(1994)
Republished by permission from "Lyric," Vol. 74, No. 3
Gimme That Ole-Time Religion Needy ancients were aggrieved If prayers’s goals were not achiev… And beat the god in stone or tree For what they thought its treacher…
Kings once favored beheadings; and when it was their turn, so did angry peasants America chose a different tableau: Black hoods, elaborate nooses
Florida, 2000 A.D. A panting tongue of a tiring natio… lapping a tawdry cornucopia poured like broken baubles down th… through the northern end of Southe…
A magic trick will awe the laity, So though it make of me a vile par… I say if he had lived Year One A… Copperfield might be today’s Mess…
A Teacher to a Boy with a Center… While you turn red at my approach,… Your nails and shift your eyes abo… Attempting all the while a saving… I play the teacher’s role: I set…
One moonless night in 1773 Americans, enflamed by British bu… Donned Indian face paint, boarded British ships, and gashed with hatchets
Savage Customs Dakota Indians placed a seed insi… The mouths of those they buried, a… A small but sturdy seedling gratif… The tribe, new life ascending from…
The Jacaranda in Spring (Near Rhyme) What discount art inspired this ta… Eleven months a year you’re quite… Too dark and gaunt, we thought, to…
My myths have talking ducks and dogs mice making Roman arches in the baseboa… burglars
Aroused by thee, I misbehave, afire with lust while thou art coo… and thou then seem a microwave and I a zap-ped molecule.
Gimme That Ole-Time Religion I As one New Yorker said, the guy w… You in New York, your wallet as h… At least has goals, unlike the oth… Who kill and maim and have no aim…
My wife not being speculative, I requested her philosophy, what her thoughts on life and deat… and, while she put away a pan, she… well, I’ll just bumble around unt…
The score now even after Jordan’s… up yours, you punk, confess before… she’d deceived you, Lance, her pre… see the Bible, frayunds, Isaiah f… four-car wreck on Hempstead, now t…
The Star See that star that now appears To glisten in the sky? It took perhaps a million years For it to reach your eye.
One morning Leda, sitting on the… Saw Zeus appear transmogrified to… She heard too late the honks and w… And so with godly force he conquer… (Some skeptics say she could have…
