i just took more advantage of the wonderful macbook/internetz age than i ever have before and made a quick recording of myself reading my latest-writ poem-a-day. since i don’t know how to host/embed mp3’s on LJ, you fair tumblr readers get to read/hear it first before the weekly archive. lucky you! please pardon my lisp (no really, and how i run out of breath at the word ‘getaway’) and of course the fine somerville sirens that come in kind of appropriately at the end. i’d read it out loud a few times to hear what needed revising, and since it helped me out so much i decided…it’s time to share in a new way. xojojo
74. July 15, 2010 (thurs.)
We link snakeskin arms, shimmy frillies
lower, reveal more sequins on our ungirdled
silhouettes. Left-strut, right-hip, titty-hop— i trip!
A ballerina makes a modern dance jeté—
the buzzer goes off and off, sound equiv’
to the vaudevillian devil’s crook
shepherding you offstage, a rain of tomato
curtains crowing at your stocking runs. Run!
i bolt awake from the black light night
-mare of doing a group burlesque routine
for feather’d flesh, for realzies! It’s not until we pack
the car to return to Boston, guessing at what’s
sitting on the trunk, small turnips? Sugar cane?
Live garlic, you say? —we learn the appalling audience
sound was just Papa putting his father’s WW I
dock alarm? Atrocious noise-maker under our bed
-room window. (i’m grateful it wasn’t the 20 year old
firecracker hazards like the day before.)
They were trying to shake us from humid sheets,
but we thought it was the fan, a frantic unplugging’d
made the sound go away, surely the old folks know
you want to spend the after hours of family getaway
being romantico, mixing drinks while everyone sheep sleeps,
dancing in the night light’s buttery halo, kissing and wishing
each other sweet green room roses, falling asleep holding
hands, a cork and matches under our pillow.
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