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The Missouri Review 27.1 (2004) 139



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Plain Talk in a Beaver Hat

Squint of window; red drapes almost open,
Like a striptease of suicides. And I'm trying
To talk some sense into the sunset—
Bloodshot eye with a vicious wink; migraine
Sulking in a worn corner of the skull.
There's an honest reason no one writes about
The banality of good. I've pressed it down
Between the lines of my faux-marble notebook,
In a pang of promiscuous ink: You can
Save the words, but they won't save you.
The first lies we tell we tell ourselves.
There's no use greasing the mirrors or buttering up
The wintry saints. Some kink in the double helix
Abbreviates our days with a nasty twist.
That's why I've locked myself behind this vodka
In the Hotel Anonymous, in a shawl of flies,
Night climbing the fire escape. That's why
I keep a sweatcloth next to the bare bed,
Mattress ticking like a convict's shirt:
For this long dark of alibis and shame.
Elton Glaser is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and editor of the Akron Series in Poetry. He has published five full-length collections of poems, most recently Pelican Tracks (SIU Press, 2003). With William Greenway, he coedited I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems of Ohio (University of Akron Press, 2002). Among his awards are two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, five fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, the Iowa Poetry Prize and the Crab Orchard Award.


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