“as great knockers knocked the air”. RICHARD EBERHART
they go, don’t they, in threes,
with a clump of poison ivy stuck
in the little spaces, as in toes,
growing in the deadly meadows
of morass. Here, sharp-skinned feeders
rip them wide-open and scatter the seeds
among a hundred husbands hungry after hunts,
their wives gone “plumb crazy” in the bath.
O Tubby! don’t you know? haven’t you heard?
The day the first of them came back,
a whole block’s worth of Vermont
exploded, never to be felt again.
“Sorry you had such a wait,”
the local dealer said, “I had to tend
some poor soul got his hand caught in the blaze.”
Further North, the igloos just gave up,
the Southern States abolished what was left
of happy, lazy afternoons, and Cuba split-
how the sun got back up no one knows!
Where was I? I had a girl
locked-up with me inside the Whaler Bar,
that table thrilling to have hands held across,
knees known to nearness, sex shot to “Sorry,
was that your foot? I thought it was the bell…”
O my dumpling! the waiters had nothing but desserts for us that year!
Loving you was rather like lying down:
Nothing but sky!
Oh, we gave up the instruments, shot the dogs,
sent “poison pens” to every suitor’s “sis”.
Nothing for all your trouble but a bruised
shin, some hokum pouring from the tube:
“I think this girl is dead.”
What’s left the Shadow knows,
and the daily columns read:
“Couple for the Season. Living-in.”
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