Aaron Belz: Lovely, Raspberry

From the occasional reviews department: Aaron Belz's Lovely, Raspberry.

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Sometimes, it's okay for poems to be funny. Not Pam Ayres funny, but wry-life funny:

Every day I get emails
that say things like
BELZ! We should
have done that one
thing that one
time, remember?
Really though
how ARE things?

And I always reply
the same way,
like, DUDE!
I do not know
who you are.
Where do I know
you from?
But I never hear back.

I save all those emails
in a special folder
labeled "I hate my life."

Aaron Belz is funny. Funny and confiding. Funny and I-want-to-get-emails-from-him-with-thoughts-like-this-in-them:

'thirty illegal moves in the cloud-shape game'

Potatoes
Waves
Ghosts
A Rorschach blot
Fuzz
Clouds
A dragon head
Chèvre
A puddle
Cloth
A swab
Crumpled up paper
A blob
Trees
Jelly
Scallops
Fungi
Hair
Milk
A piñata
Chamois
Sheep
Feta
A fist
Algae
Alsace-Lorraine
Quiche
Stew
Bubbles
Pudding

I want Aaron Belz to write me a letter containing 'five beginnings of jokes'

1. Why did the elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, orca whale, sealions, newt, weasel, and many different kinds of birds cross the street?

2. Elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, an orca whale, sea lions, a newt, a weasel, and many different kinds of birds walked into a bar.

3. How many elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, orca whale, sea lions, newts, weasels, and many different kinds of birds does it take to change a lightbulb?

4. Elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, an orca whale, sea lions, a newt, a weasel, and many different kinds of birds were entering heaven, and St. Peter stopped them to ask a question.

5. What do you call elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, an orca whale, sea lions, a newt, a weasel, and many different kinds of birds at a party?

I want Aaron Belz to talk to his other friends about me, and when he does, to call me 'my chiquita'

We were friends. We dressed up as bananas
sometimes and went out on the town.
I called her my Chiquita. All in good fun.
We talked about dating - whether we should
make our relationship official. We decided no.
We were happy to have the freedom 
of just being friends with banana outfits.

And then I would confide back to Aaron Belz, and I would tell him stories about things that make sense in my head, but not out loud, like the 'things that i have only one of'

I have two kinds of things, she says.
I have things that I am in to
and things that I have only one of.

That there is more than one thing
that I have only one of is, of
course, the irony of ownership;

the real question, though, is 
where do the circles overlap? 
What are the things that I am in to

that I have only one of? she says,
and looks momentarily tired. 
Perhaps, she muses; perhaps

there is a third kind of thing. 
For I also have many things 
made of leather. See? she says,

gesturing to a large collection
of leather objects. I am also 
into ornithography. Now,

does that count as a thing that I 
have only one of? For I do not 
have more than one ornithography.

But occasionally Aaron Belz will write a long poem, with a complicated layout, full of tabs, and little narrative, and no funny bits (or no bits that I feel confident laughing at, in case he was trying to be serious, because he's tired of being thought of as that guy who writes funny observational poems, and couldn't people for once see that he has something to say, like, an important view on the world?). And I'll read those ones dutifully, but I won't be able to tell him that I didn't like them, because I didn't get them. Instead, I'll try to distract him by saying, "Hey, Aaron? What about that wand one? I really like the wand one. Read it to me again."

my best wand

Of all the magic wands
I've bought over the years,
only the steel one
with the sharp tip
really works -- you point it
into someone else and say
ABRACADABRA
and the person magically
becomes wounded.