Giovan Alonzi: California Poets Part 9, Four Poems

Giovan Alonzi

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Giovan Alonzi

Four Poems

the mookse & the γrites

Eins within a space and a wearywide space it wast ere wohned a Mookse.

—James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake

how many bad turns turn                     a bowl into a jug with a long narrow neck full of minced meat?

mookse whimpers whines

sniffs

& licks but licking’s not

a trick

harpoon-like & long the grites

gorges smug in the jug eyes glazed beak lodged

legs long

furry mookse flat flummoxed

pure fury

testing mooksey’s moxie

beak full of meat

gritesy gurgles, flatter me moo, & i’ll see if i can plate some meat

moox dog-smiles, says, pretty gritties

sing me a little song

the grites wet speck-for-speck tugs

its beak from the jug & squawks

dirty trillings right before it pokes the mookse bloody-blind

the mookse cries

why my eyes you’d won already nasty grites what cruel rule is this?

but no response is cautious

to the mookse before the sound  of flight & smell of shit

fills the mooxies sense of swamp

then a scurry to its under earthed nook

bumping into trees         lost at sea without a star

dawn to dusk  everything erased

a long droll caw portends           the jot, is that you? i am blind

will you help me?

give me my cheese, says the ever-night

& i may lend my eyes

o mookse amewl           rolls

& cries & bares its teeth

revived by irritation & pain

the jot caws above

whetted trickster’s pride           swelling bloody in the face

the mookse licks the half-light catching lastly low breezes of a settling darkness

mookse often eager for the dark  only wishes absent light

didn’t demand to be the revelation

aching in its essence

something big something nothing

floats above the moö

scrambles further using scents             sounds of bugs             to flee a looming

phantom drawing mucksies awkward tenor

does it grab the canid by its feet?

writhing in the air the mookse’s sense              of the swampy edge proceeds to

melt away the smell of muck                 the smell of shit & wetland bloods

as something hollow     as a needle & much deeper     than the deep

penetrates the pelt       wherefore the tiny        dog before a bliss

begins a-soothing whilst a-hanging

smelling not a thing     not a body but a thought against         its nose

becoming dry    its twitch of life            a tired guide     only wanting rest before

its resting         means that it will die

black oils on black velvet                     holding mookse

like the womb that carried it                in its skulk of kits

if you want you            can bite me now while

you still have the strength, says the thought

but i am afraid

says the mookse

though i feel, coos the mookse, very nice

sometimes, says the thought, everything is exactly       what it isn’t

tongue of mookse tries to lick

the offering it thinks       a wing what very well

should reek of lake & shit

but now is fresh as death  smooth & whiskerless

a bell compared to the vile

grites & the game of wits         it isn’t in

if i am the meat you mean to mince

then why my eyes why the darkness why the stalking why the bliss

& with a shudder &

a shake               its little

fangs

sink

into

the light

surfαce tension

los que nunca sabe nadie de dónde son

los mejores artesanos del mundo

los que fueron cosidos a balazos al cruzar la frontera

—Roque Dalton, “Poema de Amor”

endless                                                                             shipwreck

a beached                                                   what does the sun want from me?

smack              of translucent peactime tentacles

precious inflammation             various millenial              metals

geiger               count               the faces                          of our fluids

like feedbackwater                   doesn’t titter                 tattar

jacob’s light                 ladder cracking down                  on the turtle crust

boiling earth                water                           air                    & fire

down to los                  gritos & sand               paper      sanity

mooking frowns           raw                  private body              shape

of court            public parts                  up        for childish persecution

civilians                                   so                                           coefficient

alien nomination               the bookish odd’s            bodkins

constant border              line                                     personality

incredible fear work         & extreme      bloodletting     amid america’s

theory of a cure for a germ                               called  distance

 urge

  for the closeness

secular cranberry               bog                   para-flood all out   of blood

cannibalists          outlawing                 cannabalism                 teeny-weeny

guillotines’           uncondition                  ugly christian         space values

honeymoon                                                          to             waterlemon

neo-fresco                                         losing                           pigment 

is the message      is the medium                 is the nation       of innards

& orphans                                    joining             the call        to measure

emptiness

α fαce unto the crowd

io numb nile-side to see the loose truth

in the juice - spherical holstein’s black & white

cosmology - serious mookuments

 ropes floating limp hands above a papal white

robe hiding midnight tome-like - face gray

long dead deep folds

super duped cottonwood’s bomb of gilead

gushing - luring the mookstock to

the muscles of the mountainside

martyr sauce at the crusade parade

words floating fried - dead air activities

reactionary thermodynamics

sexual creditors putting stock in panic’s

alpha malediction - syntactical assault gear

an earthy word births a bird

of mouth - rotoscoped & rodeo clowned

in the night’s quietude - a miranda writ birdcall

sweet n lo, slowly reduced blood

sugar - sunflower swallowing sunslaughter

half-fie’s darkling dayfly - judgmentaly ill wide

peephole & the old morse

of the woodpecker - a friable destruction

of wild life-habits where light’s allowed

to speckle sense - wavering

in the weight of where a tabernacle stood

woodstock isn’t woodstock til it becomes

the official name for rome

half a calf ’s sound for stargazing between trips

to the trough - notebook returns me to my san

fernando scrawl - short

message service - technical realization’s

radiation of knowledge meant for the mobile

originated & the mobile terminated

baby tlic squirming in the beast we need sated

butterfatty colloidal suspension of plymouth

rap rock - terran fear

of blood children - what a great depression

variety stow-away - radio knows

a wailing siren as well

as its air raids - a movie of background whining

body of a child - hood grey in a bush-citadel

doom’s mook! when wood

looked for turns to roots - nincompoops

& bootleggers on lonesome roads’

automatic reaction to big city

pickle hearts & the red eyes of empathy

vitality’s dissected ecstasy - breath half alive

severed center’s so shy

A FACE (wrapped in a shroud - his sentimental barbarity

& adamantine anti-intimacy - has no fears to share for their burden,

no fears to spread like butter,

no fears to flatten & smother, no fears of the inability

to fear the light’s identical other, needing no need to mention

it isn’t mentioned):

lovehisvoicelovehisguitarlovehisideas

hot body of honey-woke ham radio

brand spankin’ nu deal saved

some beauty unrest - echo-dislocated limbs

curling & cramping into ghosts

the sworn & the fettered

swaddling a little rock - mighty morphin’ baby

in the manger - large economy sized - hurdy gurdy

middle earth aged & out of kilter

a state of the art psalm shelter - bone white

boy dreams drip castling - spreading

spectrum to shuck

melt & bend artificial intelligence failures

retro’s active as a rusty chain of neighborly

reactions - gross bodily forces

not soaked & missing man of ruinous

mutinous hands womanning humanness

the mud man’s

unmasked amanuensis chugging whole

mook & gritting his teeth - broad &

bemooked expression

on this side of our sidereal half-tides

questioning peacemanship: what is it to look

without the thundersoft decay of a love?

skull

Where

the eye

was

was

a bellow

pinched—

trunk

d

i

s

i

n

t

e

g

r

a

t

e

d

;

sun

stripping

the jungled

attar

of     memory

endlessly

                        memory

endlessly

memory

endlessly

memory

endlessly

in

the centuries

is of ivory

not

memory

melody?

memory

elegy?

memory

penalty?

memory

weaponry?

− − − • •

Knockings

I never

dig out—

& my mouth

pours out light

in lieu of concrete.

Invisible trees

grow here

& shadows

splinter

into personage:

V's

edges

sharp enough

to cut

open

unforeseen

joy—the only joy

there ever was.

Her speckled hand

fluttering

against her neck,

searching

for survivors.

Anything left

of deep music;

any air left

she & I

might remember

how to breathe.

Author Bio:

Giovan Alonzi holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CalArts, where his thesis was awarded the Emi Kuriyama Memorial Thesis Award. His writing has appeared in Fence, Los Angeles Review of Books, rivulet, Full Stop, & elsewhere. He teaches writing composition at California State University, Northridge in both the English Department & the Department of Central American & Transborder Studies. He, his wife & their daughter live in Los Angeles on Tongva land.