Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Jackson Mac Low


HE APOLOGIZED FOR FLAMING TELEGRAPHERS


He apologized for dividing our occasions.
Pastimes get lost among a cappella flies.
Your wrist bent backward during a corny binge.
A fish beats any two conversations
The States are full of narcissistic rats and so is Lapland.
A casual vision was added to her monstrous memory.
The alphabet was pumped into the sun by Jonah.
Our nightingales' wings made them retain their differences.
A teapot was gathered up from a fiery road.
The planets began before history stank.
His smoky-flaming urn was lost among hair-raising
	suitcases.
The sun anthropomorphizes icebergs.
The sound check came out very fine and very steely.
A short sunset closed in on our notions.
My frustratingly reserved agent is inexhaustible.
One Mongolian orderly could not comprehend their 
	chutzpah.
Morsels left by the mirrored tribes perniciously took away
	our checkered windows.
The moon was as usual sunlit.
No evidence can erase their marbled nervousness.
Ipecac steered their understated sundials.
Epiphanies are not appreciated by the anesthetized great.
Philístines forgot their rigor when an independent snake
	broke out.
Gumdrops are willed by little werewolves.
A classy asteroid was packed with the seafarers' teeth.
The wind disguised the methane from the flaming 
	telegraphers.
	

Freely composed around words and root morphemes selected
successively from a reading by Michael Gizzi and immediately included in
sentences, some later revised. The Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church,
New York: 18 February 1998

© 1998
from POETRY READINGS



Back