Sampling

    In a Yoruba creation myth, the god in charge of making human beings drank too much, and that's how white men came to be.

    When the table
    turns, the hand resists:

    a drag that makes
    the potter's wheel

    become a rhythm section, needlestick
    a stimulant, the catch a can,

    some touch and timelines into an
    uncanny centrifuge of boosts and beats,

    the standard tunes transmogrified
    to hiccup-arts all down the street, with feline felonies of sly

    invention -- licks of scratch -- unending love become at last
    merely a men, a mensch, a mention,

    all because
    bad vinyl snagged

    the holy handyman's attention.




    Bio Note

      Heather McHugh is the author of several books of poetry and literary essays. Her most recent book publications are Hinge & Sign: Poems l968-l993 (National Book Award finalist); and her essays, Broken English: Poetry and Partiality. A new collection of poems, The Father of the Predicaments, will be published by Wesleyan/UPNE in September, 1999.


    Contents

     



     Heather

     McHugh