Five Poems Your Momma Likely Wouldn't Whip Up

ANKARA IMAGE

There’s no Turk quite like a stewing

curly-haired Turk, and no question of it,

such a boiling and bareheaded fez boy

makes cannibals of us all, though this

guy might effortlessly have been sultan

of your Ottoman corpora delicti, for

our dude’s one shut-eyed needle floating

fast on currents of dark, dark ink being

eagerly piped over riverbed carpeting.

IN POLAND

Warsaw, Warsaw, what the doctor saw

When you search the brothels of Cracow

For oysters purple, succulent, and tart.

O let’s not fool ourselves, let’s not wait

For freight trains to jump a rusting track:

I had to have my neighbor’s sister (a “no”

Answer some straying sound without

My stethoscope) while your pinkish melons

Flash a double, constant treat; your taffeta

Negligee this out-of-town mask minus real

Facial features; your juices some flavorless

Vodka escaped from a wee, wee fountain;

And Warsaw a city of gauze and tape

Where the sun’s reluctant to wink or blaze.

PAPERBOY

Why, yes, of course (how often do I have to say it),

There is fantastic sport fishing in the Seychelles,

Tenements of boneys and bananas, a community

Where sunup and sundown are everyday announced

By hidden cornets. (I myself think they’re blown

By big-lipped cheaters staying on the lee side

Of dark gray cloud mobs and nasty escort winds,

But what-the-flying-fuck do I really know, and so

I’ll grant I could be as constantly wrong as some

Senior and demented paperboy whose tossing aim

Is any family’s east-facing porch, but whose honest-

To-goodness landing spot keeps turning out to be

His grossly over-titted wife’s new-cut peony hedge.)

THE EAST WIND V

I like to think I’m screwing the strong east wind

that pushes through my screened-in porch

before the sun gets high enough to bloody

my neighbor’s barberry hedge. Oh if that long

hedge weren’t there—i.e., if there were no thorns

to claw my sex—I’d likely tell the breeze to fuck

itself, and I’d bull-rush my neighbor’s bushes

and be rapping against her sliding door. (Yet be

assured, I’d have sweet bridal vestments slung

across my arm and a Mendelssohn march a-gurgling-

up-and-out my whiskery throat.) But the hedge

is there, ‘twas my neighbor who planted the mother,

and so the best I’ll ever feel of a morning

is to have east wind pulling the waist of my person.

WATER WITCHING IN VERCORS

‘Wanna go water witching, fleur de lis, ‘wanna divine

in yonder field while our motel maids cart the floors

and spruce up our economy room? I sure as hell want to,

and with crackers aplenty in all my pockets and a flask

of merlot tucked under my briefs, I think we can dowse

for the better part of the afternoon and even wedge unto

evening, since things won’t get dark, I promise, since it’s

the planet’s orbit (and not me) that lets shit stay light

till nearly eight o’clock. Oh I want my hazel rod whiplashing

down like a just-spent dick, or dropping fast if I get creamed

by an angry farmer throttling forward in his quiet tractor,

a French hayseed so foaming and ferocious about the lips

I’d never get fair chance to brace for the discovery

of an ocean underneath my shoeless feet, a tranquil place

the world could add to its seven seas, and maybe a realm

overcrowded with floating burlesquers (i.e., those who

have been here before). But if you want, pichou, your hand

can now grab either side of my rod. (It’s not that I’m so big

into sharing, but you just don’t seem able to whittle

your own forked stick). However, please understand,

there’s no guarantee at all you’ll feel even a misty spray,

much less uncover the world’s long-lost eighth sea.

William C. Blome wedges in-between Baltimore and Washington, DC. He once swiped an MA from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, and his stories and poems have appeared in fine little mags such as Poetry London, Amarillo Bay, PRISM International, Bangalore Review, Salted Feathers, and The California Quarterly.