Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Sapphire


EXCERPT FROM "RABBIT MAN"


3.


you saw death like the black legs of your mother

like the bent teeth of your retarded sister

like the wet smell of light in a fish's eye.

you saw death riding without a car or credit cards.

you saw death creeping waddling like the fat women

  you hated.

you saw Jesus could not save you.


god's hand is creased with the smell of burnt hair and

  hot grease,

she hears you tell your sons don't get no

  black nappy-head woman.

her titties sag down sad snakes that crawl up your legs

till your penis talks and with blind sight you see

the two daughters you left in the desert without water.

oh death knows you and invites you for dinner,

rolls out the driveway like a coupe de ville,

is a snake-tongued daughter who turns on you,

is a thirsty rabbit choking on a lonely road.

death is an ax in an elevator rising to the sun.

death is god's egg.

death is a daughter who eats.

you are the table now the wet black earth lays upon--

you are dinner for dirt,

a cadillac spinning back to a one-room shack.

you are the rabbit released from fear,

the circle broken by sun

the handle of a buried ax,

head rolling thru the desert

like tumbleweed--

back to Neptune.

copyright 1994, from American Dreams



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