My love-
I think I died today
When I was walking across the street-
A bleak and muddied sky
and sidewalks of pristine filth
(They run all over you know,
covering the surface of the earth in strides of square)
And the tapping noise my boots made, that little slap
of slush then the pocked-pavement-
How could you say that I did not die?
And there was a homeless man in my afterlife-
I think he comes to everyone-
One last ditch effort to weed the
charitable from the foolish,
the ones who did not know a
certain saint was waiting.
I asked him if his donations were taxed
In hours of cold hands grabbing
at existence as though it were a
commodity, Like we did that day,
window shopping--
Oh for a life! Some flowers in
a backyard, And a crying baby
somewhere in the hazy sunset distance
All the eternity we can handle.
Someday the world will stop for me again
and I will alight as from the top of the escalator
to the cool of a departments store,
walking as though I had never ceased to be propelled upwards
now choosing to glide horizontally because I can.
And the goods to admire-
shaking hands with sweater sleeves, sheer and woolen,
to measure their fineness with the flick of my fingertips,
measuring with glances how I shall fill me and you,
The two of us together.
- Elise Matz 2001
THE MEMPHIS FEVER BANKS
We detoxed in Memphis
where they take your temperature
and blow it in a vase.
My deep need saluting
the stiff crazies swimming
their long nights under suspicion.
One whole wall the blue
chromatic Fahrenheits
of our Confederacy.
Glory says the weather is evil
to Atlanta crumpling
verandahs up and down the family.
I say nothing doing any heavier
than the captain aboard trouble
on a blue light special.
They tell you keep in mind
the distal. Glory says blight
scrubbed the walls of Nivea.
They tell you don't watch.
When the mammal abates
your incubus is joined by millions.
In a polished shield they
watch their overtime winding
glaze from shatters.
(Brochure available at Langerhans
wherever pain-free magnification has opened
the door to color garaging.)
The captain lounging like a python
swelling its blood
with tokes of New York Life.
Home from the fever banks no wind chimes,
haloes, peristaltic phosphorous.
Gone the Hercules fire buckle,
his blue siren, his starlight abandonment.
Gone the black nails and the heavier-than-air divorce.
Hello Glory the doomsday orphan.
FLORIDA
I have been to Florida
I have seen mollusks of the newly astral
strewn over the sand like receipts
for grandsons mailed Philadelphia
I have been to Florida
I have sucked the tonic promises of heaven
in the juice bars of Biscayne teddies
waiting naked under the tables at 21
I have been to Florida
I have seen the armadillos spilling mango
on the outskirts of Easter morning
under the scrutiny of plumb-bobs
I have been to Florida
on the Cocoa Beach ether that carries
you to seasons turning pink neon
into 2am Chicago August
I have been to Florida
with brief treatment mothers
oiling their red reflections
against the royal palms of the headmen
I have been to Florida
at the spring canonization
of the breakdown of satin linings
and the hot browns going under hard
I have been to Florida
nights when moonlight smears
your resistance to the dogs
and flushed souls race their Pennzoil flamingos
I have been to Florida
all day all night Angie in the buckle seat
Uncle Billy burning tragedies of oil
to a cold surmise facing Africa
I have been to Florida
when you re-enter the sparkling time vaults
and traverse the blind-white hyperblue in Aspen
and her perfume languishes in steam
I have been to Florida
where everything I imagine is true
for the ten minutes it takes
and the ten minutes it gives
- Murray Moulding 2001
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