TEMPORARY

The scoundrels with whom I often work

Lacks the necessary elan for the job

But do their best, waiting for the day 

The great scoundrel will arrive 

And there'll no longer be a need 

To hold his place.

ANSWER

Raising no echo when I walk 

I think "Perhaps I've died when

I wasn't looking"

My shadow lifts his left hand,

Tilts it slowly back and forth,

Shakes his head no.

COVID WRITES A POEM

Sick, Sore, Lame and Disordered

Drifting home by moonlight

Saw the North Wind running

Across the sky, his great purple wings

Folded behind him. In his left hand 

An ivory mask of an old man

With unmatched eyes.

SLIPPERY CUSTOMERS

The court's necromancer has summoned up

Five poets of whom the King's heard

And ordered them to write poems in praise

Of the King's new palace. It's not going well.

Two of the poets are visiting the dungeon;

Another is covered in ink and is trying

To stab the forth with the small knife

He uses to sharpen quills. The fifth

Says death has destroyed his ability

To rhyme but given him great facility 

With numbers; he offers to audit

The kingdom's books.

YOUNGEST OF THE GORGONS

The thing about Medusa is that 

She knew every joke invented

More than three thousand years ago

Which is most of them. More,

She told them wonderfully -- really,

Her timing was exquisite, each pause

A small masterpiece of comic art.

Her snakes would laugh themselves 

Into hilariated knots.

EARLY AFTERNOON ON SVOBODY AVENUE, ABOUT 1910

One man has walked almost 

Entirely out of the picture so that 

His elbow and his slender cane 

Are all we see. Three other men

Hold canes; only one rests

On the ground. Every head is covered.

Soldiers on horseback wear caps 

Two little girls and one woman 

Wear kerchiefs. Two of the men 

Mirror each other, their canes

At the same angle, their eyes 

Saying "Yes, we see you. 

Don't tell us what comes next."

OPERA

The ghosts of Lemberg are putting on an opera 

My grandmother  -- who once worked 

In a cigarette factory -- urges them to do Carmen.

For days her ghost, who looks to be about 15,

Has been looking sideways at other ghosts

And lounging provocatively on gravestones 

In the cemetery where she isn't buried.

Her sister Irina, though, thinks Nabucco

Might be a better first production.

With no money they've been unable

To rent the opera house so are renovating

The one that wasn't built, following plans

Rejected by the Council in 1896.

A SKETCH

Fujiwara Kiyotoda is portrayed

Just at the moment his brush tells him

He's called up a poem far too powerful 

For him to handle alone and that 

He must die unless a god intervenes.

ANNONYMOUS DRAWING, ITALIAN, 16TH CENTURY

The recollection 

Of a boat carries

A tall ghost who holds,

Awkwardly, a long pole

Which she isn't using

Being in no hurry

To reach the shore.

The outline of a man

Glares at a book, sparing

No glance for the water.

A many-roofed house 

Invites you to stand

At a particular window

And wave to yourself 

Looking from now.

NOT MINE

Though she has answers

To all my questions she works

As half a metaphor in a poem

Written in 1937. She shrugs

When I plead with her saying

If she was my character

She'd have to talk to me but

Since she isn't she doesn't.

PREPARED

At midnight we make noise to distract

The demons who, it's said, wait to destroy

The new year. I know demons but've never

Asked what they plan to do if they succeed.

There are rumors, though, of a machine

Made of paper, spit, steel and cobwebs 

With great gaps in it so that instead of

The riverine existence we have now we'd 

Learn to jump between instants. Dreams 

Left behind might wait for our return

Or go their way or see what was new

Among the realmless dead.

MORE THAN THAT

Someone draws a picture of me,

And strikes it with an iron knife but I,

Carved from durable stuff,

Shrug it off. I am no tender dove 

To fall dead from the sky 

When Clown Brandon stabs its image.