Bad Ideas. Michael V. Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ enslaving?

      Dear hatred, sweet hatred,

      do you not move our enemies

      to know us better?

      Prayer for Envy

      Canvas envies paint.

      The bullhorn envies

      the voice without need

      of a battery.

      The diamond envies our indifference for coal.

      Pavement envies the boot, whereas

      the stiletto envies grass

      which is more true than

      the stiletto envies the boot

      or that pavement

      could envy grass.

      The needle envies

      the wound it closes, the scalpel

      envies skin.

      The ground the air

      for how it moves; the Earth

      its steady orbit.

      The dead envy the living,

      above all, for their smell.

      Envy

      envies only itself.

      In a song, all silence is envied by its notes.

      Notes being nothing

      but noise without a pause.

      The hand

      envies the hangnail

      which harms

      without intent.

      Prayer for Paternal Love

      All eight fingers on his right hand refuse

      to be a blessing

      so that even at the dinner table

      he cannot pinch salt from the crowding

      of his digits.

      Days after he was born,

      Only dogs,

      his father had said,

      could ignore them.

      Eight splayed fingers on the back

      yard stump, knuckles

      around the wrist,

      Hold still, his dad says.

      The boy prays the octopus

      of his hand contains

      a secret.

      Bouyancy

      like silt that can storm

      then settle, given time.

      He has loved his father

      less than either of them

      would wish.

      Now give it here,

      his father says, and the boy

      to prove the point

      reaches for their axe.

      Prayer for Happiness

      When your father dies and leaves you

      more money than you anticipated

      can you admit there is not in his death

      some fickle breeze of how easy it is

      to embrace happiness?

      Liquid,

      hard to hold, happiness is an acid

      not long contained, it leaks

      through any trap. Assumes

      any shape:

      Happiness comes to the hand

      holding the knife that slits the throat.

      Happiness in the eye of the kiddie

      porn find online.

      Relief is bedfellows with happiness

      when the car crash fells someone

      else’s daughter, when cancer

      takes down a killer who we breezily

      forget is loved by family.

      Each time we celebrate

      the downfall of a dictator

      we drag happiness through our muck

      by its collar so that happiness

      will not recognize itself.

      Prayer for a Wig

      in memory of Elise Partridge

      In the untidy storage room before a reading,

      she touched a small hand to her cancer wig with a laugh

      at its benefits. Like, my hair is always done;

       no more expensive cuts!

      The irony had an echo, how the more

      people you love the more bad news is had.

      She smiled. We smiled. I described a drag mullet—

      a dear friend’s wig re-gifted, that she’d been given

      with cancer at sixteen (what luck to be born

      to outlive experimental treatments)

      —that I admitted was a joy to wear. Proof

      my dear friend lived.

      Prayer for Promiscuity

      Midnight in Stanley Park,

      the moon is an ally. Night

      breathes СКАЧАТЬ