2 Poems from “Rouge State”

#14

Seaplanes crashing through windowpanes, Moon passing river in paper cup. The camels get restless—God whistles Through the night like lewd boys At the prison wrestling squad. The Magi know their Atari— Long drives from the bar to vacation bible school Sear in the hotter mercies of the East That leave one a-melt at landingstrips, a sherbet Too orange for summer afternoons Waiting to be licked up into tongues. #15 Here at the garden’s hot marges   Events soften into fire ants. We cock ideas at prairie dogs To watch them smoke, then squeal Pythagoreans cross their ‘t’s   With dim narcissus fresh-picked from the clefs Of that vast, inaudible cosmic symphony The cow thieves once called home. Zeus lets fly with the lightning rods   His hot heart flaming like shish-kebabs Off a Deer Park backyard grill.  Marshmellows Crisp to swart mothers, I burn—pterodactyl Dactyls sing over me with ease.