Moon Is Always Female Read Online Free PDF Page A

hungry fox:
    never otherwise
    am I so cruel;
    never otherwise
    so happy.

     The fisherman’s catalogue:
     a found poem
    Orvis nymphs: dark hendrickson,
    leadwing coachman, pale evening dun.
    Cream midge. Grizzly wulff hairwing fly.
    Wet flies: hornberg, quill gordon, ginger quill.
    Weighted nymphs: zug bug, hare’s ear, Ted’s stone fly.
    Caddis pupa of great brown and speckled sedge.
    Pale sulphur dun thorax dry fly, Rat Faced McDougal.
    King’s river caddis downwing fly.
    Silver doctor, green highlander, dusty miller,
    black dose, rusty rat, hairy Mary
    and the salmon muddler. And the popping frog.

     Rainy 4th
    I am someone who boots myself from bed
    when the alarm cracks my sleep. Spineless
    as raw egg on the tilted slab of day
    I ooze toward breakfast to be born.
    I stagger to my desk on crutches of strong coffee.
    How sensuous then are the mornings we do
    not rise. This morning we curl embracing
    while rain crawls over the roof like a thousand
    scuttling fiddler crabs. Set off a
    twenty-one tea kettle salute
    for a rainy 4th with the parade and races
    cancelled, our picnic chilling disconsolate
    in five refrigerators. A sneaky hooray
    for the uneven gallop of the drops,
    for the steady splash of the drainpipe,
    for the rushing of the leaves in green
    whooshing wet bellows, for the teeming wind
    that blows the house before it in full sail.
    We are at sea together in the woods.
    The air chill enough for the quilt, warm
    and sweet as cocoa and coconut we make
    love in the morning when there’s never time.
    Now time rains over us liquid and vast.
    We talk facing, elastic parentheses.
    We dawdle in green mazes of conversing
    seeking no way out but only farther into
    the undulating hedges, grey statues of nymphs,
    satyrs and learned old women, broken busts,
    past a fountain and tombstone
    in the boxwood of our curious minds
    that like the pole beans on the fence
    expand perceptibly in the long rain.

     Neurotic in July
    Even desks and tables have edges sharp
    as the blade of a guillotine today.
    The wind gnashes its teeth in the oaks.
    The translucent pearl fog of morning
    is tarnished with my fear. One friend
    dies at home in whatever pitted dignity
    pain allows. Another friend lies dying
    while the doctors in the hall mumble
    their lies unsanctified as white lab rats.
    Another comes out of a coma that almost
    killed him, mischance exploding in the hands,
    while in high glittery summer out on Route 6
    tourists try to drive through each other’s
    bodies. The rescue squad drags their fatigue
    to the third accident today, broken
    glass and broken organs, the stench
    of spilled gas and blood.
    I jerk with anxiety, the reflexes
    of a severed tail. Straw and sleet I am.
    My thoughts spill, the contents of a dash
    board ashtray, butts, roaches, seeds,
    cores, bottlecaps. What I dream stinks.
    Only in political rage can I scorn danger.
    In daily life I quiver like a mass of frog’s
    eggs. Quaking I carry my breasts before
    me like ripe figs a thumb could bruise
    and, Be careful! Be careful! I croon
    all day like a demented cuckoo with only
    one harsh plaintive cry to those I love.
    They pay no attention at all but wander
    freely in and out of danger like sanderlings
    feeding on the edge of the ocean as the tide
    changes, chasing after each wave as it recedes,
    racing before as the wave rushes back.

     Attack of the squash people
    And thus the people every year
    in the valley of humid July
    did sacrifice themselves
    to the long green phallic god
    and eat and eat and eat.
    They’re coming, they’re on us,
    the long striped gourds, the silky
    babies, the hairy adolescents,
    the lumpy vast adults
    like the trunks of green elephants.
    Recite fifty zucchini recipes!
    Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;
    sauté with olive oil and cumin,
    tomatoes, onion; frittata;
    casserole of lamb; baked
    topped by cheese; marinated;
    stuffed; stewed; driven
    through the heart like a stake.
    Get rid of old