I discovered the work of George Bilgere (pictured above, sort of) about two years ago in a recorded interview with former US poet laureate and current hero of mine, Billy Collins. Collins read Bilgere's poem, What I Want, aloud in his deadpan drawl and its brilliance immediately grabbed me by the lapels. Hailing from Cleveland, Ohio, Bilgere's books are hard to come by in Britain, but I seized the opportunity on the recent Los Campesinos! US tour to scour new and second-hand bookshops for an overweight luggage penalty charge on the way back. I returned with some beautiful books, but none of them were George Bilgere's. I found it impossible to believe that such a gifted man could be apparently completely unknown throughout the length and breadth of America, especially in Ohio itself. So, perhaps this blogpost, along with the readership of almost 5 people that Google Analytics reliably informs me I have, can go some way to correcting this ill. Bilgere's collection, The White Museum, can be bought here.
What I Want
By George Bilgere
for my marriage, 1996-2000
I want a good night’s sleep.
I want to get up without feeling
That to waken is to plunge through a trap door.
I want to ride my motorcycle
In late spring through the Elysian Fields
Of the Rocky Mountains
And lie once more with Cecelia
In the summer of 1985
On a blanket in the backyard of our house
In Denver and watch the clouds expand.
And it would be great to see my mother
Alive again, at the stove, frying a pan of noodles
Into the peculiar carbonized disc that has never been replicated.
I would like for my ex-wife to get leprosy,
Her beauty falling away in little chunks
To the disgust of everyone in the chic café
Where she exercises her gift
For doing absolutely nothing.
* * *
I want world peace.
I want to come home one evening
And find Julia, the new assistant professor
In the history department,
Has let herself into my apartment
For the express purpose of lecturing me
On the history of lingerie.
I don’t ask for much: a good merlot.
An afternoon thunderstorm cooling off
The city as I sit listening to Ella
Sing “Spring is Here,” so the air goes lyrical
And perhaps a stray bolt of lightening
Strikes my ex-wife as she steps from her car,
Setting her on fire, to the unqualified delight
Of the friends she has come to visit,
Who are thoroughly sick of her self-aggrandizing stories.
I want to spark a bowl of Maui Wowie
And spend the entire afternoon in my dorm room
* * *
With Corrine Spellman, trying to remember
What we were talking about, wondering
Whether, in fact, we had had sex yet.
I’d like to sit at the little outdoor restaurant
By the lake in Forest Park, talking with my aunt
In the humid summer twilight, as the hot
St. Louis day expires upon the water
And the moth-eaten Chinese lanterns
Glow like faded Kodachrome.
We would argue about the great tenor voices
Of the century, or causes for the dearth
Of poetry about the Gulf War,
Or why my father drank himself into an elegy
We never stop revising,
While couples on their paddleboats come in
From the darkening lake, as they’ve done
Since the beginning of time, and children
Call each other across the shadowy fields.
* * *
Yes, that would be nice.
I want a good woman
With a sweet bosom
And a wicked sense of humor.
I want to wake up in London on a spring morning
And read in the paper that my ex-wife
Has received a lethal injection, courtesy of the state
Of Ohio, as part of a citywide program aimed
At improving the civic pride of Cleveland,
But something went terribly wrong
And she’s been left in a persistent
Vegetative state
Which everyone agrees
Is nonetheless an improvement.
And it would be wonderful
To sit down with Maria
At our favorite restaurant in Madrid
With some good red wine
* * *
And listen to her Spanish
Caress the evening.
I want to read that a new manuscript
Of poetry by James Wright
Has been discovered in someone’s attic,
And someone I haven’t yet met,
In some future I have yet to despoil
Has bought it for my birthday,
And after the kids are asleep
We sit out in the backyard,
A little drunk, and read it
Aloud to each other,
Something we often do
In summer, before climbing upstairs to the bedroom
In the big old house we love so much.
