Poetry Magazine, Terry Degnan, November 2000

Poetry Magazine

Terry Degnan

USA

http://members.tripod.com/tdleroy2

pleather, olive barstools

     i sleep on the boxspring of a buried widow
     making sure jack gets the recessed coils
     i was her next man in line
     she left her fortune in an antique vacuum
     for a dirty rain day
     died in a home, mute
     without the means to express
     the vault beneath the stainless steel
     the terror of her labors
     the genious in her paranoia
     i hid her bar of soap in the basement bathroom
     there is luck in the perfumes of the dead
     purity in the mix of water, which is caustic on sinners
     skin
     sometimes in the morning i can smell her
     in her egyptian paper towels
     around her thousand golden cats
     i never met her
     but i never not miss her
     it has to be the boxspring
     suddenly i like a.m. radio
     which doesn't really make sounds
     other than talking
     which is bees work
     which is like fish hollers
     or cloud tantrums in brazil, heard from pennsylvania
     which full circles me to rain
     the kind that makes new paint dirty
     and illuminates the shoulders of ghosts
     when i go
     they'll torch the mattress
     and spread our skin cells, singed
     across magestic landfills
     resting in the recesses of much
     softer
     trash.

stucco conversation bubbles

     i've been deprived
     i have been asleep
     waking, with another man's wallet in my pants
     wondering how long til i find
     the perfect stick of words to fit together
     to sound like rolling latin men
     i want to sound like i was pretty
     like i was a lego beauty queen
     sexy as i click together
     resizing my body with the times
     refitting my poetry in slicker jeans
     pulling the smoke ring around my just notic'bly damp eye
     when i mutter words like
     fuck, humid, and mother
     king, so's i can have a damn cool chair
     so my crew can notice and say sentences like:
     yeah, coo... that friend of mine
     and his damn, cool, chair
     i have been in florida
     dying
     i have been in virginia
     remembering dying in florida
     and etching punchlines for an epitaph
     plotting down pink streets
     and defiantly saying
     "you just missed Jesus"
     and "does acid rain scare you?"
     i want to fit wet dirt under the surface
     like ruining JUMBOJETAIRLINE beautiful sentences in the middle
     i too, want prince william
     but i don't understand it
     i'm afraid my idea of parents is wrong
     i want
     to do the right thing at the wrong time
     tip a hindu cow
     mostly i want chemically depressed people to say "you're funny"
     and an old friend to say
     "it doesn't matter"