Late-ish
By John Ashbery
The girl in the green ski chasuble
hasn’t yet graduated from radio school.
Let’s pay attention.
Looking ahead, why, he waved his mouth along.
Doesn’t life get difficult in the summer?
The divine medicine for it collapsed
in front of the shortstop,
who took off like a battalion.
Crowds of older people who would read this
happily, willingly, then walking into night’s embrace,
then kiss. “To turn you out, to turn you out!”
Sometimes an arm is accused:
You could have felt it, the blue shirts,
phlegm central, four times a night.
But what does that get me?
Light refreshments.
When the suburban demonstration kind of shrunk
you put your foot out,
leave it or kiss it
or even two years ago,
Charmaine here tells us.
I think I should stay ...
Cross-eyed sonofabitch ...
He liked him, he could tell. A de-happening.
The gangster no longer wanted to sleep with him,
but what the heck. With time off
for actual fuzz collected ... All right, boys.
Cheap murders, peach driven ... I seen enough of those
samples along the way.
Source: Poetry (March 2016)