Alligator Image/Internal Nature

Images/Poems/Sounds by Janan Platt | Music by David Platt

[ Title | We're Still Here | Ysatis in Spring | Lost in SF | Cheese Crackers ]
[ The Communal Graves | Air & Metal | Imagine ]



AlligatorsAlligators
"Everything is speaking or singing. We're still here."
(from Magpiety, by Philip Levine)


piano

tick

TV

doorbell

guitar

keyboard

Casio

rain

telephone

vacuum

flush

doorslam


[ Title | We're Still Here | Ysatis in Spring | Lost in SF | Cheese Crackers ]
[ The Communal Graves | Air & Metal | Imagine ]


TS | AU

Ysatis in Spring

This week before Mother's Day, Macy's pushes Kenzo d'ete,
Amarige, Ysatis. Cut grasses scent the air.

We take the narrow road, Los Alamos to Eagle Rock,
just above the smog to Corey's party and pony rides.
A shark piñata swings from the maple and
parking's on the lawn below the house.
Red chickens and spotted dogs pace next to a jeweled
retaining wall made of bottles. The champagne row
is Eric's brother's wedding. Clear, emerald, amber.
Bottles filled with dirt, pebbles, or ocean air.

Daniel runs to a mystery ruin of rusting Plymouths
and Mercedes. L'Aventure Ultime. Escapade Romantique.


[ Title | We're Still Here | Ysatis in Spring | Lost in SF | Cheese Crackers ]
[ The Communal Graves | Air & Metal | Imagine ]

Lost in SF

Sometimes she wonders if movie titles
are societal forecasts, the eight theater
marquee a partial text. Why is everyone
so impersonal? She derives the collective
movie maker's symbiotic nature. Pays no
attention to the actual movie content,
just the huge three-dimensional words--
a competitive paragraph that changes
according to box office. Should she
quit the teaching job? Reads the words
like a horoscope, as she sits in the dawn
jam with her coffee, the radio reporting
about how the road looks from above.


[ Title | We're Still Here | Ysatis in Spring | Lost in SF | Cheese Crackers ]
[ The Communal Graves | Air & Metal | Imagine ]

I never ate in my dreams until I realized this. The next time, I was eating cupcakes. Most recently, it was cheese crackers, though I haven't really eaten them in years.

[cheez img]

First electronic rights, THOTH, 1996


[ Title | We're Still Here | Ysatis in Spring | Lost in SF | Cheese Crackers ]
[ The Communal Graves | Air & Metal | Imagine ]

More Gators

About the Communal Graves of Potters Field, New York
A Found Poem

- Excerpts taken from a New Yorker article, July 19, 1993 -

Usually they're not even lost.
Could be a man meets a woman
and leaves his wife.

Maybe one out of ten turns up dead.
You know, a body found
in a plastic bag in a lot.
A charred hand clasping a gun.

What's strange and what's not,
it's a matter of perspective.

Twelve years.

When there are no fingerprints and no face,
that's where I come in.
The next thing is, is it human?

Usually I have the mortuary assistant
handle that. Then I try to determine sex,
age, race, stature.

Pathology and anomalies --
A writer -- the hand and right-arm bones
would be longer, and there would be
pronounced muscle markings.

Personal identification is last.
There are cases where, much as I hate
to say it, I don't even try.

More Gators

[ Title | We're Still Here | Ysatis in Spring | Lost in SF | Cheese Crackers ]
[ The Communal Graves | Air & Metal | Imagine ]

bottlesbottles

Air & Metal

When it's three here, you're eating
cornflakes back east. Cornflakes
getting soggy while I can't

sleep. Crickets chorus. Jets come
and go like sliding doors,
the rubbing sound of air

and metal. TV mimes the effect,
yet it's not necessary. We could be
sharing something simple like the stars.

First electronic rights, THOTH, 1996


[ Title | We're Still Here | Ysatis in Spring | Lost in SF | Cheese Crackers ]
[ The Communal Graves | Air & Metal | Imagine ]

Imagine

When my sister turned twelve,
she had a Safeway sheetcake with

Crisco-white frosting, Fab Four
heads moulded in sparkling sugar,

surrealistic air-brushed guitars
and quarter notes. Notes,

not music, nonessential script,
elegant as words, sweet and true.

When Imagine came out,
my sister was driving. We stayed

in the car and listened in silence
until his mystical sounds wore off.

Dreamers of John - New York John
and us the California girls.


Copyright © 1997
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