Poem of the Day
1981
By Asiya Wadud
in a world the orange sun resets
in a world the orange sun resets
Anglo-Saxon Sally operates between Third and Lexington—
she makes large claims:
“Forecasts — Future — Past—Present”
Maresfield Gardens, his last address.
The exiled Old Man talking less and less,
Too aware of his steel jaw’s clicking
And the fifty minute hours ticking
Ladies, it is late. The lake is ice.
You've surely seen the heron fly beyond
the great black oak. And watched the robins go,
She Said in the LADIES,
in the rest area LADIES on the road to
Terre Haute. Plenty of angels, she said again.
Female flesh
Dissolving into artichokes
Exploding stars
The subway when
no one’s there, and then
the train is screaming.
Somewhere a boat is leaking
I don’t know where.
You have a little smudge on your forehead, dear,
like a smashed raisin cookie.
“O.K. imps, snot-freaks, pill-elves,
hi-fi fairy-fury flipsters and intelligences,
its out, all out now onto the rooftops—
Shades of brown: rust of the dirt road in
and the gullies deepening to umber,
the taupe of winter grass along the shoulder,