Poetry

Herculasses, a feminine fauna.
Naked as the crashing of barrels.
Cooped up on top of trampled beds.

has a name of her own, you know. So?
So ask her what in tarnation she thinks
she’s doing here among the bathers, nudes
reclining, torsos of Venus, costumed odalisques

Summer was flooding the city highways
bathing sycamores below the savage tenements,
[…]

Boulevard Lannes what are you doing so far out in space
With your garbage carts pulled by draught horses plodding
    one behind another…

unbalance the flowers on their stems:
their brute grace fisted me silly. Now
I’m sodden as Sunday. Greeks
couldn’t speak of my feelings, I’m a zoo baby.

I was sleeping in Madison, Anthony Bradbury’s spareroom,
after a day when we visited a gallery to look at collages
he had pasted from illustrations torn out of magazines.