Photo Credit: Tori Merkle Photography
We met Daniel in Harvard Square, where he stood at the corner of Mass Ave and Brattle, typewriter poised to write a poem for a dollar. We asked him to write a poem for our dog, and what he pounded out on the old manual keyboard was sublime. We asked for more, and a correspondence ensued – Boston, New Orleans, Florida – and produced the following excerpts from his impressive body of work. Here’s how he describes his writing:
As for the story of how I came to write poetry in Harvard Square: it has everything to do with my love affair with New Orleans, which started three years ago when I hitchhiked from New York to the Big Easy. New Orleans is a place where there’s an established legacy of typewriter poets that goes back a decade or more and it planted in my head the seed of what I do now.**
Sugar, Add Blood
In summertime, you give up walking and swim through the air. They’re dangerous, those summer swims. Several friends once tried to cross the city and washed up on the other side of town, nearly drowned. On days like this the local saint, Mr. Malo, jumps aboard a vintage Coca-Cola cooler and rides it out into the street. He throws cans to the people dying on the curb: the panhandlers and the pedicabbers, the fools and first-time tourists, the day-swimmers and any thirsty lizard. Several people have been saved from the verge of the Permanent Nap, simply by adding sugar to blood. Though Mr. Malo remembers a time when these streets grew high with cane and the recipe was reversed.
The Brief Story of Sunday
Red saw a different girl each day of the week. Murder brewed between them all. He would take them back into his room and screw the black bulb into the lamp. They opened their chests and let him eat—flinching without a sound. A new Day came along who thought, like all the others, she could become an era. But with the black bulb in its socket and her heart held in his teeth, he mumbled the name of another girl. Drops of whiskey slid down her cheeks. “I love you too,” she said. And wished she hadn’t.
To Gild a Bumblebee
The jeweler went mad.
He went ahead and caught
a bumble bee
and plated all its yellow bands
with gold.
It was a beautiful thing.
And when the village saw it
there was a great auction
in which all the richest ladies
bid for it.
And when it was done
he tried the same thing
with the sun.
He burned up as he worked.
It was a beautiful thing
the way the sun
gilded him.
(July 19, 2018, Newbury Street, Boston)
One Sunflower Turned to the Other
One sunflower turned to the other
and said:
“When the sun burns out
I’ll follow you
Instead.”
The other one played coy:
“Oh Jerry,
you know
it is too late for us.”
“Is it really, my dear?
Why don’t we—“
“Shush!”
— cried the painter
working behind the canvas.
He cut off the ear
that could hear the stars
But he could not afford
to quiet the ruckus
of the flowers.
(July 19, 2018 Newbury Street, Boston)
Fishing Practices
I sit on my stool
Hovering just over the subconscious
And pluck out the golden aardvarks
and supernatural salmon
that swim just under my feet.
‘Discount dream, once used.’
‘Love poem, fit for any woman.’
‘Ancient wisdom, back in vogue.’
They line up and pay
good money for my catches.
And I assure them:
my fishing practices
are sustainable.
(Newbury Street, Boston)
Emerging From a Day-Nap
In this moment
I am over-full
of sleep.
I could stay awake for 7 days.
I could chat nonstop
for a double shift.
I could dream about Nirvana
wide awake.
There are stars on the bottoms
of both my shoes
from walking through the foyers
of space.
There are coins shining in my eyes
and the Ferryman is after me
about his toll.
I’m not afraid, tho. No. Not I.
I can improvise
a whole new life for myself
on the spot.
Look:
I am now a baby
just born
from the mouth of a fresh
spring bear.
Am I not beautiful?
(I is.)
(Newbury Street, Boston)
Penumbral Thoughts
Sunny day, you bloom black on me.
I am ready to demote
all my ambitions
to the state of longing glances.
And later: glares.
My strength is not failing.
I do not believe my dreams
were too great
for my back.
I simply want to glance and glare
from great distances
at greatness
and knock him
from his horse.
Sunny day,
you’ve put me in possession
of the firm belief
that some of the greatest artists of history
have been lost to us
because they could not network.
And I have also been nursing the strong suspicion
that an artist is only as great
as how many others they outshine
with their glare.
(July 11, Harvard Square, Cambridge)
***
Daniel Lev Shkolnik owns a Yale sweater he will never wear. He takes his Faulkner with absinthe and his absinthe with an orange rind. In Istanbul, he learned to read the future in his coffee grounds. Despite the omens he repeatedly finds at the bottom of his morning joe, Daniel continues to write.
After a fated hitchhiking trip from New Haven to New Orleans, Daniel fell in with the street poets who kept starvation at bay writing poetry on typewriters for passersby. Back in Boston, he met Bruno, his 1927 Remington Portable No. 2, and began writing on frigged puritanical sidewalks. He’s since relocated to New Orleans where his fingers don’t freeze in the wind, where puritans are scarce, and where his first novel is nearing completion.
Daniel will be publishing two poetry chapbooks in the coming months. To receive updates about his upcoming chapbooks sign up for Daniel’s weekly poetry emails by clicking here.
Thank you very much for an opportunity to read Daniel’s work- I absolutely enjoyed his poetry.