friday refrains · brian diamond
Friday 25 April 2008 | 3 cookies in the jar
The Un is especially pleased this week to present a poem by her colleague Mr. Brian Diamond (whom she calls, affectionately, “Briamond,” but faithless readers need not follow suit because it is kind of silly).
And who is this Briamond character? He himself kindly provided the following boilerplate bio: “A native of California, Brian studied at the University of Oregon and received his MA from Cal State Northridge. He enjoys gummy bears and light rail construction. His greatest accomplishment to date is winning the New Yorker cartoon contest.”
Well. What could a lowly editor possibly add to that? Only that Brian is gently ruthless in workshop, a wise reader and a thoughtful reviser, and unremittingly hilarious. (The two Brians—pictured below; Lee on right, Diamond on left—are probably largely responsible for getting me through teacher training in one mostly-sane piece, due to their capers, cutups and sly sarcastic untermütters.) He’s also one of the few State School colleagues writing poems I want to keep and read over and over again.
Here, then, is one of them; Briamond performed this a couple of weeks ago at a reading and I immediately demanded a copy to post. He politely obliged but when the NYer wants to pay him $300 for it, of course, he should pretend it never saw print anywhere and I’ll delete this post tout suite.
SENSE
It takes 4¢ to make a penny
A man in Calcutta got rich this way, melting down
currency and selling it for scrap
Your share of the national debt is over $77,000, most
of which you owe to yourself
The square root of a large number is also a large number
I don’t believe in math, I believe in miracles
says the politician who is mathematically eliminated
To be mathematically eliminated is, in fact,
a kind of miracle
Cancer kills more people than cars and cars
kill more people than war
So cars are the medium between cancer and war
The president declares war on integers, then chides
a blind man for his sunglasses
If you go blind, you may learn to see with your tongue
Smell precedes sight and dies first
Smell I could do without, says the war-torn village
A dead ovary is a black raisin to the touch
There are only three bones in the human ear,
the most delicate in all your body
Four out of five doctors makes a B-
99.9% of all species are extinct
(Brian Diamond)
3 cookies in the jar
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hey un,
can i ask you a wordpress question? have you updated to 2.5.1.? and if so, how do you not lose all the changes you have made to your stylesheet, etc.?
many thanks,
a.r.w.
Who is this fine young poet, and how can I learn more about him? I like the cut of his jib.
one out of one brew-hos likey some Briamond words.