The Solicitous Sirens of Self-Help / Dunder Hill

Bean Newton

Issue 31 * Fall 2012

According to his (wretchedly) salsa-stained notes, Bean Newton began this poem as an ostensible reaction to/against Dylan Thomas' “Fern Hill,” but became distracted by a self-help book his therapist made him read. The title of the book is lost to time, but Newton's disgust with it has survived through this work. -- E.W. Wilder

Dunder Hill

If you can believe it, you can
put it under your mattress, or
swallow it whole, horrifying
the ladies down at the Slop 'n' Shop
with its writhing aliveness. You can
drop its panties and smack its ass
while tutoring on the edge
of a press-release, or whip
chains with it, murder
done in black alley free-
form-alls and tipping
glibly over oozing ounces
of penis-glue. If you can
believe it, I have dropsy
to sell you, pricked in
formaldehyde, natured-up
in own very God factory,
denied lean-iency and chuffed
about the bread and soldiers. If you can
believe it, you can curse
its mothers and serve
its puerile bureaucratic
prerogatives. If you can satirize
its mega-low-down pricing
and rock-bottom. If you can
believe it, you can sell its
assets into floozidom and re-range
its autonomic structures beneath
blue-light satisfaction; the upper
classes crow to you. If you can
believe it, you can wipe its snot-
nozed relevancy as po-mo arbiter
of loose truth as heart as now,
the last and the latent in emphathy,
bombed-in from satellite-ville
and tickled-fancy pickle-trances
on the video-nomic hi-lite reel:
run that play again, Steve,
if you can believe, then
I will too, and we'll chive
in our jives,
by the see.