there is air in me right now

by matthew savoca

2009-04-10T05:58:00.000-07:00

these poems are new versions of original poems by kathryn regina from her chapbook i am in the air right now which is published by greying ghost press.

here is a promotional video made by greg lytle for kathryn's chapbook:

websites:

kathryn regina

matthew savoca

start reading >>

interview with a hot air balloon

2009-04-10T05:57:00.001-07:00

Hot Air Balloonist Magazine: Are you a hot air balloon?

Hot Air Balloon: Yes.

HABM: Why did you become a hot air balloon?

HAB: Someone rode a bicycle.

HABM: Has anyone ever ridden a hot air balloon?

HAB: What?

HABM: What is the best part about being a hot air balloon?

HAB: Being in motion. The warming flame. The amount of air.

HABM: What is the most challenging part about it?

HAB: Being stationary.

HABM: How do you manage when you're stationary?

HAB: I look at things in the sky. On a cloudy day it can be difficult. The passengers can be a great help. Once I show them tree line, it’s easier to convince them to take me up. Branches are pretty.

HABM: Do the passengers enjoy the ride?

HAB: They feel happy about the idea going up and down. While we’re in the air they are restless. One lady decided to throw her handbag and shoes over the side. She was bored. Some of them try to take home souvenirs. They get frustrated when they realize that air is everywhere. They are generally unhappy people.

HABM: How long have you been a hot air balloon?

HAB: On my birthday, a man tied many helium balloons to a rusty lawn chair and floated 200 miles from his home. He hovered over his dog and his dog waved at him.

HABM: Are you going up right now?

HAB: I hope so.

HABM: Do you think being a hot air balloon is still a viable form of existence?

HAB: It's, uh...eternity...rhinoceros face...

HABM: I can’t see you anymore. Can you see me?

HAB:..........

HABM: Do you have any words of advice for aspiring young hot air balloons?

HAB:...........

there should be a word for each kind of hot air balloonist that exists

2009-04-10T05:55:00.001-07:00

pedro and i met the air. we had written it letters. the air was assembling pieces of cloud.

the air told pedro and i about the oldest form of human-carrying flight technology. it told us about a fire-starter in its village. she had a flame halo.

pedro went away from us to discover new fire words. “there should be a word for each kind of
fire that exists” he said to me.

“there is a flame in this hot air balloon” i said to pedro. the air watched us talking.

“humans have explored the entire horizontal world, but they rarely think to explore
vertically,” i said. the air nodded.

pedro and i love air.

the air taught us about how the oldest form of human-carrying flight technology started with floating eggshells and airborne lanterns. pieces of things befriended the air before humans befriended it. birds are not included in this.

“people think too much about birds” pedro said. the air looked quizzically at him.

i think too much about people. the tree line looks like a silver dollar when it reflects the sun. it makes the shape of a man’s face.

pedro is not even speaking a language. the air is on my side. pedro is confused. he thinks he is a school right now. he thinks the air is a chalkboard, inside of him.

“i am on my 49th word for fire!” pedro said. the air rolled its eyes.

the air is going to throw pedro overboard. it does not love pedro the way it loves me.

the balloonist who isn't pedro is boring

2009-04-10T05:54:00.001-07:00

i wish we would float by a bear.
are there any bears in america? if a bear
was my balloonist we would hold hands.
the bear could not operate the mechanisms because
of no thumbs but i could take care of that
i have been playing spider solitaire for 4 days.

i take rejection so hard.
i didn’t want the air to throw him overboard but
we were sinking and it was tired of his vocabulary.
laughing can be fun if you reject stuff. rejection makes the laughter
become fun. i am playing two hands of spider solitaire at once now
i will not beat the devil because he's a sore loser.

when the air hated you it was thinking of someone else.
it saw people’s faces in the trees and confused you
with someone cold and heavy. it doesn't really know
anything about your temperature or density or whether
you could operate the mechanisms. i don’t matter.
when it loved me it was thinking of someone else.

on the energetic principle of "hot-me goes up"

2009-04-10T05:52:00.000-07:00

the air likes to perform experiments on me. it is “bad for me.” everything that is good is bad for me. i get colder the higher up i go because the molecules spread apart and less friction is less heat. but if hot-me goes up wouldn’t i be hotter the higher

up i went? energy is strange. for example, the midwife’s mother has brown eyes and her father has brown eyes but she has blue eyes. do blue eyes surface in a baby the way hot-me goes up? it is impossible to know. we do not have the energy.

the air is very cold. for example, the molecules on its skin are spreading out the way the continents broke apart a while ago. if it had been high enough up in me it could have seen the continental drift. the midwife insists on birthing the

babies of the air. it is the newest form of existence since water babies. she says that when water babies are birthed they come out blue because of the energetic principle of blue water. but when air babies are born they come out clear

and babies should be clear. but isn’t the sky blue for the same reason that water is blue? it is impossible to know. the air does not understand how hot air balloonists work. it has something to do with food. sandwiches and fruit-cups are the main components of energy.

when they work against each other people vomit. when they work together islands are built and people go into the sky. the air did not throw the midwife overboard. the air did not drop the baby in a lake. it was energy. for example,

sorry i didn't catch you as you plummeted yourself towards the earth – balloon4human

2009-04-10T05:50:00.001-07:00

you: haired human wearing cloth garments and rubber foot-things
me: hot air balloon with basket

i was studying my ropes yesterday that attach the basket when i saw you pass by. the pale expression on your human face made me forget all about my sheared twine. i puffed out to find something i might offer you on your journey, like a crust of bread or a morsel of cheese.
it is always good to offer humans food. but when i flared in again you were gone.

i wish we would have had a moment to converse. there are so many things i wanted to ask you.
like, did you jump or fall? what's it like to have appendages? do you have any siblings?

i am hoping you got snagged in a tree, and that i don't. if you are still alive and have made your way back to civilization, call me. actually though, i don't have a phone, i'm a hot air balloon. but you could have a skywriter write me a message. tell me what color basket i was carrying so i know it’s you.

HAB

the hot air balloon is sleeping

2009-04-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

(a bear, a native american and an auto mechanic are with the balloonist).

bear: did you see that chameleon float by? it was the color of air.

auto mechanic: this hot air balloon is a jerk. i don’t like deception and i don’t like poor vehicular maintenance.

native american: there should be a word for water without a bottom.

bear: i wish that chameleon would come back. that chameleon and i had something. i hate it when that chameleon is offline.

hot air balloon: i am not a wi-fi connection. this is the hot air balloonist. i think you have mistaken yourself for the internet.

native american: my eyes are water and my hair is water and my heart is water. my pillow is water and my liver is water and my teeth are water.

hot air balloon: i don’t feel like going up today. i want to swim in the balloon pool.

native american: i am water and my people are water.

auto mechanic: if you hadn’t let all the air out we wouldn’t have this problem. now there is no air left and everything is blue. that is not right. things should be clear but instead they are blue.

hot air balloon: ho-ho. this hot air balloonist is not a duck-billed platypus.

bear: that chameleon has opened my heart in one thousand ways.

i thought i wouldn't be the air inside anyone today

2009-04-10T05:44:00.001-07:00

people are empty but
there are several forms of air that can go inside a central cavity.
I am going to open myself up and see only
things that i especially like. puppets, diet coke,
spell books, beautiful rocks. i am going to see
these things the way i see the families in my molecules.
some of the people in the families die. there is a funeral
in my nitrogen atoms. the grandmother throws herself
into the grave. the children play at empty ionic platitudes.
some of the people in the families say maybe they’ll call
which means they will not call. one person says
he will walk again, which means he will roll into his grave
and my nitrogen atoms will split.
there isn’t any space inside of people.
space is encased outside the skin. it is the new year.
it is a rolling ocean and empty people and a grandmother
haunting my oxygen. it is a bright sun and a mother
in my nucleus, complaining of the heat.

nothing satisfies like empty space

2009-04-10T05:43:00.001-07:00

the frame cleaner bought a horse balloon for me
and the candy striper hasn’t even seen the movie vertigo
the passengers are useless
i would go up faster if i could cut the basket rope loose,
or if my anxiety came from a vineyard
anxiety is useless because it comes from the inside

watching a candy striper and a frame cleaner make out
is not that interesting. i am bored again
i would like to swallow a large piece of the dirty earth
and charm the horse balloon while covering him with soil
all the horse balloons followed me up and slept
next to me under silky clouds for years

it is dumb when you don't have lips to put on something; heat
comes from fire and not some unknowable source like
‘love’ or ‘nuclear power.’ sometimes i see pictures
of native americans and jousting weapons and
sometimes i confuse the sun for pedro’s face
but it's spots were not pedro’s freckles and it was not clear

like my face and it did not glimmer like a silver dollar
and there is not enough air for a swollen heart,
a frame cleaner, a candy striper and a horse balloon.
forty-seven people i’ve touched have died
i am not sorry. i regret the pollution but not everything:
i briefly displayed a mark rothko paiting on my 'chute

the humans do not use memory or voice

2009-04-10T05:40:00.000-07:00

it is hard to tell where my hands would be
the cloud coverage hides shadow-me.

i have accidental dreams of fish, murder
and native americans. photography is of no use to me,

literature is of no use to me, vanished kidnapping victims are of no use to me.
i have seen the same parlors you frequent, i know

that while i was dreaming you were gathering mushrooms
to poison my soup. you are getting close to me

so that murder can ensue.
humans do not look like me at all.

i have to stop talking to the trees though, they are expressive like
your face. you do not need to raise your eyebrows

so much. i get it. i get it.
things i know, i repeat

the hot air balloonist: neutral, bored of memory, does not rewind

i don't know how to get out of this guy

2009-04-10T05:38:00.000-07:00

i am the one who made electricity. it felt silly
like the south pole. it makes me sad how
the magnetic fields are changing
north and south are moving towards each other
when they meet they will hang over the continents
all the humans will watch vertigo lying down
north will become bloated
with grief and roll over into the east
all the humans will bleed from their ears and jump into the ocean

i didn’t make the compass
when a plane flies by it doesn’t know which way is east
it cannot see the sun and doesn’t know which way is east
it looks at the compass but doesn’t believe what it says. electricity could be
involved. when electricity is involved you cannot believe anything
it feels silly to have electricity around all day
the altitude is killing natural magnetism.
east is going extinct and i don't care

i never want to get out of here
the only movement is lateral

the sky is the best place for escaping observation

2009-04-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

it is difficult for the native americans to see me
at this altitude. i am a pinprick over the airscape
i think or else i am a little european car. it is difficult for a
four-leaf clover to see me without eyes.

all of the sweet peas gather under a full moon; their light
limbless, balled into sweating fury. or else
those are trees, i don’t have water bottles up here.
i keep my sweat in the clouds for hot days.

i have an art collection in my basket. i have seen civilizations
pass and painted them in nitrogen and oxygen. War is not paint
and tiny brushstrokes; i don’t have paint up here.
“what do you do when you have to go to the bathroom?”

the passengers are dumb. i don’t take them to the ground
anymore. they are well-armed with lavender pebbles,
sour peaches and potatoes. they don’t need to see history
closely. they don’t need to see each other's faces up close

to remember the boring fizz of love. their eyes sting
from dry air, not realization or tears, assholes.
i wonder how the alphabet has changed since they last
used it. i wonder if slurpees are called something different

now. it is difficult to know their minds without other minds
knocking into them. there are birds. they miss the native americans.
they miss bald expressions. they miss mirrors. they miss time
will open up into them, blankly, without passing.

i am going to kill the air myself

2009-04-10T05:17:00.001-07:00

it will be fine
when i said that it got worse when you were gone
it was thinking of something else
my heart is in a balloon and my stomach is in a balloon
and my head is in a balloon
i was thinking of the bird that flew into a balloon's basket
hard so that it actually flew inside the basket
and it got trapped there and confused and everyone felt sorry
for the basket and not the bird who had to stay in that basket
‘s head. i felt like crying at your door and begging you
to come out and that felt good because i've never had a real life
i like to feel like i am about to do something that i would have done
and so become another balloon and not just that i’m confusing
myself with another balloon but i actually am that other balloon

today i saw a watch made out of a silver dollar and it reminded me of you
because you wear a watch too.

there is air in me right now