the grass fire can be seen
raising its smokes

Everyone at Lake Kearney had a nickname:
there was a Bumstead, a Tonto, a Tex,
and, from the slogan of a popular orchestra,

Jayne Mansfield isn’t dead.
I know.
She isn’t living, maybe, but she isn’t dead.

It isn’t May-like, this impure air
which darkens the foreigners’ dark
garden still more, then dazzles it

In that high thin sun, in that provincial winter,
surely Madeleine
                          —et vous, Madame, mère bien-aimée

(tongue twisters, etc. for e.e. cummings)

THE CHEAP SHEIKH AND THE CHIC SHAH SEEK TO SPEAK AT A SECRET SPA.

((THE CHEAP SHEIKH AND CHIC SHAH SEEK TO CHEEK TO CHEEK AT A SECRET SPA. . .))

When the husbands turn their noses up,
the wives are distraught. Some buy chic new clothes
or sheer lingerie, while others will intentionally do neither.

You were not there when the bombing started;
you were not there when the others were not there.

Sweet element, disguise,
like a partial illustration—
it is our own inviolable corruption.

The night was to the bowler
as pig is to the ham—