David Dodd Lee

Two Poems

Translation Ambulance

They call them tracers and they sit in the dark
With the video versions of what is not you

Bright arcs over gray

“a choreography of human barks rising from the bunkers.”

A doctor,
From Pakistan, enters the Elysian fields of light

Speaking flawlessly

Not making eye contact . . .

A maelstrom of wood plugs up
The fallopian brake where the trees fan out

Sends the boxcars flying

Jet propelled, seeds riding in pasty water

Being born isn’t the great accident

The pure cells ride the
Heavily burdened ones

(a wasp gall explodes)

A surfeit of fortification goes straight to the damaged boy’s forehead

The other ones look out at the sand—

some daydream—

East of Kabul—

Half notes, Whole notes, a soundless impasto



Errors

        (an Ashbery Erasure poem)


weather in boxes
lit red with snow

Carnivores, and light

winter is beyond the bed

tall and violent

i thought of your plight
cave doping
a tit of unrisen love

Flat head that fumes
desire for falling

pay her

the rope’s silence is true?

return to SHAMPOO 37