  
|
|
|
| ||
| about the author |
|
Critique for S.B. Poems should make, at least, a good prose sense, my teacher said, echoing Ezra Pound or Robert Frost, to disciples in our dozens both unknown and now very well renowned. It is the world we echo that we create. "How sleepy and pleased are the turning faces of trees," you write from far away, while at my window a four-man crew, shouting in Portuguese, takes down a towering silver maple that's grown too rotten for the neighbors to tolerate. Dawn Song O body, we lie here locked in an inseparable embrace while hands circle the clock face twelve times faster than the sun like a lover's deliberate chase over another's body. It is second best to lie alone in bed, but to be rung out like an old year every morning at the same time is worst of all — thinking of the chopped dreams we drop in a second when the alarm sounds. Body, I am already up, gone into the world you brood on, spitefully dragging you with me to shower in the cold dawn naked, shivering, arm in arm. Desires We talked all night long about writing — the fat woman, you and I and the blonde student I wouldn't mind getting alone for a weekend: Gretchen to my Faust. We talked all night long about writing and it snowed like hell but didn't stick. The blonde girl said she wanted medical coverage, and the fat woman wanted kids. We talked all night long about writing, and I know what you want is recognition with faculty status and a book or two like stiff drinks under your belt, and I'd take the same, either way, but what I wouldn't mind more than anything are words set down to make a difference to me, to the fat woman and the blonde girl and, of course, to you, but not just you. We talked all night long about writing like characters in somebody's famous book dedicated to the author's wife. |
| © Copyright: J. Kates |
|