When, as the famous anecdote has it, the painter Degas told the poet Mallarmé that he had good ideas for poems but couldn’t find the right words, the latter responded, “It is not with ideas, my dear Degas, that one makes poems. It is with words.” Little interests me less than the attempt to situate …
Pepkin’s Travels 116
Out of his underwater mortgage endlessly swimming Out of his mortarless collapse, the reign of brick Out of the mortified crowds of looky-loos gawking Over his cremated house, his live wires all gone dead On account of the morass of profit and loss on this his sole world and abode On account of business done …
Scaling Knife Nocturn
The scent of hoping for a perch to bite,a plan in motion, unpaid debts. Casting his line into the river sermon,its voice rising like a clarinet, while his arms in the dim light of just-before-dawnremain a heavy burden. He can’t shake the constant reminder,the screech of a sacrifice he’d made under the road where a …
Mr. Hope
Walking up Broadway, I swear I saw Mr. Hope just leaving the Garden of Eden. Though no one else seemed to notice him there, I aver it was Hope shuffling his cards for a three-card Monte. He strutted along with a skip in his step, scatting “Ain’t Misbehavin’” wordlessly. Decked out in a seersucker three-piece …
Lines for Fortune Cookies
Everybody does this one. Don’t worry about it. Your lucky number is one, but it makes others dislike you. Someday your blueberry crumble will win a blue ribbon. The plans of your cats have reached completion. Don’t return home! You will convert loneliness into a great mastery of Jeopardy. When the mouse on your computer …
Jedediah Smith 