EastWesterly Review
since 1999

In the end, I suppose, Bean Newton needed this, something of a prayer, something of a lament, something of a love poem. Battered, sick, saddled with student loan debt, Newton found himself, at the end of 1998, before he finally lost or cut contact with friends, acquaintances, and the outside world, settled into a sort of existence, as a “sandwich artist” at a well known sub sandwich chain, living in the garage of his former landlady, former lover(?), Gertrude “Grennie” Grenbach.

The following is one of the few poems extant from this period, found printed off on a dot-matrix machine he had purchased at an equipment sale at a nearby branch of the town’s public library and stuffed in a much-worn Doctor Marten boot.

–EW Wilder

Brue in Bean

I

Washwight with sand, who did you know
how you were destined to become?
Integral to Harvey parts, forthwith
takedrown—terminal conic sections
redound. The wash the Lord
removes. I am taken, winglet-
wise: turgid urges salt north.
Pinnacle breezes lift the chin-
hairs, tickle the hammerhand. 
Purse bush sallows her eyes,
dominates. 

II

I would dare the churchbells, the race
to overcome. Dreadfellows, celibate
but ardent, drachmatize the gelded
crucialfix. The pews squeak, dis-
consolate and thrum up smooth.

III

The lessons are lessens of doubt.,
grout pawndering out of the seems,
an argument about neglect, its benignity,
its shall-o-ness in the face of dearth,
a refusal to hang on when the hangin's good.

IV

Handedness inherents its own
warped bone of would. Torque
is the tongue of measure. Command
the ask of the ides. I arc
for you(r) misgiving. How do I
prey for the tangled trees?

V

What does the Lord want
of trouble, of treble, of tables
laden with fruited thanks? Take
and eat: the cherry, the kiwi,
the many-opinioned pomegranate.