Reverberant

Near bank off to the farthest marsh & back again across
Bucknaked Lake, leisurely, with paper bag
of apricots: O golden hind-
ends, buttock-niceties I nip
& sneak a quick read
ahead in my unexpectedly fiendish
pageturner as the rowboat slips,

I've dribbled on paragraphs & lost what little place
I had. I thought we were bound & determined, but no,
prodigies intrude
among the unstable characters & seem to have sized impending
developments & run off with some other & irresistible
narrative fan into the glitzy apartments of light,
leaving me to my devices.

I adore even your loose pits, kiss-&-toss.
Summary plot: the heroine's flesh eats. Minnows I never
quite follow nudge concrete crumbs off the sunken municipal
monument, whose vandals stepped-right-up
into divine wings just as the reverend raven
shrieked they would above the overwrought & trashy sand,
somebody's popcorn — I wasn't there, but I heard. The toughest act

to follow, somebody sang, is of love. Two for instance
hobgoblets of wine tablehopping your picnic may rap up
a paramourous seance: hand-in-hand your intimate
circle since carnal history's earliest
incident may agitate at once & globally, blush each
to each affected organ — so it strikes me, & tipsy
still in my innermost ear, after an argument from design.

Copyright © 2003 Martha Zweig All rights reserved
from Northwest Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission