A Ten Thousand Dollar Bill by Sandy McIntosh

                 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

A woman asked if I could change

A ten thousand dollar bill.

I told her, “Nobody can change

a ten thousand dollar bills.”

But I opened my wallet anyway

and found that I had ten

one thousand dollar bills.

“It’s your lucky day!” I told her.

“Here’s your change.”

She gave me a wink

and a big smile.

Later that day

Another woman asked me for change

of a ten thousand dollar bill.

I told her, “Nobody can change

a ten thousand dollar bills.”

“But I just saw you change one this morning,” she argued.

“Won’t you open your wallet again and look?”

So, I opened my wallet,

And yes, there was change

for a ten thousand dollar bill.

“It’s your lucky day!” I told her.

“Here’s your change.”

However, counting it out

I noticed that the first ten thousand dollar bill

wasn’t in my wallet. I’d never taken it

from first woman!

I ran back to the first woman,

who was still smiling and winking.

“I’ve spent it all”

in answer to my question.

And now tears filled her eyes.

I felt sorry for her.

And opened my wallet

To give her the second

Ten thousand bill in my wallet!

I ran back to where the second woman stood.

“I’ve spent it all”, she told me

tears filling her eyes.

I patted her hand.

All I could do was stand there

holding her hand.

Eventually, I found

comfort for my self:

Even if I’d had

the ten thousand dollar bill,

it wouldn’t have done me any good,

because nobody can change

a ten thousand dollar bill.

                                         from Forty-Nine Guaranteed ways to Escape Death
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Copyright ⓒ2007 by Sandy mcIntosh

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At the Funeral Home Bar by Sandy McIntosh

This funeral home is impressive, shiny new, vast as a

convention hall, coffins and mourners everywhere

 crowding the horizon. Over there, the dancing

Hassidim; yonder, the phlegmatic Peloponnesians.

 Every religion, every class is accommodated. But I’m

here on business. I roll my mother’s wheelchair toward

a couple of idle morticians. “Could you watch her for a

moment?” I ask. “I’ve got to meet someone at the bar.”

“Certainly,” they answer. I can tell they’re about to give me

that creepy mortician smile that says: You don’t know

what we know about what happens next. However,

I don’t have time to humor them. I’ve got business at the

funeral home bar—

— which turns out to be a lovely place, warmly lit and

crowded with genuine, friendly folk. No rude barroom

jocularity here. Indeed, they make quiet, respectful

jokes. Occasionally one will place a comforting hand on

another’s shoulder.

I’ve come here to meet my friend, but time passes and

she never shows up. “Your friend is late? Get it? She’s

your late friend?” says the gentleman next to me. I laugh

politely. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Sooner or later she’ll

show up. They always do.”

But she doesn’t, so I decide to head home. Once off

the barstool and onto the floor, I realize that everyone

here is extremely tall. Even I seem to be taller than

when I came in. “Mourning will do that to you,” says

the gentleman next to me. “Sadness does it. Let me

show you,” and he makes a sweeping gesture with his

hand. The scene is transformed. We’re no longer affable

people at a funeral home bar but tall pine trees in a

forest. It is winter. The air is clear, cold. And though we

stand together, each of us is somber and alone.


                                                                                                                    　---from Forty-Nine Guaranteed Ways to Escape Death
                                                                                          Copy Rightⓒ2007 by Sandy McIntosh

                   Inside the Regent Theatre Milk Bar, Brisbane, ca. 1936 / State Library of Queensland, Australia

About Sandy McIntosh
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How the Work Gets Done by Sandy McIntosh

I challenge my dream: “Show me the Equator. I’ve never 

see the Equator.”And I’m there, registering at a hotel 

on some tropical island in the middle of the ocean. I 

look around expecting the exotic but everything looks 

depressingly ordinary, as if this were some grubby 

convenience store in Canarsie. “Show me things I’ve 

never seen”, I command my dream. I’m imagining 

succulent equatorial flowers, blossoms billowing like 

parachutes, and juicy fuchsia-hued fruits big 

as boulders.

The scene changes, but instead of embroidered nature, 

I find myself in the hotel’s unremarkable cocktail 

lounge. Some guests have dressed formally. Others are 

naked. We’re just a bunch of people sipping our drinks, 

probably waiting for dinner. We attempt conversation, 

but it goes nowhere. “This is nothing!” I scold my 

dream. “Show me the horrors, the spectacular horrors 

of the Equator!” I’m imagining spiders towering like 

skyscrapers on stick legs, and malevolent vampire

 insects numerous and unremitting.

Nothing outwardly changes, although, one by one, 

I begin to recognize my fellow guests. In fact, I 

realize that I know every one of them and I wouldn’t 

I voluntarily spend in their company! I notice, 

too, that every one now is looking around the room and

recognizing everyone else. From their gloom I surmise 

that every body has discovered universal, mutual heated.

Can it be that, compelled by the rules of civility,we 

must spend our short, once in a life-time equatorial

vacations in this Sartrean hellhole in intimate contact

with those who revolt us?

But then it dawns on me: “Thank you,” I tell my dream.

“For this true horror of Equator!”  

                                                                     
about Sandy McIntosh
                                                                    from FORTY-NINE GUARANTEED WAYS TO ESCAPE DEATH

banana trees / minds-eye

Copyright ⓒ2007 by Sandy McIntosh

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The Shop Across the Street by SANDY McINTOSH

First it was a shoe shop.

      The shoemaker so poor,

He slept on the floor

      and resoled customer’s shoes

with cardboard.

*

When it was a clothing store

     The young owner

decorated her window

     with grace and invention,

one spring hanging a sign

     “Just Married!”

and posing manikins

       as bride and groom

holding pictures

       of her own wedding.

Another spring

       her sign read:

“It’s a boy!”and she dressed

       Her manikins

in blue

      surrounding them

with toys.

     For Halloween,

She costumed the manikins

     with sinister masks.

But in December,

     when she dressed them

in Christmas finery,

     she neglected to remove

the sinister masks—

      which troubled us

as we ate our breakfast

      and watched

from the café′across the street.

      Later, she hung a sign:

“Divorced. Closing Store .”

      She’d stripped the window

and abandoned the manikins

      to their nakedness.

Under the stark

      neon streetlamp

they glared at us:

      Arctic snow.

*

Now the shop

      Is run by a man

selling buttons.

      He has swiveling reptilian eyes

And dresses formally,

      a lengthy metal chain

from a window curtain

      as a watch fob

on his polka-dotted vest.

              ---for Peter Blair
                                                                                                          from FORTY-NINE GURANTEED WAYS to ESCAPE DEATH

Copyright ⓒ2007 by Sandy McIntosh
Venetia's Coffee Shop, Lower Clapton, E5 / Ewan-M

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A Snowball by Sandy McIntosh

             

                 Ginsberg threw a snowball
                 at Frank O'Hara's coffin
                 at the bottom of the grave.

                 "Damn,"he whispered. 
                 "Damn,damn."

                  *
                 "A lovely, sentimental story," Ginsberg told me.
                 "But not true. Frank died in July. Not much snow.
                  Who told you this?"

                 "Armand Schwerner, I think."

                 "Well, Schwerner wasn't there."

                  *
                 In time,
                 I imagine Ginsberg grave.

                 Nothing sentimental about it:
                 It's a warm day, early April,

                 the grave is opened,

                 a snowball 
                 balanced

                 on its edge.

                                                                  from FORTY-NINE GUARANTEED WAYS TO ESCAPE DEATH
                            
　日本語で読む　 　Copyright ⓒ2007 by Sandy McIntosh/  photo by St Marks Poet Memorials / B.D.'s world

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●A newly written essay ”A Lecture From the Bartender at Grand Hotel, Oslo” by Sandy McIntosh

日本語はこちら

A Lecture From the Bartender at Grand Hotel, Oslo

by  Sandy McIntosh

  

Translation is too difficult.

We don't expect our American tourists to speak Norwegian so we learn English.

One language can do violence to the other. Pick its pocket, so to speak.

For instance, Oslo gets many meters of snowfall. Knut Hamsun, in Hunger, has his character sleeping in the snowed-in streets of Kristiania. (Oslo used to be Kristiania in 1899.) Hamsun knew those streets. But then your Robert Bly comes along with his egregious English translation and messes up the map so that it neither resembles Kristiania nor Oslo.  A tourist could get lost in the snow and die following Bly's map!

Knut Hamsun was our breakthrough novelist and maybe deserves more respect, though he was often down and out.

Henrik Ibsen was our breakthrough dramatist--hardly down and out!--but you wouldn't know it from the English translations. 
For instance, in Ghosts, Mrs. Alving refers to her husband lying around reading "bank journals," which doesn't make any sense in English.
But Norwegians know instantly that "bank journals" really means "Pornography." 

Ibsen drank and dined at the Cafe every night. His dinner was always an open sandwich, beer and schnapps. And often a pjolter, which is our word for Whisky and Soda. And he could get drunk.

Hamsun and Ibsen lived here in Kristiania at the same time, and I think they met only once, poverty and wealth being discrete languages.

One night Ibsen was too drunk to sit. He insulted the waiters and we had to translate him into the street. Hamsun was down and out, living in a wooden box outside the Cafe. Ibsen landed next to him and decided to take a little nap. Then you could see Hamsun's arm reach out of the box and pick Ibsen's pocket!

Then Hamsun translated himself into the Cafe and ordered a splendid supper!

Kunut　Hamusun
Robert　Bly
Henrik Ibsen