Bob Heman
INFORMATION Four minutes into the plot there are already three murders, a kidnapping, and a game of Russian roulette. All of the boats have already left the harbour. In their place a man is signaling with a set of flags. He is only a clue when the story is told in French. ** INFORMATION If god is removed from the story the woman becomes more important. There is always light, but never an explanation. ** INFORMATION The extra person in the boat was not recognized. He resembled the flowers the waitresses had cast aside. Language had not found him yet so all he could do was rearrange the stones he found and hope they would be noticed. ** INFORMATION It is always raining, a cold heavy rain that soaks their clothes and crawls into their minds. It is always yesterday although in their minds it is always a day that has not yet arrived. Their vehicle is a zebra, or a machine that sputters and sparks. Their only excuse is the mountain. ** INFORMATION Has no interest in cars or football or firing guns. Has no interest in the price of salt or in the distance to Duluth. Has no interest in the machines they had to be taught how to use. Has no interest in opera or the way the dancers moved. Has no interest in the idea of meaning. ** INFORMATION The system requires that language be used carefully, that adverbs never be mistaken for adjectives, that the woman be described using only numbers and colors. Each time they enter the forest there is a different explanation that is never satisfactory. Meaning is something that can never be discovered no matter how deeply they dig. ** INFORMATION It begins in the restaurant or forest, in the ocean or tunnel, in the clouds that are never close enough. Each time a different word is used, or a different animal whose name is always incorrect. The time is always the same, and is indicated as such on the map. ** INFORMATION Wanting to devour her mouth with his own, but his own words never adequate to create that space. Instead he can only count the pauses and false starts and wonder how to begin again. ** Bob Heman writes very small poems. His words have been anthologized recently in Contemporary Tangential Surrealist Poetry: an anthology (SurVision Books), A Shape Produced by a Curve (great weather for MEDIA), Alcatraz (Life Before Man), Contemporary Surrealist and Magic Realist Poetry: An International Anthology (Lamar University Literary Press), Escape Wheel (great weather for MEDIA and A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry (MadHat Press). His art includes collages, ink drawings, and participatory cut-out multiples on paper. In the late 1970s he was an artist-in-residence at The Brooklyn Museum. |