Four poems

By August Kleinzahler
Copyright 1999 by August Kleinzahler

Watching Young Couples with an Old Girlfriend On Sunday Morning

How mild these young men seem to me now
with their baggy shorts and clouds of musk, as if younger brothers of the
women they escort in tight black leather, bangs and tattoos, cute little
toughies, so Louise Brooks annealed

in MTV, headed off for huevos rancheros
and the Sunday Times at some chic, crowded dive. I don't recall it at all this
way, do you ? How sweetly complected and confident they look, their faces
unclouded by the rages

and abandoned, tearful couplings of the night before, the drunkenness, beast savor and
remorse. Or do I recoil from their youthfulness and health ? Oh, not recoil, just fail to see
ourselves. And yet, this tenderness between us that remains

was mortared first with something dark, something feral, we still refuse, we still refuse to name.

The Dead Canary

Behold the dead canary of Saturn,
rain matting its feathers and runnelling past its vivid beak.
- Someone's poisoning them.

the old lady says, then gives her black Scottie a yank before he inhales the remains.
- Sad, sad, sad,
the old lady says, head bowed

over the tiny yellow thing, so delicate
and gay, so exquisite in its proportions and shape, collapsed there on the bleary pavement.

Then flashes me an eldritch look in passing. As if I spent my days with a drooper,
skulking about in search of their feeders,

alive only to cancel out their color and song. I would as soon hammer a butterfly
against a wood fence with a sixpenny nail

and go about with its powder on my sleeve to savor under black light later that evening,
alone in my rooms with my stoppers and vials.

No, no, I am a clement soul, not a beast, and fill with plenty at its ruined wings, but marvel
as well at what a picture it makes,

nicely off-center and ravaged enough
but not too, spread out there
on a square of sidewalk - framed:

if only for an hour or a day
until a cat comes along to tear it apart or it's sluiced to the gutter by rain.

High School Confidential

Maria I love you Jesus
Your red lips you . . . Better
Than Angela but don't say
can I walk you home later
Or maybe we could meet at Tito's
So no one will see I like your
New shoes and blouse I notice
You every day talking with
Your friends before lunch
Did you see Felipe with those
guys last week I can't believe
You ever really liked him

My mother works till 8
And her ugly boyfriend's
Down in Fresno (I hope
Maybe he drops dead) so
Would you like to stop by
I could put on some music
Special favorites I think you
Would like them too you seem
So nice I mean when I look
At you you seem so nice so
Kind and pretty big brown eyes
Maria I love you Jesus

Longitude Lane

The oleander on Longitude Lane
flares among the languors and fevers of June below the south-facing piazzas
the sea breeze find
or don't quite find
along the corridors of ivy covered brick Carolina gray brick and wrought iron
that wind away inland from the Battery

History just sits out there, a kind of weather in the harbor and beyond
on the plantations and through the low country with its bogs and herons
its forgotten skirmishes

And the manners in town so antique, so elegant an underwater Kabuki in summer dresses
The old families and Huguenot names

The long siege and storied cannonades

Turkey buzzards over the market
water rats under the pantry

The precious settee and the wild, wild daughters