Collected Poems

TROUBLE

Easy enough. As when my hand Exploded my fantastic self I did not know nor understand The beauty of my lonely life. She knew me lonely so she took My bare body into her bed, Yet could not bear to let me look Her over, naked. For she said She did not know if she could bear Two hundred pounds of the blind skv, A man, a rock that breathes a woman's hair. Neither did I. And when I lay me down to die Let me call back I might have used The woman of a girl who loved me Enough to let me let her lie Alone in her own loneliness, And mind her own good business. I love for what I will become In my good time when I go home Back to my skull, that is our face. TROUBLE Well, look, honey, where I comefrom, when a girl says she's in trouble, she's in trouble. (Judy Holliday) Leering across Pearl Street, Crum Anderson yipped: "Hey Pugh! I see your sister Been rid bareback. She swallow a watermelon? Fred Gordon! Fred Gordon! Fred Gordon!' NEW POEMS 187 "Wayya mean? She can get fat, can't she?" Fat? Willow and lonesome Roberta, running Alone down Pearl Street in the rain the last time I ever saw her, smiling a smile Crum Anderson will never know, Wondering at her body. Sixteen years, and All that time she thought she was nothing But skin and bones. HUMMING A TUNE FOR AN OLD LADY IN WEST VIRGINIA dummy-dummy-dummy-dummy-day: gran maspretty baby . . . More than other song, Your song, all yours. You cast line in the water A long time ago. You plumbed it down, down, Down to the fish-heads, Stones, closed •windows, The sludge black snow. More than other song, Yours wakes the cat fish. No other, not even The splintering of ice. Not even squeal and grind Of chain on cold chisel On a rust-rotten girder, The terminal bridge. More than other song, Yours. I sit and listen To the soft floppy whisper 188 ...