Night

Joe ain't studying nobody.

he laughs his own sweet bourbon banner,

he makes it to work on time.

Late night, Joe retreats through

the straw-link-and-bauble curtain

and up to bed. Joe sleeps. Snores

gently as a child after a day of marbles.

Joe

knows somewhere

he had a father

who would have told him

how to act. Mama,

stout as a yellow turnip,

loved to bewail her wild good luck:

Blackfoot Injun, tall with

hair like a whip. Now

to do it

without him

is the problem. To walk into a day

and quietly absorb.

Joe takes after Mama.

Joe's Mr. Magoo.

Joe

thinks, half

dreaming, if he ever finds

a place where he can think,

he'd stop clowning

and drinking and then that wife

of his would quit

sending prayers through the chimney.

Ah, Lucille.

Those eyes, bright and bitter

as cherry bark, those

coltish shins, those thunderous hips!

No wonder he couldn't leave

her be, no wonder whenever she began to show

he packed a fifth and split.

Joe

in funk and sorrow. Joe

in parkbench celibacy, in apostolic

factory rote, in guilt (the brief

astonishment of memory), in grief when

guilt turns monotonous.

He always know when to go on home.

The Camel Comes to Us from the Barbarians

This one is enormous: rough-cut,

the fur like matted felt—

and so much of it,

rising in vulgar mounds upon its back

as if the sand itself had belched

into heaven's beard. Gods,

what malevolence! The eye a contant

rolling orb, glistening with ill intent,

yellowed, gummed with hair, more hairs

than you or I would care to count,

that eye marks every move its jailer makes

and waits for him to step too near —

one blow would cripple any man.

Another specimen stands bellowing

beneath the farthest palm. Though slighter,

it daunts equally, staked haunches

straining, muscles potent as the reek

that saturates our sun-baked marketplace.

About the larger one some purpose lurks:

Hindquarters splayed, it tugs against its ropes,

snorts, yearns its massive head and slavers

toward that godawful sound. Could

the drabber one be female, and its mate?

More monsters in our midst!

And yet... if these vile creatures be

like geese, or dogs, and their offspring

learn to cuddle the one

who coddles them first — why,

our fortune's pegged for sure.

Let us display our sternest countenance,

then apportion what they most desire

according to the measure of their service.

A rare commodity, these beasts —

who cannot know

what beauty wreaks, what mountains

pity moves.

 

Rosa

How she sat there,

the time right inside a place

so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with

its dream of a bench

to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:

the clean flame of her gaze

carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up

when they bent down to retrieve

her purse. That courtesy.

 

Rita Dove

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