|
"Senator (I have never lain with rubrics,
nor am I among the indicted's
swart date books: I am the anchorite's
punched lips. Small-lunged boys
who duck in the old beds from dogs
have lain low in me;
rabbits, I think, have bolted here
who smell a cold hole
in the fuck-all blurry middle
of a life sprint. The ant
comes to me for its mortar: I am the divots
of the ballpeens, cane marks
outside libraries. I fell from a tree planted on a hill
of the earth's early ticker tape; I cracked open,
a walnut of ticker tape. I am a tick
in the hide of the book, seed
of the monograph: Yesterday the dewpoint fell
and a big fog issued from the comma -- meadows
in the semi-colons filled with tractors, the plow's tines
are made of me, as were the eyelashes
of Elijah, fingernail moons
of Coltrane -- my heelmarks
are scattered in the mesquite tree, I was abused
by cummings.
The day the pennies pitched their tents
on the banks of the math books,
I became their tent stakes. Queens
have walked in me for I am
smoother than a dashboard:
Jerusalem is just a booth in the heat, but ain't I
the backrooms of Nineveh. I respect the oyster
for being the grotto of a single mood -- cowry's arcature --
but in me is a canyon filled with stones
that are sweetly immobile, in me
an old man's laundry
sculls on the slantlight. I am a small girl's middle, suitcase
of the vivid poor -- farthest cousin of the thistle's tribe,
having struck and hung on
in this most drifting soil: my whole family was born
in an un-neutral footnote
and were taken out into the wire and weeds
and were shot in the gravel; it is on gravestones that I am
the cradle of years,
and) I have to say
it's a pleasure
to appear before you
in this honored room."
|
|
