We didn’t see the Feral Poet this week, but he did send in some work for his Sunday page.  A brief note attached indicated he was out of town to escape the hub-bub of Bike Week, but that he was feeling especially effusive and limber, something to do with rum and fruit juice.

* * *

Absent Dog

Four literal clowns
lined up
along
the gymnasium wall
of my youth.
We represent
the absent dog,
one said.

Maybe.
But there was
much more light
than I remember
there being
for any dance

we ever had there,
and I have become
so suspicious
of all clowns.

* * *

Poem Falling on a Man

I hear it in the kitchen
at night
making huge linoleum
sandwiches.
It recites the Kama Sutra.
It wants my wife.

I could still
kill it
if I had the guts
but I keep
remembering
how much at first
it praised me
how much
it loved me.

* * *

Tangerine Eating

Something dynamic here,
instructive:

After a brief
obligatory struggle,
manifested
as in most change

by a clinging to the known
in the face of the unknown

repeated
eight to twelve times,
each segment comes away
a golden smile.

* * *

Conversational Spanish

All these wounds,
the deepest of which
are self-inflicted and spaced
with mile markers manned
by hollow-eyed, sleepless insurance men.
I have come up against the walls

of wide-open spaces

and brother, they are built to last.
Coffee sustains with the perpetuity
of saints, and is easier to swallow.
A couple in the next booth
converse in Spanish,
but all I get are the easy words.

* * *

Creamed Jade

Just let me have
a couple more summers
here, it’s worth it
to elbow past the jerks
and starving fat kids,
all the millions
sprouting mouse ears
and vestigial tails,
for a morning
on Boca Ciega Bay

the water like creamed jade,
the dolphins in to feed.

* * *