Read New and Selected Poems for Free Online Page B

pressed
Against misfortune;
    Â 
You had a pair of silver,
Spiked-heeled shoes,
And a peekaboo blouse.
    Â 
We looked swank kissing
While reflected in a pawnshop window:
Banjos and fiddles around us,
    Â 
Even a gleaming tuba. I said,
Two phosphorescent minute hands
Against the Unmeasurables,
    Â 
Geniuses when it came to
Undressing each other
By slow tantalizing degrees . . .
    Â 
That happened in a crepuscular hotel
That had seen better days,
Across from some sort of august state institution,
    Â 
Rain-blurred
With its couple of fake
Egyptian stone lions.
Note
A rat came on stage
During the performance
Of the school Christmas play.
Mary let out a scream
And dropped the infant
On Joseph’s foot.
The three Magi remained
Frozen
In their colorful robes.
You could hear a pin drop
As the rat surveyed the manger
Momentarily
Before proceeding to the wings
Where someone hit him,
In earnest,
Once, and then twice more,
With a heavy object.
History
On a gray evening
Of a gray century,
I ate an apple
While no one was looking.
    Â 
A small, sour apple
The color of wood fire
Which I first wiped
On my sleeve.
    Â 
Then I stretched my legs
As far as they’d go,
Said to myself
Why not close my eyes now
    Â 
Before the late
World News and Weather.
Strictly Bucolic
    for Mark and Jules
    Â 
Are these mellifluous sheep,
And these the meadows made twice melliferous by their
      bleating?
Is that the famous mechanical windup shepherd
Who comes with instructions and service manual?
    Â 
This must be the regulation white fleece
Bleached and starched to perfection,
And we could be posing for our first communion pictures,
Except for the nasty horns.
    Â 
I am beginning to think this might be
The Angelic Breeders Association’s
Millennial Company Picnic (all expenses paid)
With a few large black dogs as special guests.
    Â 
These dogs serve as ushers and usherettes.
They’re always studying the rules,
The exigencies of proper deportment
When they’re not reading Theocritus,
    Â 
Or wagging their tails at the approach of
Theodora. Or is it Theodosius? Or even Theodoric?
They’re theomorfic, of course. They theologize.
Theogony is their favorite. They also love theomachy.
    Â 
Now they hand out the blue ribbons.
Ah, there’s one for everyone!
Plus the cauldrons of stinking cabbage and boiled turnips
Which don’t figure in this idyll.
Crows
Just so that each stark,
Spiked twig,
May be even more fierce
With significance,
    Â 
There are these birds
As further harbingers
Of the coming wintry reduction
To sign and enigma:
    Â 
The impatient way
In which they shook snow
Off their wings,
And then remained, inexplicably
    Â 
Thus, wings half-open,
Making two large algebraic
X
’s
As if for emphasis,
Or in the mockery of . . .
February
The one who lights the wood stove
Gets up in the dark.
    Â 
How cold the iron is to the hand
Groping to open the flue,
The hand that will draw back
At the roar of the wind outside.
    Â 
The wood that no longer smells of the woods;
The wood that smells of rats and mice—
And the matches that are always so loud
In the glacial stillness.
    Â 
By its flare you’ll see her squat;
Gaunt, wide-eyed;
Her lips saying the stark headlines
Going up in flames.
Punch Minus Judy
Where the elevated subway slows down,
A row of broken windows,
Only a single one still intact
Open and thickly curtained.
    Â 
That’s where I once saw a thin arm
Slip out between the slits,
The hand open to feel for drops of rain,
Or to give us a papal blessing.
    Â 
Another time, there were two—
Chopped off at the elbows
Raising a small, naked baby
For a breath of evening air
    Â 
Above the sweltering street
With a gang of men partying
Out of brown paper bags,
One limping off, seemingly, in a huff.
Austerities
From the heel
Of a half-loaf
Of black bread,
They made a child’s head.
    Â 
Child, they said,
We’ve nothing for eyes,
Nothing to spare for ears
And