Sunday in bed rest, read
“How Swans Came to the Lake”
Wait for Roxanne’s return from India
Two more days, two more nights
A test, these obstacles, ignore them
People say life is suffering
My good fortune highlights
their disappointment
Every old wife’s tale, every urban
myth comes true
Eventually, mid-life crises, divorce,
kidney robbery
in bathtubfull of ice Motel 6
just when you think you’re gonna
get lucky. But this time
the crystal opens
Museum specimen amethyst
in Madison Avenue window
reminds me by bar code & price tag
there exists unpredictable
luxury, star-brained universal
dust cloud splashing serpent fangs
of poisonous blossom
multiplying in my chest,
the arteries of electric concussion
displayed for the birth of embrace

I surrender
I will pay
Rain slaughters the balcony
I’m invisible
Impossible priorities!
Flowers blown off
Curtains spill red skeletons
It’s time to come home
I’m describing my death
Do you feel me dying inside of you?
My mother tells me to come inside
But there’s nothing inside worth imagining
It’s all outside, flesh, limb
Starlings in confusion
Outside where the body is
Purified by danger

Michael Rothenberg is the publisher and editor of Big Bridge, www.bigbridge.org, and co-editor of JACK Magazine, www.jackmagazine.com. Most recently, Rothenberg is editor of Overtime, Selected Poems by Philip Whalen (Penguin Putnam, Inc.), and As Ever, Selected Poems by Joanne Kyger due out from Penguin Books summer 2002. He has published several books of poems including Favorite Songs, Nightmare of the Violins (Twowindows Press), What The Fish Saw (Twowindows Press), The Paris Journals (Fish Drum, Inc.). In Fall 2003 An Unhurried Vision will be published by La Alameda Press. He is also the author of the novel Punk Rockwell (Tropical Press).

 Michael

 Rothenberg