It Startles
Who can punctuate it? Wife.
The unplantable blacktops in the past
of my wife. The hurricaned
petals. The combustible joints
of wife. My wife getting naked
under stars in a car.
The chiseled and serif
typeface of wife. The radiance:
her fancies and goodnights.
Natural law’s deduced from such
movements. In the house whose root
is my life. Dusky,
sometimes a lioness
sleeping. Taking dictation
for briefs. Courting in malls
gone to seed. What astonishes.
Who? Cur’rants, coop’ers, wife.
For’bear’ance, forbearance, life.
We refused the agents
of mansionization, my wife.
We put the palm chakras
over the eyes, which eat light.
Yet we never rolled a rug
and played a gramophone.
And we never bit the sugar
knuckle to the sugar bone.
Wife, you say you saw
the hook and carcass
swing in the door.
Tell how we took a bus to the beach
to watch the cook fires go. The waves
were mushy, the dark
fettered down. Are pictographs
better? Is archness the answer?
Bonny. Ennui. To do it
without the assistance of machines.
Among pleas. For a time, wife and I,
we were festively clothed. The flung,
stony planets made wishes on us.
Blinking wife, thinking wife, my piebald
stitched, my soldered life.
Now! The cold! Is! Past!
(This poem was first published in the National Poetry Review)
