Slow Dancing Through Time

Or, Wild Poet, Talking Nerdy

Summer Night, Winslow Homer

I came across Matthew Dickman’s poetry by accident, the way it often happens surfing the internet. Suddenly, there it was, a video of Dickman reading “Slow Dance” at the San Francisco Zen Center.

And I was blown away.

Now, Dickman’s poetry isn’t Zen, or even spiritual. It’s earthy, sometimes crass, lightly humorous. Hip, you might say, in the way the beat poets were, so clued into the “street life” of their age, with such insight and understanding, they could be said to speak for that generation.

So I think is Dickman’s poetry, though since I’m not from that generation, I may be wrong.

For me, there’s something so poignant and unexpected, tender and heartbreaking about these poems, his voice, his particular perspective on the world. In some ways, his poetry reminds me of George Saunders short stories, the way they meander in comic and surprising ways and then go soft and deep and true in the end

In this way, it may be Zen-like, after all. In that his blunt, sometimes unbeautiful images strike you as an unexpected blow, like that “thwack” from the Master’s stick on the student’s head, that makes you wake up and “see,” but you’re not sure yet what you’re seeing, only that this quick-silver clarity is already fading, while something solid and meaty seeps unawares into your bones and shores them up.

Listen to Dickman reading his poem “Slow Dance”, or read the poem “V” printed below the video. See if it happens to you. Tell me if it does or doesn’t do what I say. I really want to know. People either love his work or hate it, I’ve heard, so either way I’m open.

Matthew Dickman reads his poem “Slow Dance” at Narrative Night 2008 in Seattle, Washington.

V

By Matthew Dickman

The skinny girl walking arm-in-arm

with her little sister

is wearing a shirt that says

TALK NERDY TO ME

and I want to,

I want to put my bag of groceries down

beside the fire hydrant

and whisper something in her ear about long division.

I want to stand behind her and run

a single finger down her spine

while she tells me about all her correlatives.

Maybe she’ll moan a little

when I tell her that x equals negative-b

plus or minus the square root

of b-squared minus 4(a)(c) all over

2a. I have my hopes.

I could show her my comic books

and Play Station. We could pull out

my old D&D cards

and sit in the basement with a candle lit.

I know enough about Dr. Who

and the Star Fleet Enterprise

to get her shirt off, to unbutton her jeans.

We could work out String Theory

all over her bedroom.

We could bend space together.

But maybe that’s not what she’s asking.

The world’s been talking dirty

ever since she’s had the ears to listen.

It’s been talking sleazy to all of us

and there’s nothing about the hydrogen bomb

that makes me want to wear a cock ring

or do it in the kitchen while a pot of water boils.

Maybe, with her shoulders slouched

the way they are and her long hair

covering so much of her face,

she’s asking, simply, to be considered

something more than a wild night, a tight

curl of pubic hair, the pink,

complicated, structures of nipples.

Maybe she wants to be measured beyond

the teaspoon shadow of the anus

and the sweet mollusk of the tongue,

beyond the equation of limbs and seen

as a complete absolute.

And maybe this is not a giant leap

into the science of compassion, but it’s something.

So when I pass her

I do exactly what she has asked of me,

I raise my right hand and make a V

the way Vulcans do when they wish someone well,

hoping she gets what she wants, even

if it has to be in a galaxy far away.