I’LL BE FINE
Give or take, without my books
having been lauded from the towertops.
Or a poem of mine exiting
Meryl Streep’s superior vocal recesses.
I’m good receiving zero walk-across-the-stage-
to-the-microphone
awards. So long
online interviews with swirly-haired
men-poets or beefy phone
conferences from endowment outfits.
No fresh killer videos hooked onto
freight cars of alliteration.
I do still like Oreos.
I will drive to the grocery at midnight
for a few sleeves of Oreos.
Those are insanely good cookies.
On heavy bell hooves a dark bay rapscallion
at the private field on
Guadalupe Road
situates with blithe polish
at the weathered railing,
as handsome as all get out,
just letting people murmur and stroke
his glistening crest and broad
shoulder in the glassy sun.
To the fence, his keepers
attached a metal “do not touch equine because this
law says so” sign.
The people have tried to be agreeable decent citizens.
They have wrung their hands to resist
but they cannot convince their hands.
He is the most turnabout brimful thing.
