Anthony Robinson
Terns, Herons, Bitter Melon
All my hair in a Safeway grocery bag
On the bathroom floor
A soul moves in a white straight line
Coming back to the point of
origin: the aviary of loss.
What’s given:
(a few dollars, clinging, three
peach pits, head)
What’s tallied:
(told, found, abacus beads,
feathers for quills)
Today they circle.
On Thursday, they form a V.
We’ve gotten used to the patterns.
Fruit gone bad on the kitchen counter:
The sweet smell like distance.
The distant smell like
Michael Jackson Caught With Weapons of Mass Destruction!
—a poem in
Girl leaves, can’t find me. Brake
trouble is big this year.
At
Susan,
The river.
The arch. Look, the casino.
Kristin, the river.
Look. Aaron,
the river. Look.
Pink and green.
Tonight the half-circle is luminescent;
it glows like the brand-new Twenty.
She being brand-new…and I know,
the mall was closed.
Another
Suffocated tabloid-woman.
Radical defense at
Racial defense in
Radical separation, racial
stratification. Welsh rabbit with a man with startling hair.
At the center I tried to catch the bus.
Dead Strom Thurmond.
(Fucked a black girl.)
Dear Strom Thurmond, you sir are no Maggie Gyllenhaal.
I forgot about Central time. TV an hour
early.
& after a thoroughly disappointing night,
the Blazers beat the Lakers 112 – 108
&
the snow all fresh on the vacant
downtown was blindingly beautiful
though all I wanted was a Pepsi.