Mine Is the First Rodeo, Mine Is the Last…

I’m grateful to the man now sleeping with my ex-lover.

It’s true I loved her, but it’s right that someone be with her now

in the dark hour of our republic. Life is no good anymore.

There are no jobs and no money, so it’s good

that someone be with her now under street lamps filtered

through sheer curtains at night, the pale approximation of daylight

illuminating the outer slope of my ex-lover’s left thigh

and the asymmetric birthmark located there I thought

resembled the bust of Martin Van Buren,

which that man should smooch now and cherish

as I did those tender hours on the other side of time and the republic

when in the opulence of waking I’d move to the window to squint

at the dapper bodies passing which seemed then to know

where they were going. What awaited

when they arrived there. No job, no money,

I’m grateful for the man now nuzzling and elating with my ex-lover,

how she survives with him this dark hour, its sad redundancies,

the human condition like a phonograph skipping,

which is the condition of urging the same thing over

and anticipating a different result. How dull it is,

its mimeographed disasters, dull how the bankers are

offing themselves now in morning again, leaping from windows again,

the republic fretting as if it’s the first republic, the first dark hour,

and dull the way the man drives daily at daybreak away from my ex-lover

in an extravagant light believing that if he does, that when he does,

he’ll be the first to hurt her. O enduring sun.

Source: Phantom Camera (New Issues Press, 2013)