i.
Was when the dream came to its end,
Was when I began again
To make something of this guilty living,
To make something of the mirrored moon-face
Staring back at me with cunning caution, me,
Or one of my father’s cronies, or one
Who knows what’s coming next, whichever way,
Staring back at me:
Friend, perhaps you’ve lived at last to kiss,
To know the real hands and body of the dream,
Take on, possess that slender flesh
You find each bitchy night-time on display;
You’ll find all else is fruitless, friend.
As for what it offers,
Well, you’ll see.
ii.
The day that Larsen pitched his perfect game,
It rained in southern Minnesota.
Mrs. Schoener shoveled coal inside her furnace,
Muttering that the tail of him scourgeth,
Lasheth and spurreth. Trespasseth
Not on Libya’s sand lest the soul be split asunder.
Let it be wing-wafted, tempered by dew;
Let your shield be white-rimmed.
See furies in the furnace, fine fellows that they are,
Haunting fiends to grasp your wrist to hurl you into hell;
Better to float and soar through folds of cloud-land.
Mrs. Schoener shoveled coal inside her furnace.
It rained in southern Minnesota
The day that Larsen pitched his perfect game.
iii.
Sometimes,
My knuckles pearl-white,
I’d clutch the separator crank;
My cousin bucketed froth-warm milk.
God, how he’d swear!
Yet even so,
The thing was gently
To touch and pull those pink-warm fuzzy teats,
My forehead warm against the Holstein’s flank,
Every morning,
Intimate like that,
Milk sluicing
Warmer than my hands,
Cream, odorous,
Till slowly the drowse;
Though not asleep, I’d dream
The shadow of a shape,
A milk-white form
I thrust my fingers
Hands and arms into
The rumors of another life.
