Yet won’t lay one.
She, addled in her goose-wit, struts
The barnyard like those taloned hags
Who ogle men
And crimp their wrinkles in a grin,
Jangling their great money bags.
While I eat grits
She fattens on the finest grain.
Now, as I hone my knife, she begs
Pardon, and that’s
So humbly done, I’d turn this keen
Steel on myself before profit
By such a rogue’s
Act, but —- How those feathers shine!
Exit from a smoking slit
Her ruby dregs.
Negro, masked like a white,Your darkAmputations crawl and appall—-Spidery, unsafe.What gloveWhat leatherinessHas protectedMe from that shadow—-The indelible buds.Knuckles at shoulder-blades, theFaces thatShove into being, draggingThe loppedBlood-caul of absences.All night I carpenterA space for the thing I am given,A loveOf two wet eyes and a screech.White spitOf indifference!The dark fruits revolve and fall.The glass cracks across,The…
Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees,You move among the many-breasted hives,My heart under your foot, sister of a stone.Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds.The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.In these little boudoirs streaked with orange…
And faced me, back to a ledge of dirt, to rattleHer sallow rodent teeth like castanetsAgainst my leaning down, would not exchangeFor that wary clatter sound or gestureOf love : claws braced, at bay, my currency not hers.Such meetings never occur in marchenWhere love-met groundhogs love one in return,Where straight talk is the rule, whether…
