Wartime Pantoum (audio only)
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On Marriage
Epithalamion? Not too long back
I was being ironic about “wives.”
It’s very well to say, creation thrives
on contradiction, but that’s a fast track
shifted precipitately into. Tacky,
some might say, and look mildly appalled. On
the whole, it’s one I’m likely to be called on.
Explain yourself or face the music, Hack.
No law books frame terms of this covenant.
It’s choice that’s asymptotic to a goal,
which means that we must choose, and choose, and choose
momently, daily. This moment my whole
trajectory’s toward you, and it’s not losing
2016
Iva's Pantoum
We pace each other for a long time. I packed my anger with the beef jerky. You are the baby on the mountain. I am in a cold stream where I led you. I packed my anger with the beef jerky. You are the woman sticking her tongue out in a cold stream where I led you. You are the woman with spring water palms. You are the woman sticking her tongue out. I am the woman who matches sounds. You are the woman with spring water palms. I am the woman who copies. You are the woman who matches sounds. You are the woman who makes up words.
1969
Ghazal !يا لطيف (Ya Lateef!)
A lot more malaise and a little more grief every day,
aware that all seasons, the stormy, the sunlit, are brief every day.
I don’t know the name of the hundredth drowned child, just the names
of the oligarchs trampling the green, eating beef every day,
2020