A Brother Grimm Exposes the Truth
This plastic nurser filled with lemoned water is mine,
as are the seaweed-colored contact lenses.
Beside my handsome brother, I am a puppet, a plaything;
around women, my jaws clack shut, dusk upoon the horizon.
The perfect arc of my life is as weather mounting---
first gray, then bleak, then a deluge of hopeless black.
Dear wolf, if you lean way back, you can almost see
the stars announcing my death. They are white
and soft like the virgin neck of a swan. Bite deep, quick.
From
Say Hello
James Tate
I am trying to pry open
the tunnel of years between us
like a cork from bottle,
the mad turnip moon
right out of the sky.
If this trick works,
I will hang
bats from the roof
of my mouth,
dance like a tin can
with a firecracker engine.
Well, you cannot call me
foolish when I strike
the match that is lodged
length-wise in my throat,
though it might smudge
my breath with smoke.
I don't know if we can
huddle together like cups
in a fairy tale granny's cupboard.
I don't know if we can
clamber forever upward like twisted
branches of a cemetery oak.
One of us is shaking,
dear James.
The other is silent
as the leathery tongue
in Hitler's old jackboot.
From
The Florida Letters
The Little Pumpkin-Headed Boy
Lurked in the corner,
jealous all the good names
were already taken.
The Goat-Faced Boy.
The Turnip Kid.
Little Melon Junior.
So when it was his turn,
they took a scalpel
and carved out a nose, mouth,
punched out eyeholes
with their thumb-hooks.
When they held up the mirror
for him to see their work,
he spat out seeds like curses
then rolled outside to cry
and lament his curlicue lips,
the tambourine smile he
could never wipe off.
From
Ha Ha Tonka
