Kenward Elmslie
SIAMESE STANDPIPE
You silly thing to fear you bore me
by very things I like to hear about:
beautiful women on crutches walking
by open-air abattoir into Doll House,
the two of us bread-and-buttering Out
way past lamp-posts in the cloudbutst,
peg-leg gal (high ked) is entering
Double Header, 2nd Ave near Yeller.
Here's a fluke: lucky'
01
sun beams
on: pastern, pinbone, heart girth,
as gal nearing the ultimate passes
through swinging doors ofJohnny'S
Handlebar Mustachio, young crowd.
Empty space where her extremities
once pranced , eye-patch. Give–
looking for give, soft Chinese walls,
which eye-patches do, clamped into
place, drench passersby. Another
peg-leg pushing into Eleven Eleven
Tavern. Fell off cliff, mid-embrace,
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, high
tension wires crackle. Cane as pun.
Stack. Haystack. Atlas Baths, 4th
Floor. With them lined up outside,
stumps covered with rubber. Horizon
delightful! Any statistician partial
to slump dips and what they represent
in human terms: shifts in demented
contingencies of the fall-back variety .
Beams down on nightclub pallor meat .
