In the morning I ate a banana
like a young ape
and worked on a poem called “Nocturne.”
In the afternoon I opened the mail
with a short kitchen knife,
and when dusk began to fall
I took off my clothes,
put on “Sweethearts of the Rodeo”.
and soaked in a claw-footed bathtub.
I closed my eyes and thought
about the alphabet,
the letters leaving the halls of kindergarten
to become literature.
If the British call z zed,
I wondered, why not call b bed and d dead.
And why is z, which looks like
the fastest letter, at the very end?
unless they are all moving east
when we are facing north in our chairs.
It was then that the dog barked,
there was a clap of thunder,
and the claw-footed bathtub
took one step forward,
or was it backward
I had to ask
as the windows went dark
and I reached for a far-away towel.
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