CXIV
In The Stocking Factory
The woman rings the bell coherently (Sadie’s burned herself badly)
Training her horse (I lost my keys in the bushes)
Love’s poisons. Three feet (Legs lift out of the morning)
Gliding on the sidewalk, some mice (All of her skin)
Take a cracker from a junkie. (She loves a man in the bush)
Greeting and smiting with a halberd (Sea monsters now offer their hands, who always at first)
Young construction workers kneel (In these hallowed drain pipes)
Before the king’s hard body. (Doo-wopped for lariats)
She walks all over the dressers. (And leans on the sultan’s pillows)
She dances in the plaster. (Laughing at my home-made townhouse)
An apple yells out louder than the finish line. (THE DESI ARNEZ CHAIN LETTER)
She crouches. She adjusts her gait on the window’s ledge. (Infrequently, on)
The world has wandered in to the supermarket. (A cat-caller and a nay-sayer)
A Mafia don stands behind his cement mixer (Taking the easter bow tie to court)
Brushing spiderwebs carefully from his hair. (Whose entire Detroit family)
She ignores the lawn chair. (There goes another lost plumber)
On the verandah, night (And when the time comes to walk into the darkness)
Looks out of the face (on the day the lamb, or)
Of the newly born. (I see something coming, aces and electric eels)