
but if felt good that the water was trying to stage its
own little something/ to try on a paradigm with you

……And we’re homing in on our demand for an evening’s
……calmer qualities which are always like a sandscape

……Even-ing
……and almost-ing

A desert        filtered through painted brushes
……and
moved around by a minor wind
……in negative relief
turning your face again away
from the storefront/

We pick up the wine/
we
leave