NAMED AFTER DAYS

Theater won’t do, ice flakes cast up (or licked, touched with the lips, by the sailorsuited chimpanzee)
Salinger on joy as a liquid, or Stafford saying what comes to us enliven
not inner discourse the quiet a long and sad pause as when oatmeal cooked steams
to be fluffed, novelist plumping us like a pillow. Cervantes Sterne Melville Joyce and
Weller’s striped waistcoat, barberpole of service, remnant of head pigtailed and powdered
are water from well or barrel, the brick at the foot of an overflow to lessen a hole in dirt.
Gigantism does not translate well because the gold egg’s our size, pullet armful as
in Stone the rope to dunk the car abruptly has leaves on, scenes in novels having no behind, lighthouse drops
framed in Dickens’s hall another matter, excisions his shadow
pushed paper paper pushed to script, O’Neill’s father’s the world is mine
in limelight, on the rock hard in a small theater nearly translucent without a
magic lantern lens, wick. Haining’s washateria porthole doors with women’s names on like boats
needs sample names even made up for the effect, to list them an
element in description as project as now in this one
lace and odd sock go in at the tip with a quarter cup of detergent quarters
in a rolled wallet with ties.

10.21.84