Fetch

Fetch

Fetch

After six months with the Sisters of Shame
I returned home to find that the supposedly obsolete
Hands Off policy was back in force – no more
joined writing, the miracle that always surrounded it

faded to nothing because I’d sequenced one of the Earl’s
witless wives & why not? After
that sell-out performance in Rome
I had a license to play. A purple tree

with paint I already have & a vermilion sky
that I’ll swing from, pushed
by you. Are
you qualified to? Anointed

with crows’ milk? Black mothers
under the soil, they dance
as best they can. Not as lucky as we are
who have a huge hall all to ourselves. But damn

that band. Every three minutes they change
from a cotillion to a tango. For the cotillion
we move to the rhythm of water dripping
from a tap & for the tango it’s the splash

of a bird in a bath. Not as easy
as it looks. The moss is slippery
& the water a swill of shit & feathers. Soaked
to the skin, he takes off his clothes & puts them

on a dog, will use its body heat
to get them dry. At this rate
I’ll never have what it takes for the Earl’s
other wives. At the very thought

of a ménage a trois or more I tremble
uncontrollably. Up here
in what was my mother’s room
I’ll die too, & if I don’t at least

I’ll have dinner with someone
who understands me, a no longer young man
who took to poetry
like a puppet to wood.