Monday, March 3, 2014

Poem: Have Yourself


Have Yourself

Jurassic, era of choice.
Wading in the evertropic,
chomping on chlorophyll when some

Tyrannosaur cuts you off and in
fact yes the middle finger is the
digit of the 21st century.

I play the archer in an ’86 pickup.
You have not in fact severed my
arrow finger and I will now
pierce your Firestones with a
flick of my wrist.

The present day is a hydroplane, a
turbojet, we no longer have
watches we have phones that
order us around and don’t even
do laundry the bitches.

Laptoppers fill the coffeehouse in
perfect schoolhouse rows, facing
east like morning glories.
I tap my baton on the
podium and begin the
overture to Giovanni.

The hours ramrod past.

I am Orion with a longbed and a list:
Restore Anne to the ancestral couch.
Follow Janine’s U-haul to Pacifica.
Chase the Pleiades across the sky.
Drive Nina to the airport

(She dreams of Paula,
turning to ashes in Phoenix).

The errands go to the lucky ones.
I sit at my window, dining on
unemployment stew, watching the
neighbors dodge lightning bolts.


Nina calls from baggage claim.
Paula’s in a coma.
Floyd’s gone, Sandy’s in chemo,
Nadine’s lost her house and
Lois is losing her mind

(Ellen dreams of Phoenix,
who is not a city but a cat).

My hand on the truck door.
A white dot bores a hole in
the crushed velvet it
might be The Asteroid.

Or Venus.


From the collection Fields of Satchmo

Photo by Pamela Quattrochi

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