hymn to a thing that I knew and still know to some degree
A girdle and a griddle and a boy, a bubble gum boy
with his sticky and his merging. A brother and a friend
in a truck in a bed, and oranges and pumpkins and Oreos
and a bicyclist and all things fast and red. A man, a cigar
and the cigar’s cigarette and a stain, a hand and coffee
in a bottle and a baby and the smell, the mud and the slip
in a town, in a jungle, in an ocean, in a box, and you
and me, a part of me, and then some more of me but not all
and some uncles, and some cousins, and aunts four to one
for change, we’re changing, and some Coke, a cockroach,
and something frozen, and a threat, and witchcraft, even
some spiders and worms and skin, and a hang, bananas,
a shower, ripeness, and cooking and calling and trotting,
yes I said trotting, dripping, part flowing, converging
three spirals, a vortex, four suctions, five or six big bangs
and a largeness, a whizzing, an uncomfortable silence, and
finally, finally something I can squeeze into nicely.
