Robert Sheppard
A Poem (from book 9 of The Lores: Twentieth Century Blues)
no negotiations
tart! he shouts at the slot machine
armed to the teeth with retributive spite
erect on the plinth of his own mottoes
his gun-oily digits target our lips
a composite hero squanders his rationed milk
ghosts, nazis, saints, all alive at once
a smudge of human interest disrupts
this urban pastoral with a moment’s self
it rubs itself watches another walk bare
buttocked across the room limbs improvise upon
a melody of clefts between tense shoulder-
blades, sharp breath ecstasies their communicative ethic
in times of black maps imagination is
intervention (zero hour malevolence trades in history
last updated November 24, 2003