White women coming around the bend

In a bathrobe and trousers,

Leaving behind a trail of small coins

Starting at the gangplank,

Pour me a glass of India tea

And let your dead body fall into the cup.

Fill up the cuffs of your shirts with rouge

And an Asian softness.

You prop open a door gallantly behind me

With a rounded wheel of cheese from the Queen of the Roman Empire.

Her coattails are made of velour

And her shoes of camembert.

Instead of wearing a tennis shirt

With the superbe leash of a dog

Who follows you and plies you with sausages and coffees

Held between his paws,

In place of the barmaid’s toe shoes,

That for years have enchanted your eyes in the aisles,

On your arm you rest a gold sword

Used by Dom Delouise twice to cut his own arms off.

The nomads of the North know better than to attach anything to the backs of their sleds

With the exception of a volley of fish

They dug out from beneath our sins, shining

Like your eyes

As they slipped my clothes from me.

Your arms make the motions of prying apart my zipper

And chasing a sheep dog.

The fingers of the harpsichordist

Ring against the most beautiful vowels

Singing for the master below.

You tee off gallantly and hit a tree.

You offer to take back these offerings:

The skiing coat everyone was talking about

That you exhibited on the back of a primate;

The peaceful spider plant growing in one of your old boots

Beneath the staircase;

The janitor’s hand-made worker’s compensation agreement,

His signature written in costly French red wine;

The repair work you deducted from your taxes;

The truckload of cold strawberries that are only now ready to eat!

You compute in your ledgers

How much more it would cost to kiss the petals of a flower

And wander off with a law book balanced on your head

And it comes to... more than a suitcase!

—Depending, you guess,

On what types of old birdshit

You rub into which coffee makers

In the porter’s apartment;

So you decide you’re going to loll about in the pig sty

Until twenty-nine lesbian Jewesses

Refuse to put their pubic hair

— What?! Oh excuse me. You already did all that.

Open a bottle before you go, with your free hand,

For the smoke, for the articles, and tell me about your mother

Who could spin the globe about on the axis of her meager nudity.

—O Mama, you was be-u-ti-ful!