I.
Leaving my air-
conditioned digs
I drove half an hour
hiked a quarter mile
to spend an eighth
of my 90-degree day
beside an acute angle
of a cascading brook
to beat the heat
read and write
bask in nature
After a time a black fly
not a deerfly, horsefly
bluebottle or mosquito
but some hairy black
disrupted my ennui
divided my attention
buzzed my wrists
landed on my left
left and landed
on my left thigh
left and alighted
left, alighted
left
I waited for it to alight
on the back of my right
thigh, in childish pique
struck with my left hand
I flicked the fly’s hairy
corpse into the creek.
II.
I stayed in my air-conditioned digs
(my naturally unnatural environs)
and left the hairy black fly to his.
I disturbed not his ennui, nor he mine.
Tomorrow I will still be in this crib,
he still basking in his nature.
Posted in Other, Poetry
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They of course caught Bulova red-handed.
He had more hands than one, naturally,
but it was the bloody one that mattered—
the third hand, the one entitled second,
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Posted in Other, Poetry
|
Joan Wicleff it was
from whom I learnt:
art is a verb.
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|
Once upon a time in Memphis,
I consumed 300 films a year;
what would I ever have done
in a ghosted town like yours,
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Posted in Other, Poetry
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inspired by the film of that name
i.
You want me to turn out the lamp.
I linger on your face a little longer.
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Posted in Other, Poetry
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Perhaps you should stop reading now.
Continue and you may determine
whether this poem begins to live today
or if it be dead when read, as said.
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Posted in Other, Poetry
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We are the occupiers.
This is the land we possess.
Hollow rings a tribute
to its past stewards,
however noble,
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Posted in Other, Poetry
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Greg Fisher and I became friends instantly when I transferred into Thorndyke Elementary School in third grade. Greg had already been at Thorndyke through second grade, the school’s inaugural year, and like most of the school’s other veterans welcomed the transfers from Cascade Elementary. A great many of the kids in Mrs. Bruffy’s third-grade class that year stayed together all the way through graduation from Foster High School, but Greg was one of only a handful–Greg, Stephanie Cortes, Jay Savage, Ron Miyatake–that I can say I consistently stayed close to from “beginning to end.” Continue reading →
An Australian preferred the limerick
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Posted in Other, Poetry
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I hold you. Clad in papered foil
(or is it paper foiled?) peeled
back, you slyly reveal the arc
of your sagging bun as we sit
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Posted in Other, Poetry
|
