ISSUE: Spring 2003
We are tired of arguing about who is the most hurt.
Better to toddle off for a little Chinese.
The locust flowers each year like cornmeal in the gutters.
An extraordinary way of putting things, saved up
for the love affair of the century,
gets used by a baker’s apprentice talking to his dog.
Investors sink back into the shadows.
Someone with a huge capacity for ambivalence nods off.
The cutrate sky seems for a moment to throb.
Affairs that began in spring’s alarming weather die of heatstroke.
A generous gesture hovers in the back of the mind,
but never steps forward. Cravings appear,
like baskets of fresh linen, in the homes of our friends.
Tenderness is appraised and turned in for theft.
The fragrance of dispatched gardens, like a telegram
from the government, is just a memory. It is so fitful,
so desperate, this business of what matters.
Another’s down with a stroke. This way of looking at things
will be forgotten. It was only an experiment.
