RAGGEDY ANDY

by Derek Pollard

 

 

          Today is like Denmark
A fingerprint dragged across the mirror
Fine silt drifting through the afternoon air

Who is Iginla? What does Lem mean?

          I catch the lid of the saucepan
As it slides onto the stove
The ruddy circles of the electric burners
Ruddier when splashed with Tabasco
Ruddier still the night I opened
My finger hanging an under–the–counter
Stereo beneath cupboards sagging
With the weight of twenty–five years

This year is grey, glutted with rain

          When someone yells Faggot
What do you do? Again, and again,
And again, what do you do? Today,
We shake our heads in exhaustion
And disbelief, wondering whether
It will be drugs or simply the strain
Of such senseless stupidity
That finally unseats our neighbor
The one whose brother kept yelling
The other day like it was Nazi Germany
And no mistakes could be made
To keep the trains running
(On time or not, does history
Bear out that it mattered?)

          If you use non–boiled India ink
To give yourself a tattoo, what happens?
Does drinking your own urine actually
Cure fever and chill? Do such things
Even matter when you are only given
Two quick choices—either to talk
To your own shorn skull at the side
Of a grave or to take up house
With Dick Cheney?

 

 

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