No Frills

Friendship Week Continues With Lewis Dimmick's Poetry

Dear Republic,

When commenting on Courtney Sender’s piece “A Pox on The Foul and Pestilent Gatekeepers,” I mentioned that Lewis Dimmick is my favorite living poet, yet his poems have never seen the light of day. That changes today, thanks to Sam Kahn suggesting that readers of The Republic of Letters submit for a friend.

"No frills." Lewis allowed me to use those two words to title this set of poems. No higher compliment, in my opinion, than to be called a no-frills poet. No-frills poetry is the hardest kind to write, because it leaves nothing to hide behind.

-John Julius Reel

NO FRILLS

Twelve Poems by Lewis Dimmick

“I Would Call Out”

I would call out for my mother to bring me a glass of water. It was dark in the night and quiet, and I lay awake and my father had died. The dark in that room, what couldn’t it contain? The small sparks of my ideas, all my serious thoughts, sank into it like fireflies. I could get the water myself, she called back in the dark. But I wanted her to get it for me. I would feel her move past my room and into the kitchen. When the water came on I listened to it take the shape of the glass. Then my mother stood over me and I drank.

***

“There Were Nights”

There were nights I slept in my mother’s bed. She, my sister and I might have watched a scary movie. That was my excuse, though I was never scared. I had already imagined my own death, had swallowed the pill of mortal terror. Absurd fictions did not move me. In my mother’s bed I could not sleep. She woke here and there to tell me, “Be still.” I could not. I would hear the dog whimpering in her dreams. Soft lights on a black sea. I rose and swam through the dark to save her. Our whole world was asleep. All the things in all the rooms. The rooms, also, sleeping. The dark itself was bathed in sleep.

***

“The End of Summer”

My sister was ten when my father passed. It was the end of summer. When school came back she refused to go, scared my mother would vanish. My mother took her for counseling. I would sit in a separate room during the sessions. There was a small blackboard and some toys on the floor. I sat quietly. For a while I ceased to exist. Then the counselor summoned me to a meeting, where I responded with silence to all her questions. At home, to answer my mother’s astonishment, I replied, “You told me never to talk to strangers,” and I probably meant it, though I like to think I was cunning. What did I know? What did I feel at five years old? Was mine the most astonished soul in our house at night? One learns to steel oneself against the dark, that deep, permanent ink. When the lights went out, was I composing these words?

***

“I Could Disappear”

Early in my life I fell in love with words. With enormous interest I read signs in elevators, prompting my Aunt Roz to exclaim, “Look how he loves to read! He’s going to be rich someday!” Never that. I could play in between the letters, climb on top and slide back down. I could disappear into words. I make myself out of words. It’s like picking stones from the shoreline, arranging them into a spell. If the spell works, the earth breaks open. Or the earth becomes small and still.

***

“The Barbershop”

I walked past the barbershop on my way home from school. If my mother was standing on McClean Avenue when I turned the corner, I knew it was time for a haircut. The barber would spray my hair with a water bottle to get me ready. Then he combed the hair back. I must have looked different, a more comical version of myself, because my classmates laughed and called my name as they streamed past the door. This troubled me, the idea that at any moment I could become something different. It was like the sky, how it could be on fire, and then the fire went out and vanished under the earth. When the job was done the barber gave me a comb. The dentist was running the same scam, but with him it was a lollipop. They gave you something in exchange for what they had taken away. Then they set you back in the world, where it was your job to pretend to be free.

***

“Food Shopping With My Mother”

There I became fluent in the language of no frills. No frills tuna. No frills peanut butter. No frills mayonnaise. The white label adorned only with the blue and red stripe. All the goodness inside. You see, I had tried Skippy and tried Jif, with their jazzy labels, full of pep. No frills peanut butter was creamier and more delicious. It was, as Philip Larkin wrote, “useful to get that learnt.” I would like to make a no frills poetry, not foolishly decorated but sure as stone. The straight skinny. The nitty gritty.

***

“Rebel Fruit”

My favorite thing about food shopping with my mother was watching her steal. We started at the far end of the supermarket, the fruit and vegetable aisle. She selected a peach or plum and ate it as we walked, mouthing each bite with a deep kiss so no juice would spill. I knew she had no intention of paying, and this thrilled me. It was as if she was toying with the idea of a world where she could have whatever she wanted simply by taking it into her hands. She was right to take something back, given all she had had stolen away. She moved down the rows as though savoring each step, rebel fruit in plain view, juice lighting her fingertips.

***

“Cockroaches”

My mother brutalized them in my youth. She would charge one on the wall and mash it with her palm into crunchy jam. While killing them she cursed them, which I loved. Kind and knowing, enduring, pure. What a woman! I once heard her declare, “I’m so angry I could spit,” as though spitting was the worst offense she could dream up. That kind of woman, shot through with light. But around cockroaches she let the profanity rip. God DAMMIT! Son of a BITCH! Then she left them oozing on the wall.

***

“My Motorcycle Jacket”

Reaching into my pocket for a pen, or opening a notebook and writing a few words on the page, became acts of luxury and consequence in the arms of my motorcycle jacket. The sweet and tough odor of its body left me drunk. The first time I wore it to school, a pretty girl from the neighborhood sat next to me on the bus and fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. The leather crunched. My mother bought my motorcycle jacket at a flea market, but flea market doesn’t sound good enough. My mother bought my motorcycle jacket at the gates of Hell and paid with the souls of the weak and untrue. She sacrificed nearly a week’s pay. We found it at a back stall. It hung high. It shone. It was carried down on a gleaming hook, or did it simply descend?

***

“She Was a Woman"

There were times my mother was taking a bath and I asked a question from outside the door. She would call me in to hear me better. She didn’t seem to mind that she was naked, and it’s true I was only a child. The room was drenched in peace, stillness. Under the surface of the water I saw her nipples and dark hair. Every bit of her was my mother. That I knew for sure. And I knew she was more than what she seemed. I knew what life had done to her, how death had pricked its needles in her heart. She was a woman. She was calm water, the answer to it all, in spite of everything the world had done.

***

“Candle for My Father”

Once a year, I encountered in the kitchen of our apartment a burning candle, a remembrance of my father on Yom Kippur. The candle always took me by surprise—little light standing up against the dark, to mourn the soul of man. The whipping sounds in the glass were of a dancing woman’s dress. The flame moved to secret music. I studied its shadow on the wall. The following night the candle would be gone, the kitchen no longer magic. But the following year my father would return, to spend the night and morning burning.

***

“The Poet Had Written”

The poet had written many poems and finally some were good. A dull glow rose from them. The poet understood this was all he should expect. You never really got it. What was it, anyway? Standing on the shoreline, watching light rise over the horizon, brought the teasing idea of something more. The poet knew there was nothing more. Only to savor the cold air, the smoke of his breath, his private thought.

Lewis Dimmick

’s first book, This Music: Pieces on Heavy Metal, Punk Rock, and Hardcore Punk, was published by Wardance Records. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, Decibel, Vice, Noisey, The Big Takeover, and Headstuff, among others.