Cedar Sigo
Two Poems
Hounds Tooth

We had salt mines all over town

Living hand over fist upon their royalties.

I would eventually break their key,

Accidently and by my own foot

There was one beauty there to sing

and another to divorce me.

Tell me I needn’t fear, be kind.

She still taps one foot across the nile

To much acclaim in my own mind

Had the nerve to lay a matchbox

on my clothes, on my sink in my bedroom,

My good life and hard times.



Show Boat

              for patrick

I thought you were coming toward me
a few blocks earlier,
down Hyde street. It was a man weak
and crushed beneath this grey wig for women.
I can’t believe that it’s really you.
Who would ever remove both shoes in the Tenderloin,
waiting outside of LIFETIME BOOKS?
I rejected your invitation to the Jack Kerouac reading
as he was not represented by top agencies.
He had once given a reading at the police station.
None of this concerns the poem as pure entrance.
What I have allowed and what I might do.
Fix myself against a long drink.
Write out any trace of formal training in praise of Jack.
Go back and visit rulers of the interior,
Let loose our new books and prints.

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