Jean Day
from “Fallopian and What For”
Opening onto the meadow of it
having emerged wet from dark trees
with the ability to swivel our heads
the debate depends on what we can get
in trade:
camaraderie or the despair hysterics suffer?
Either way you may break your guitar
over the head of the premier
of our fine fat city
may approach the goose with a whoop
of riot but may not find it glorious
•
to be moved along.
I don’t mean to be radical
but kind of want to
stand around at least
brilliant in witness to the earth so large in its swirl of skirts
that we perceive it as flat and fall
into the ferment of the crowd
Do you want to make out?
in the ferment of the clouds?
See if I can change? Into pants?
It’s the way we do business here
in the oracle arena
•
On the other side of
Where we don’t wear
Even the idiot in me recognizes the pilgrimage
in this trivial pursuit
toward Cinderella’s hideout with its seven little men
and their hearts of platinum
an army of bikes likes
an army of unforgiveness
having gotten in over our heads
and sentimental about factories and mines
Liberty swings her lanterns
but the coal’s too deep, too dark
for just this reason
•
Belatedly.
The English for comrade is lady—
snap caps (not poetry) on a hot sidewalk
in the small town of another’s bed
Let’s go there.
Where bears roll their windows down for you
and then do Dallas. Not
in poetry but two-fisted apostasy
hubcaps roll away toward sunset with a ding
and the armies of kind stitch,
bitch, and wait
•
At the millpond of the horizon for reinforcements
we skate the ice without getting wet
pretend not to know how not to fall in
It’s really not fair, fear
Pussy Riot’s in here
without passing the gas of Code Pink
commotion confirmed in the wind that has caused
some bells to ring in the desert
pots and pans to be beaten to death
by sundials that are sad by definition.
We do not fit in