We asked for the seasons -
A pregnant fall, a winter from which
We might never be received -
Until they no longer seemed to change
We saw the sun to the west
As bald as the moon
In postcards and on the television.
So we started westward.
We asked for cool lakes
The size of small oceans
Without their retribution
We wanted the stretched midlands
Their waiflike bellies and precise horizons
And darted to thresh in that palette
We asked for the starched canyons
Lands the devil had thrown up in puberty
So we went there to challenge him
We asked for the fog and saw it
Pawing the hillside the next morning
So we moved there.
Further we moved to the top of the hill
To the edge of the rocks
Until salted mezzanines
Coated our nostrils and
Brine careened in our stomachs
Until the continent puttered away behind
And we turned back
To curse that beggar sun.
Outside the Welch House
Here it is at sunrise
Resembling an old desk
Left for ruin in the out-back weeds
Clapboard drawers warped to their runners
Top stained from dewy elbows and cat
Running-down blood from empty nail holes.
A truck on the parkway rattles its knobs.
This is the form of sinewy America
Who lies there, big-eyed,
An ornery child beast
Fondling his sharp-edged treasures,
So well trussed and coated, our sighs
Make him louder, crankier,
Clack his cinders
Left to explain himself
In the weeds out back.
Parkway Girl
The girl from the corner store
Is not so sweet as she was
After that storm
We shoveled slush until ten
After the bleacher girls blew her off
With
a click-clock of their tongues
After we wheeled out the Welch sisters
Lumpy
stretchers and all
After the boy from the Northside.
She’s not nearly as kind,
either
Having had to learn the tax form
(She never made the adjustments)
After she heard that brand new Mustang
Pulling
doughnuts on her lawn
Having seen the mechanic
Three
times this August
She’s harder on the brake and the gas
Nor is she
Nearly so young.
Poetry Sale In which the shop proprietor instructs his employees
First order of business:
Two offers just in on Yeats's fingers
First a trade-in on some cellulite in a jar - Italian -
Other from that sneaky Irishman, Heaney.
There are to be no trade-ins on Irish poets
(This is a business, not a pub!)
But you can bundle Williams's corns.
So, to repeat:
THERE ARE TWO RULES IN MY STORE:
One, you have to keep moving the stock
Churn-churn-churn-fresh pickle-churn!
Two, remember the rules
Rhymers sell, the others are for the reviewers.
Don't drink that!
That's Bukowski's liver, idiot.
And how many times do I have to tell you
Whitman's lead shot does not belong in the Plath case!
Move Charles Simic's haunted matchbook
Hide Neruda's foreskin and Byron's underwear
They're upsetting the customers.
Could someone please find this man Rilke's ear?
The Fathers at Echo Lake
Wind was sledding in wet gloves
Hands child pink molds against the rails of
Their Flexible Flyers - slush making
Rockets that mocked the sound barrier.
A whirring against spiky kid
Shouts, air ripping feather-packed nylon,
The hushed worry of fathers
Bogged down in brown corduroy.
Tense ridges in their collared
faces
Wrapped up in plaid scarves that flap
Pennants cheering the onslaught.
Unruly little cattle,
Kids take over from the herders,
Fists and shouts conducting the grazing
Delirium of fatherly crises - of
Briefcases emptying and filling.
The aging men reach for firmness
in the
Slick ice concrete footings
Beneath the powdery soft
Landing pads of snow fallen thick.
A few fat drops like bricks,
The call of engines
Barking in the parking lot and
Paneled wagons slide away.