My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer

AN ANSWER TO JAIME DE ANGULO

ONE NIGHT STAND Listen, you silk-hearted bastard, I said in the bar last night, You wear those dream clothes Like a swan out of water. Listen, you wool-feathered bastard, My name, just for the record, is Leda. I can remember pretending That your red silk tie is a real heart That your raw wool suit is real flesh That you could float beside me with a swan’s touch Of casual satisfaction. But not the swan’s blood. Waking tomorrow, I remember only Somebody’s feathers and his wrinkled heart Draped loosely in my bed. AN ANSWER TO JAIME DE ANGULO If asked whether I am goyim, Whether I am an enemy to your people, I would reply that I am of a somewhat older people. My people (the gay, who are neither Jew nor goyim) Were caught in your Lord God Jehovah’s first pogrom Out at Sodom. No one was very indignant about it. Looking backwards at us is hard on neutrals (ask Mrs. Lot someday) You may say it was all inhospitality to angels. You may say we’re all guilty; well, show us An angel pacing down Hollywood, wings folded, And try us. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 13 13 ...