About Gavin W Sisk

I am a photographer, artist, writer, tinkerer, baker, dad, and much more. I enjoy measuring things, and I’m easily distracted. When I should be in the garden pulling weeds, I might slip away to my little shop where I’ll clean my calipers and wonder how to use a frequency counter to write a poem. I can name a few of the things that make me smile. Otherwise, I don't recall what truly is my favorite movie, book, or scotch. I also don’t remember which charms lead me to fall in love. These things may all be forgotten, but they are not lost. I know and enjoy them when they visit. I appreciate that life isn’t fair, though I don’t enjoy it. It seems especially unfair that we should have to work so hard for so long, and risk so much, before we can come to accept this fact. I blame it all on opposable thumbs and our ability to measure things.

Ja, ja. Ich trage Google

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Gavin W Sisk

In my email today–

“Jeg trenger din umiddelbare oppmerksomhet ON MY FORSLAG.
Jeg er administrerende direktør, fra den industrielle og Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Jeg har en gjensidig virksomhet forslag som angår overføring av en stor sum penger til en utenlandsk konto, med din hjelp som en fremmed partner, som mottaker av midlene. alt om denne transaksjonen vil bli gjort lovlig uten problemer med noen økonomisk myndighet. Vennligst forsøke å observere ytterste skjønn i alle saker knyttet til dette problemet. Hvis du er interessert, kan du svare tilbake via min private e-postadresseskrevet under, og jeg vil gi deg mer informasjon om meg selv og prosjektet så snart jeg får positiv respons.
Privat e-post: wyong@fieri.com”

TRANSLATION (edited for readability)–

“I need your immediate attention ON MY PROPOSAL.
I am the CEO from the industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). I have a mutual business proposal concerning the transfer, with your help, of a large amount of money to a foreign account, with a stranger or spouse as the beneficiary of the funds. Everything about this transaction will be done legally without problems with any financial authority. Please endeavor to observe the utmost discretion in all matters relating to this issue. If you are interested, please reply back through my private e-mail, signed, and I will give you more information about myself and the project as soon as I receive a positive response.
Private e-mail: wyong@fieri.com”

My first question is, will this interfere with my ongoing business transactions in Kenya? My second question is, how did they discover my hidden Norwegian heritage? (My first and last names are Irish.)
I’ll reply, of course–but in German, not Norwegian.

“Nach Eingang der prüft 30.000 Deutsche Mark auf ein Konto werde ich in einem folgenden E-Mail zu bezeichnen, werde ich eine neue, sichere Lage, internationale Kontoguthaben für die Verarbeitung und Verteilung auf verschiedene Cayman Island Treuhandkonten erhalten zu etablieren. Um Ihre Position vor Strafverfolgung zu schützen, werde ich darauf achten, dass Ihr Name und Ihre Bank aus allen offiziellen Dokumenten auszuschließen. Ich werde stattdessen einen Vermittler etablieren Konto zugänglich Sie ein Pseudonym und das Passwort “Tahssa-mai”. Mit dieser geschützten Account haben Sie sicheren Zugriff auf Ihre Anteil aller Finanztransaktionen.”

TRANSLATION (edited for readability)–

“Upon verified receipt of 30,000 Deutsche Marks to an account I will designate in a following email, I will establish a new, secure account able to receive international deposits for processing and distribution to various Cayman Island trust accounts. To protect your position from prosecution, I will be careful to exclude your and your bank’s name from all official documents. I will instead establish an intermediary account accessible by you using a pseudonym and the password ‘Tahssa-mai’. Using this protected account, you will have secure access to your share of all financial transactions.”

What’s interesting is the crook’s faith that Google Translate is effective in reeling a native speaker into an obvious scam. What’s really interesting is that a native speaker will fall for it.

From a Thai ad for donkey rides: “Would you like to ride on your own ass?”. Um, okay.

Feb, 2014

Evening Prayers

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Gavin W Sisk

Have you heard a stone
skip across a frozen pond
at night?
Ringing blue beyond the fires
it caroms off everything,
absorbed by nothing.
Pewless in a dark church,
pleading for a choir,
it licks lambent vibrato
from ear to ear with
nothing soft to settle on.
It could warm a pang
but lasts without us,
as if the moon holds still
while prayers wander
into the woods.

Feb. 2014

God Computes

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Gavin W Sisk

Dear Mr. Sisk:

Regarding your exclamatory remark after learning your two-year-old laptop was not upgradable to Windows 8.1.
I empathize with your frustration. Though I invented the cloud, I’ll be damned if I can control it. (I like saying, “I’ll be damned.” It gives me funny hiccups.) But consider this. I remember turning my back for just a moment (a long time ago from your point of view, which is limited by design) so I could have a strategic planning meeting with my event coordinator, Moses. From my point of view (which, naturally, is all points), I was only distracted for a moment. But apparently it was long enough for some trash-talking ape-heads to erect a fake cow to throw prayers at. That really pissed me off—those prayers were for me. In fact, I thought hard about this being a really good excuse to use up all that rain left over from the last time I got mad. Cool heads prevailed in the end (all mine). I think Moses took it harder than I did. I know what my editors wrote, but that guy had a really short fuse. And he never did reassemble those last three commandments–told me ten fit the math better (as if I needed a math lesson). Nonetheless, Mr Sisk, every time I hear, “Holy cow!” I get pretty riled up. Just say, “Holy shit!” I can take that. Hell, I invented the stuff!

Thank Me,

GOD

PS:
Yes, backwards my name spells ‘dog’. But I invented those too. So I win either way. If that confuses you, it’s your own damned fault. One thing I didn’t invent was English. (When I say that something is your own damned fault, carefully consider the source.)
And yes, I write a lot of asides. But that’s kind of silly to point out to an omnipresent being, isn’t it? (Don’t spend too much time on that one.)
Also, get a Mac.

Heavens

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Gavin W Sisk

All her other lives: ingratiating,
played beyond our window frames.
Frost caught between universes;
parallels cutting through supernovas,
not waiting for a bang.
Faster than that!

“Don’t write me at this address.”
I get it–her galaxy
skittering across the moonlit ice,
caroming from muffled laughing fires,
looking for the Horsehead Nebula
while we wait and buck our reins.

Parallels to parallels to where?
To all these campfires,
to carriages and restless hooves,
all the gracious calculus defining
moonlight traced on frosted panes?
The bang?

She sees love scratch a figure eight,
embellished with a three-turn:
a lovely note on ice.
We watch and stamp and steam,
hamed to the night;
yet our breath never reaches her stars.

Gavin W Sisk
Jan, 2014

The Flapper Ball

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Gavin W Sisk

Painted bricks
and the Charleston.
Sequined breasts dancing
down a barrel bar.

John from Jersey City
sent me. I have cash!
Goodness, the smoke.
And hot!

Take this and this
and this and hang them up
and you’re a dear,
and dearer still if you’ll

fill me up.
The glass, silly!
Or my flask if you dare.
Would you dare?

(Perched on planks.
with pendulum heels
and pensive throat.)
Watching my knees?

Never seen inertia?
Don’t get entropy?
Well, sleep on it–
by yourself if you don’t

fill me up.
The glass, silly!
You didn’t even notice
the planks are oak.

Bronx boy,
be a dear.

G W Sisk
Jan, 2014

Sentence Pronounced Upon Trees

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Gavin W Sisk

If trees had feet–being older on Earth than we; having been hewn for bows and arrows, ships and oars, kindling and matches, pulp and fiction, funeral pyres (the irony of which escapes everyone but them); having been whittled to axe handles to chop more trees; having been guarded by wooden fences and watched from wooden window sills; having thus far demonstrated more tolerance than any mammal yet designed and loosed upon the planet (explaining why old tortoises are never killed by falling branches)–if trees had feet–with rooty, knuckley toes and dirty nails (not like the nails that hold up wooden bird houses and Do Not Trespass signs)–if trees had feet, would they leave?

Dec 22, 2013

Your Head Is A Good Place For Your Eyes

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Gavin W Sisk

Every time I write a crooked slice
of my funny sideways life,
I end up flopped on the couch
with all the pink
sucked out of my tender middle.
Maybe that’s how you feel
sometimes
after bouts with the reality
that blood remembers gravity
the more it flows.
We tire easily as we go.

So why should our heads
perch so far from our feet?
Though our brains ride astride
our mouths (on good days),
our respiration
must be fussed over by organs
that might as well be on the moon.
Through the lungs, the heart,
and down the line–
flushed through miles of old pipes–
the oxygen falls into our slippers,
only to bother our gout.

The birthday candles glow bright
as our heads grow light.
There’s barely blood to wake our noses
to smell the burning wicks and
decide the lilies in the vase are real.
That’s how some days seem to me,
though younger than you.
But I digress.
And you can still tell:

the lilies came from a friend’s garden.
You smell vanilla in the cake.
The milk is fresh;
the blanket soft.
More is right and young than wrong.
Your head is stuck where it is because
it’s a good place for your eyes,
which over the window sill
see beauty your slippered feet
might barely feel.

Birds do better than murmur
in the Oklahoma sun,
which rises old but warm.
All the senses can be painted
from your chair,
whether you lift a brush or not.
You do.
So, without regret shall I.

For my friend, Jo Ann Duck Teter

Oct. 28, 2013

Fair Illusions

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Gavin W Sisk

Gavin W Sisk

Today’s trip to the Washington State Fair was fun but incomplete. Without machines from Caterpillar and Case, and nothing from John Deere bigger than a gentleman’s frontloader, the event seemed little more than a suburban thrill ride through a missremembered past. Most of the barbecue was branded by national corporations. Half the prize-winning chickens were provided by just a few 4-H families. Show horses pranced with graffiti and colored sparkles on their rumps. The blacksmith admitted he didn’t know what he was doing (we all had guessed).
It’s an illusion. I ate fish and chips for dinner and a Caesar salad for dessert.

Sept. 22, 2013

Rosie’s Rubber Bands

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Gavin W Sisk

I am enjoying Rosie’s litter box.
Something I enjoy about summer is
Rosie’s litter box.
Winter is when my neighbors enjoy
Rosie’s litter box.
The difference is rubber bands.
Rubber bands are the difference between
summer and winter litter boxes.
Rubber bands are a connection
between summer and winter.
Rubber bands and cat poop are connected,
as far as summer and winter are concerned.
One good thing about summer is
that’s when I don’t notice the connection
between Rosie’s poop and rubber bands.
Summer is when I don’t notice that
Rosie’s poop is connected by rubber bands.
Rosie eats rubber bands.
Rosie doesn’t use her litter box in summer.
I am enjoying Rosie’s litter box;
which is great,
but where does she get the rubber bands?

Sept. 11, 2013

Deviations Toward Normal