1.
Everything jumps when the car pulls
up
Grasshoppers waist-high, dust like the
sun
Leaps up.
2.
Tonight my
white wall
smells like a lost prairie.
3.
Eggs. All the eggs in the world.
4.
Inside this yawn: a small pain,
a button on a single thread,
a just-licked stamp, Pegasus rising.
5.
Father to mother:
Don't go putting ideas
Into the boy's head.
6.
The best smell in the universe:
my red-dirt sweat shoes
blazing in the corner like two queer
planets.
7.
Never write a poem with darkness
With darkness in it
I mean
8.
Since Lorca invented these crickets
and ants
I keep to the sidewalk
And speak only when spoken.
9.
Look at this shirt - my shoes -
the hair on my arms - Look at my eyes.
That's all you get. Try to explain it.
1988