wig like a genteel crow
to eat with her husband
his let-go hand
his patent on ice
Sing scrapple: buckwheat-
& cornmeal mush-stuffed
relative of head cheese,
the hog’s gray matter.
Plus every part
that couldn’t be cured
into ham or crammed
into sausage casings —
some good foot meat, perhaps,
a corkscrew piece of tail —
up to & including
the oleaginous grunt.
Always the butt of jokes
for the ignorant mass
of weiner-eaters who prefer
their pig scraps pink
morning is making
the most mist
best to miss work
and go digest
The busy ones
the fast breeder reactors
always amaze me:
the ermine’s
slick white rope-
trick of a body
vanishing into the snow
a hummingbird threading
the hundred eyes of a woodlot
without slowing down
the manic shrew
like a heat-
seeking missile
& yes
the quick brown fox
ah I am nothing but
on a mission to drink
I forget many things
dancing with myself
after a little talk together
my journal is a lone shoe
a little wife
a better ever after
to which I bitch
the little moment
I was dug out of
is a poor candle with which
to travel in the dark
through the city where we danced
beyond all moderation
come Sunday I have
more time to love
time to sin and make
a ceremony of it
like reading the Book
of Martyrs in bed
one ache two aches
two great beauties
had the pox
had one another
going out
going all about
my love is thin
but full of variety
o divert us at the office
my eyes bad in bed
must I drink coffee
if I hate to speak
like a dry ground and the streets
full of wine
Friday bar ilk
on the highway
high din