Our classroom is so cold I drink from a hot thermos,
teach bundled in blue and feel like a Ming
emperor of poetry in icy exile, and my sorrows rope
me to my desk where I float out to the Great Wall
where the sexy moon and my shadow shout toasts and marry.
Witnesses flood in with cans of blood, trucks of tall
grief as we bike across the Great Yellow Sea of Hope.
AUGUST KLEINZAHLER
August 1995
Under the floorboards Shadow and Smoke bark
through these windy summer nights, always
at queer intervals. Something's got up their noses
or call and response with a distant yard.
All summer long awakened from dreams by barks,
remembering each of them through, shabby kinescopes.
The guys upstairs come fetch them in the morning
and disappear till night, always leaving
the light on in the storeroom,
to make it more cheerful, I suppose.
Perhaps even the radio on low, tuned
to the easy-listening channel,
KBLX, The Quiet Storm,
102.9 FM.
I've grown used
to
them down there,
like the sound of the streetcar right before dawn
with its keening whine and groan.
But the renters promise to be out by fall.
