by: Alan Bernheimer ((Header art is by the incredibly talented Brice Marden, entitled “Third Letter.”))
The key to Alan Bernheimer’s “Ipsatude” is found in the first stanza “Everyone’s secret life/ Inside head fake/ Get out more.” The poet’s consciousness acts as a web that momentarily catches and holds bits of wordplay; the language of observable world and the hidden one; the poet’s inner life as reflected and refracted; the imagined experiences of others; memories real and invented, and more.
IPSATUDE
Everyone’s secret life
Inside head fake
Get out more
Forget to forget
View from locker
Twenty watt brain
Looks at sky
One of punching nuns
Ants see molecules
Shady side up
I’ll be taking names
Shoe on other foot
But badly bent
Read up write down
Haven’t heard boo
Crimea river
Use for ransom
Stripped like this
Needle in thigh
Patinated bronze
Fat encircled eyes
Anything you want
Tricked the starter
Me Geppetto
Gorgeous rolling hills
Best dressed man
In for it now
Tiger balm wrench
Some way out
Habit of mind
Live fast
Leave beautiful archive
Everyone’s sex life
Touched by movies
Fix torn sprockets
Signs of prowl
Inside business
Pushing electrons
Battery angst
About our adventure
Ulteriority
Falls into faux
Smack dab
Metabolic grief
Taller of the two
Wants to be friends
Don’t go there
Invent perspective
Items you want
Lack means for comedy
Set up as new
Distance sensation
Needs more jewels
Muscular lens focus
Rearrange universe
No end to machinery
Knock self out
Stick ups in demand
World of triggers
War of tug
Blind spot for dance
A matter of time
Next performance review
Cellophane cocktail
Walk in the woods
Got all day
Skirting with disaster
Think on feet
Not without mustard
That for pills
Paid by word
Brook no denial
From third base
Sane and shapely
Who don’t belong
Contain the truth
Out of anything
That darling blue
Greek infinity
Talk self in
Comes from spine
Ask for Dennis
Philosophical garnish
On the lam
Intrigue each other
Out on limb
Postcard touch
Steps to wipe
Away your image
Came to grief
More than this
Like as not
Lid off life
Croupier manicure
Over and took
Placeholder enclave
Has no way
On the tarmac
Play the sap
Look at works
Test routine
Send you over
Alan Bernheimer’s latest book is The Spoonlight Institute (Adventures in Poetry, 2009). Earlier books include Billionesque (The Figures, 1999) and Café Isotope (The Figures, 1980), as well as Cloud Eight (Sound and Language, 1999), collaborations with Kit Robinson. Recent work has appeared in Hambone, clash of the lichens, Sal Mimeo, and Dreamboat. His translation of Philippe Soupault’s memoir Profils perdus is forthcoming in 2016. He lives in Berkeley.
