Last night's Burlesque Poetry Hour reading was fantastic. Funny readers, good pacing, a lot of hanging out afterwards. I mean, really: I went home with three books, a new understanding of a dictator's moustache, AND Michael Schiavo's underwear.
For some reason this poem--an old one--popped to mind as I was walking to work this morning. Maybe it can be rescued from the slush pile of memory and added to a manuscript...
SELFISH WAFFLEHOUSE MIDNIGHT
The blind man down the counter works his meal like an abacus. Tap tap of fork in eggs. Tap tap of toast subtracted. I do not have it so hard. Tonight I am in like with you. Lullaby like, blackjack deal like, rickshaw trammeling down the avenue like, lit cherrybomb like, bigger boy pummeling smaller boy like, marshmallow like, black dress like, name one of the Great Lakes like, straight up like, dumb like, like eggs yielding to my ready eyes and fingers. Over. Easy. The man working the frying pan has a nametag. Flynn, it says, and I love him in. I am in like with you. I am letting myself like it.
2 comments:
Well, Sandra, I'm in like with this poem. It reminds me of one that was in an issue of Pebble Lake Review (not the same premise, no, but the use of the word "like," as in the way Valley girls speak)... but I'm rambling, which is to say I hope this poem is resurrected and immortalized (in a MS). Enjoyed.
Thanks, Nate! I think it was a precursor of the riffing style of the April and August poems. I'm not terribly comfortable leaving things as prose poems--I always wonder if, for me personally, it is a sign that I'm slacking on structure. But there's something I just like about this one.
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