We were fucking corndawgs
We'd go drink and pogo


unknown, St. Tropez, 1978

Immanence
-- by Eileen Myles

All the doors in my home are open.
There's a pulse outside I want to hear.

The phone's unplugged.
The pastiche of you on me would be unforgivable now.

If there's a god squirming around
she sees me & is me.
I wish the birds were souls, invisible.
I wish they were what I think they are; pure sound.


Snow Globe
-- by Kim Addonizio

It’s winter in the tiny motel.
The man and woman lie down
naked and freezing. A blizzard

streaming on the television,
gloss of ice on the windows,
the bourbon a bottle of fire.

After love she licks
his cold sweat, trying to seal
herself into him.

Smoke from their cigarettes
rising, disappearing as they sink
into sleep. If I shake them

awake now they’ll tumble
from the white bed,
ashes swirling and searing

their skin. Already
my hands, numb from holding them,
begin their painful prickling.

Already I’m remembering
his breath on my face, hot
as an animal’s, his insistent tongue.

Better to let them
lie there, then. To let the chill
of the deep drifts bury them.


Made In Holland
-- by James Tate

Pigtails fiddles with my riverbed,
she shoots some plutonium up my harpsicord.
I am here in Holland up a nut tree.
I walk the shopping mall in my pajamas.
My cologne seems to intoxicate everyone.
Deluded cattle walk out of the barbershop
saying things like "Nice pajamas," and
"Didn't I see you at the golf club last week?"
"Alms," I say, "Alms for The Sacred Rifles.
Alms for The Pampered Daughters of the Dragonfly."
Papa's up a nut tree in Holland, Pigtails
reposes over the fretwork of his dominion.
I am tethered to some daft subterfuge.
A doorbell rings, but there is no door.
Chuckle. A buzz, a bundle arrives:
someone in clogs is bringing it toward me.
It is my fever they want. I reach for the mop
and fall, fall quaintly against fluffy sashes,
and I fall on Pigtails, prod her
bereaved haven, skim the blemish of her starch.
And that is why I am in Holland.
That must be why, tulip.