Night
Joe ain't studying nobody.
he laughs his own sweet bourbon banner,
he makes it to work on time.
Late night, Joe retreats through
the straw-link-and-bauble curtain
and up to bed. Joe sleeps. Snores
gently as a child after a day of marbles.
Joe
knows somewhere
he had a father
who would have told him
how to act. Mama,
stout as a yellow turnip,
loved to bewail her wild good luck:
Blackfoot Injun, tall with
hair like a whip. Now
to do it
without him
is the problem. To walk into a day
and quietly absorb.
Joe takes after Mama.
Joe's Mr. Magoo.
Joe
thinks, half
dreaming, if he ever finds
a place where he can think,
he'd stop clowning
and drinking and then that wife
of his would quit
sending prayers through the chimney.
Ah, Lucille.
Those eyes, bright and bitter
as cherry bark, those
coltish shins, those thunderous hips!
No wonder he couldn't leave
her be, no wonder whenever she began to show
he packed a fifth and split.
Joe
in funk and sorrow. Joe
in parkbench celibacy, in apostolic
factory rote, in guilt (the brief
astonishment of memory), in grief when
guilt turns monotonous.
He always know when to go on home.
The Camel Comes to Us from the Barbarians
This one is enormous: rough-cut,
the fur like matted felt—
and so much of it,
rising in vulgar mounds upon its back
as if the sand itself had belched
into heaven's beard. Gods,
what malevolence! The eye a contant
rolling orb, glistening with ill intent,
yellowed, gummed with hair, more hairs
than you or I would care to count,
that eye marks every move its jailer makes
and waits for him to step too near—
one blow would cripple any man.
Another specimen stands bellowing
beneath the farthest palm. Though slighter,
it daunts equally, staked haunches
straining, muscles potent as the reek
that saturates our sun-baked marketplace.
About the larger one some purpose lurks:
Hindquarters splayed, it tugs against its ropes,
snorts, yearns its massive head and slavers
toward that godawful sound. Could
the drabber one be female, and its mate?
More monsters in our midst!
And yet . . . if these vile creatures be
like geese, or dogs, and their offspring
learn to cuddle the one
who coddles them first—why,
our fortune's pegged for sure.
Let us display our sternest countenance,
then apportion what they most desire
according to the measure of their service.
A rare commodity, these beasts—
who cannot know
what beauty wreaks, what mountains
pity moves.
Rosa
How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.
That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.
Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.
How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.
(c) Rita Dove. All rights reserved.
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