Episode 91: Daydream Believer
b'Daydream Believer\\n\\xa0\\nListen in as pop culture, nostalgia, and formal craft converge in a discussion of poems by Jeff Royce. As of this recording \\u201cwe are not the epicenter,\\u201d but it feels as if we have all the time in the world as the pandemic spirals on just outside the sound of our voices. Royce has us remembering The Monkeys and Lava Lamps, recalling Larkin\\u2019s famous insight that \\u201cThey F&^% you up, your mum and dad,\\u201d and imagining angel trumpets and panthers (both Rilke\\u2019s famous panther poem and Teju Cole \\u201cOn The Blackness of the Panther\\u201d). It\\u2019s all about resonances and craft, slushies. (Or resonances and interventions:\\xa0 Dear Queer Eye crew, Kathleen needs a home-office resurrection!). If you are looking for more fabulousness, Kathleen recommends two podcasts, Jonathan Van Ness\\u2019 \\u201cGetting Curious\\u201d and Sam Sanders\\u2019 \\u201cIt\\u2019s Been a Minute.\\u201d Samantha suggests the film Now and Then. Jason is loving Andrea Lawlor\\u2019s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nThis episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist A.M.Mills. The song \\u201cSpaghetti with Lorraine\\u201d opens our show.\\xa0\\n\\nBIO\\nJeff Royce lives and teaches in South Florida. He is elaborately married with two refreshingly complicated daughters, though he is less enthusiastic about the two dogs and fat lizard who also live with him.\\xa0 Jeff was social distancing before it was cool.\\n\\xa0\\nAt the Table: \\xa0Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Kathleen Volk Miller, & Marion Wrenn\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nWATCHING A PANTHER\\nAT THE PALM BEACH ZOO\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nHer chirps and caterwauling are\\nthe echoes of an empty sanctuary.\\nShe lowers her stare, pulls back\\nthe fat of her mouth, but the growl\\n\\xa0\\nrumbles in from another pen.\\nThunderheads build on backs\\nof roseate spoonbills, restless\\nin the next enclosure.\\n\\xa0\\nTheir pink shadows and the stink\\nof flamingo shit are enough to remind me\\nmy heart is a muscle.\\n\\xa0\\nNear the reptile house, wooden manatees\\ndrift on an ocean of organs.\\nThe music is coming from somewhere else.\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nLINEAGE\\n\\xa0\\nMan hands on misery to man.\\n\\xa0 It deepens like a coastal shelf.\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 --Phillip Larkin\\n\\xa0\\nIt began with horseradish in her mashed potatoes,\\nher father slipping it in before dinner.\\n(It began much earlier I suppose.\\n\\xa0\\nBut this is my mother we\\u2019re talking about, younger and thinner\\nand unaware that fathers can be cruel.)\\nShe dove in without sniffing, and since that day something within her\\n\\xa0\\ngrew guarded and deep. They met in high school--\\nmy father and she, I mean. She let him kiss her breasts\\nonly through her shirt, so he imagined each one a jewel.\\n\\xa0\\nThink of the let down when he saw them undressed,\\nnot cut as he\\u2019d expected them to be,\\nnot flawless as the ones he had caressed\\n\\xa0\\nunder her blouse. He learned to live with them, though; he\\nlearned how not to ask for very much,\\nto ignore her responsibly.\\n\\xa0\\nHer body arched, in dark, under his touch.\\nThey fumbled dutifully until it hurt.\\nMy brother soon was born, a crutch\\n\\xa0\\nto hold my mother up. But he wouldn\\u2019t wear a skirt.\\nShe cried until her shoes were damp,\\nand my father taught him how to play in dirt.\\n\\xa0\\nLet\\u2019s try again, she begged--words pressing like a stamp\\non my brother\\u2019s soft head--and I, too,\\nwas pushed into this world like a rudderless tramp.\\n\\xa0\\nI\\u2019ll never know for sure if this is true.\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nANGEL TRUMPETS\\n\\xa0\\nI have this 1960\\u2019s sitcom desire\\nto frolic on the back lawn.\\nOur shirts will be fashioned after white sides\\nof ranch style houses.\\nOur hearts will take shapes\\nof plastic Adirondack chairs.\\nThe kids can blow bubbles that\\u2019ll satellite the shed\\nlike little acrylic space shuttles.\\nIn the linen-scented afternoon, the backward-stumbling sunlight\\nwill brighten angel trumpets,\\ndrooping polished shuttlecocks\\nswinging like clean sheets in the here-&-there breeze.\\n& I\\u2019ll pick one for you, & you\\u2019ll remark\\nthat the day has smelled just like a fresh haircut,\\nthen you\\u2019ll kiss my cheek with the same precision\\nwith which you clip coupons\\n& the girls, giddy from so'