Ginger Knowlton >

a lobsterman's sleeve
lost socks
recursive governance

a lobsterman's sleeve

all of those pictures would have told me nothing.
maybe seeing your wife there, swimming,

it would have crossed my mind to turn off the oven.
there was nothing in it but dry brush and enthusiasm.

I know an 82-year-old painter who has sketched nothing but ovens.
baking, for me, is inevitably, or, it is an inevitability,

I would rather be swimming with your wife.
all of the lobster pots are full, but there are no lobstermen.

this is not meant to be funny. I think that we would have
a good time in the ocean. we would swim under a pink moon

in a pearl grey sky. you would dangle bits of string from a blue bridge,
pieces of wire for soft crab meat, and you would not share.

we would sit with all the lobstermen and watch you finally feed yourself.
butter and tears would streak your face, and then

you would wipe your mouth on one of the lobstermen’s sleeves.
then you would grin.

I will swim far far off into the grey ocean until I become a perfect
little speck. your wife will take you to the A & P, just

where you have always wanted to go.

lost socks

grey tube socks with red stripes droop from the shower rod.

in all of the shopping carts clattered down the alley
your old socks are overflowing and stolen
from the dumpster by a man ranting
about communists. a man straddles
the saddle of his bicycle
one foot on the ground.

your long legs are strewn across me
long-neck beer bottles in the dumpster down there
and a man mimicking your noise

it is quiet in here now
and red cows on a green hillside
in a low moan only one hundred miles away

no one has ever seen the hydrogen atom
it is entirely theoretical

on the first cold day red cows huddle together against wet
green grass
forget the dead you left they will not follow you
one cow rolls over on its back

there, some legs in the air.

recursive governance

We live in a granular universe, best governed by those men sleeping in the parks. One of them, I believe, is dying. On a green bench above him, and others like him, sits one of the sleeker homeless, his back flawless sienna, his eyes sharp still, his teeth in tact (This I can only surmise. I have not seen his teeth.) The dying man lies on his side. His ribcage juts, thrusts, leaps skyward. And this, this is the way to die.

On other patches of grass, in the same group, there are fatter men, but these are not so fat as the stereotypically bald capitalist. The true proletariat have no haunches. These men are only fat by comparison to the gaunt man reaching in his sleep. These others sleep too, but they will wake soon, shuffle through their paper bags, hitch their britches up. I do not know what they will do with a dead man.