2 Poems

The Hermit Poaches His Egg My tongue is too wide to describe an egg. Shell, albumen, yolk and I’m done. Eggs are humps of food. I can’t go on, eggs are hatching in my eyebeams. It is because I am a primate. So I desire a cave on a sparsely treed hill above a body of water and a refrigerator and a nation of wide-tongued brothers rudely grooming their sisters who wish they could come and tidy up my camp and discuss nacktkultur with a wise man. I wrote a guide for pronouncing their names because they all look alike. They find their way around by talking: “I always support ardently anything I believe; I had the best delphiniums in the country, my husband is often away on business, My twelve children are buxom comely ruddy fresh faced cherubim full of vim and vigor.” Songbird eggs are no different, but smaller tools are needed. Dehypnotization The question was: does one arouse or arise from said state? Which also called into question the distinction between the prone and the supine, so things were still vague but mostly comfortable and remained artful. But we were still worried about the general amnesty. After all, the lepidopterist née mathematician was still en tableau vivant, and it was long past curfew, and a bad time for the anti-widdershins in general. At any rate, the butterfly net was a nice touch. In the same way that revolutions are like somebody else’s alarm clock, I pressed my lips to her bandoleer and said ‘Lights out, let’s get to bed.’ My bed was a counterrevolutionary dais and we were all in danger, but she was a daisy about it all. ‘Undressing,’ she said, ‘is the last hope for the left-handed under duress.’ Embarrassed, I tried to arch an eyebrow but needed help, so I clapped like a seal and rolled us in the kelp. We had either albacore or abalone, and that night things got lovelier when she set us adrift and we cracked edible marine gastropods with ear-shaped shells on our bellies.