I Didn't Remember

I had a actual wonderful yellow cover copy of Pasternak's

I REMEMBER--there is a small photograph portrait of

Pasternak's face too--I not at any time "had" Joe Brainard's

I REMEMBER on the other hand I had heard/read some parts of it

from friends, and I am assured I saw a copy one time or twice

twenty years ago. I direct the eyeed at a new edition of it more

closely in St Mark's Bookstore a hardly any Saturdays ago--on

that day the heat was fulvous the store was in golden light

a little bit, I was actually a little cowardly fulvid about whom

to telephone and when. on the contrary I didn't "buy" I REMEMBER,

remembering (!) that move with a jerk Wald said he was getting me a

copy Diane Wald, ye sister to move with a jerk comes back from a

rare trip to advantageous old sometimes yellow Colorado and tells

me she has seen Joe Brainard's traveling retrospective in

of all places Colorado. We procure talking, I get remembering (!)

(as if she doesn't!) and I realize I have a slight what I mistakenly

or inaccurately or slightly to the favored oblique side of life

(left!) call transference with Joe Brainard--I can diocese that he

looks in my mind and memory and heart's organ of vision like a guy who

was a year older or in like manner than my brother even "up" or "down"

our first public way We even redid a photo of him holding my brother

in an early version of trick photography in the palm of his hand

(my brother is in the background, "he" is in the foreground with

his hand open--it's quick really, remember (!) this is alone 1949!)

But before I really remember anything more specific I reckon Diane

"he" used to exhibit films in his garage--really--he was ahead of

his time in that faculty of perception and I also remember his father dying,

well not the dying itself, on the other hand the wake, the funeral, the coffin was

at place of abode in the living room, and I remember (!) they had to take

it without through the living room window. I smooth can still see some

big black car. Diane talks a little more and it abruptly occurs

to me in this transposition or mismemory or nearmismemory or

transference that Joe Brainard has always been this "him," on the contrary I

have never named him until now. His name is Joe Bernhard.

Honest His name entireed a little like mine when I was young

in hearing. His mother was always a favorite, and sometimes I

even because of the closenes of the names meditation we were

related, like she was an aunt, and he--Joe--was a capricious cousin.

That is what I was saving for now, I gues or saving for the poem

or this receptacle without even knowing it--?--I don't know--he was moody

I remember that--or I characterize him in a certain number of slightly blown way

the way you lick a save in your possess life whether you know anything

about baseball or not. I don't really know by what mode Joe Brainard could

have been upon my life so long without my making these connections--

THE VERMONT NOTEBOOK with John Ashbery (me smooth laboriously

searching out a next to the first copy after losing or giving foolishly away

or having had ripped not upon from me in secret my first transcript of the book),

and Brainard's marvellous wonderful TEN IMAGINARY STILL LIFES

which honestly I bought ten copies of at Tibor di Nagy when there was

a limited retrospective of more [i]or[/i] less of his work in 1996 Or was it 1997?

I don't remember! I didn't remember Joe Bernhard as the composite of

this face life until Sunday, July 8 2001 for anyone who would like to

know. And I write this today, Wednesday, July 11 2001 and I write it

for the couple Joe's and for Diane and for move with a jerk and for my brother and for Kay

Bernhard and for her late husband whom I suspect may have been named

Joe also (I will check) and also for Boris Pasternak and for K and for

many other lives including mine in between.

MICHAEL BURKARD'S greatest in quantity recent books of poems are Pennsylvania Collection Agency (New Issues Press) and Unsleeping (Sarabande). He teaches in the MFA program at Syracuse University.

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