Poetry

You starve yourself, your body as essential as the crust off a bread. Not me – I’m the whole loaf. I rise and fall. I tease the clock. A proud machetti tears me open, warm, white, steaming. Stuffed with tuna, devilled egg, curled like an intestine, I am greedy, Every pink pimento is a fleck…

I ought to have a good opinion of myself but from my unlucky education I cannot get rid of a mean timidity as to my own worth. I was very genteelly lodged. And then the century garbage: full of prying, deceitful, hateful people named geikie, bailie, ritchie or some other name It ends in -ie…

Don’t worry about my tongue being a biscuit of dust. Don’t think about my pillow which is filled with quinine. I don’t. My malaria is not contagious, nor is it hereditary. Why do I walk bent over like this? Because when they operated to remove my malaria, and found nothing, they became bitter and sewed…

Let us remember that unsung breed who send my likes to you – wisely: Van Elliott, Bert Kelsey, Fred Weed of Roxbury Latin; and the likes of Feathereye Mykey my uncle did so unknowingly. Let me remember thresholds left here to cross yours there; remember the clutter of the place that’s Feathereye’s junkshop where I…

I received a very formal invitation: written on an anvil, her name flew by me. A soliloquy was given. Pieces of barbed wire were lifted, like flags. Of course, the necessary wafer salted with magnesium was passed around. When she first spoke I summoned immediately the bondsman for the indignant. Believe me, I never knew…

After Verlaine In the endless anxieties of the plain the uncertain snow shines as sand. Of copper is the sky, without one light. One would believe any moon, seen living and dying. As some storm clouds hover infirm and grey, the oaks of close-lying forests are among the vapours. Of copper is the sky, without…

In the country perhaps some rooster or another crows on Monday morning (the 15th? the 22nd?) This particular sound reminds me that I haven’t changed my pants since Monday Between the rising and the setting of the sun I’ve forgotten my old friends. translated by George Kimball

I have tried to write my insides out with a blunt pencil fresh from the factory new made unshorn at all I end up using a red ballpoint and I have begun to exhaust the truth of the port-bottle Here I am in Balto, passing thru In this room Upstairs my son lies on the…

This dread disease was first recorded by An ancient commentator, who described The symptoms well but possibly relied Too much on hearsay. Be that as it may, It starts with fever followed by a chill, Then six full days of agony near death, Rapidity of pulse, shortness of breath, And diarrhea, though they have a…