Destitute Peru
For John Ashbery
We pullmaned to Peoria. Was
Gladys glad, Skippy missed
Sookie so. So Peru-ward, home.
“I’ll sew buttons on dresses yet.”
Nike’s peach-knife nicked little
finger Chinese straw finger-cuffed
to Minna’s Siamesed. Hartford,
how are your wheres, our whens?
Or extirpated traumas’ gifted
guilt smothered aboard a club
car. Lake Ontario spilled
Jo Jo’s knapsack: “Pasternak.”
An alligator ate an alligator-
trapping monkey. We ate because
“it’s dark, it’s air-conditioned”
like lurching to the movies,
shot marbles in lobbies. What
interests? Takes? Escapes? Eat,
moth-light, part and apart, slowly
we slow waiters serve hot plates.
Copyright Credit: James Schuyler, "Destitute Peru" from Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems, edited by James Meetze and Simon Pettet, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2010 by the Estate of James Schuyler. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, http://us.macmillan.com/fsg. All rights reserved.
Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Source: Poetry (November 2009)