Two Poems

This Is a Farewell Kiss, You Dog, Shouted

a bellicose journalist later beaten by cops to the tune

of broken ribs, an arm, and internal bleeding although his

family denies he did anything

wrong. Bronze-coloured and sprouting

seemingly live vegetation, the large

fiberglass shoe, a sculpted

source of pride for all

Iraqis, has been seized on the orphanage grounds

where it was erected, dismantled

and destroyed. Children should be put away, Deputy

Governor Abdulla

Jaballa told reporters, from any political-

related issues … since this monument can instill

things

for which the time is not now. Zaidi, before—worst

Arab insult—hurling

with startling speed and accuracy for an amateur his footgear

at the presumptive Bush, and facing if

convicted up to 15 years, also yelled, This

is the end. Yesterday

in Tikrit, Shahah Daham informed the German

news agency DPA I did

take the shoe down immediately and destroyed it

and I did not

ask why.

A Small Lunch of Leftovers

I sniff my greasy trove—three baby

back ribs I’d forgotten on a sunny

picnic table—then chuck

a gob of fat big as his head to a sandy-

coloured lizard, flesh suicidally

intercepted by a ponderous

winged bug. Both prizes in his maw,

the reptile scuttles stage left,

where, just before he exits

into scattered bushes, a larger

saurian devours the mini-

meal trio. Some dream,

huh? A consequence, I fear,

of days spent idling with Notes

From Underground’s disreputable

narrator, topped off by bitterly

scanning from below through my crack

between literary floorboards

that Nevsky Prospect of teeming

arrivistes, Poetry magazine.

Undeservedly, I have brought

everything upon myself—including my

Erato, the novice whore I schooled in

vicious clichés and dumped,

contemptibly, back on the streets. Lizard-

like, Dostoevsky knows

the picnic I’m coming from.