By David Rivard
(posted Wednesday, Aug. 6)
To hear the poet read “The Favored,” click here.
In the dream that repeats as certain
as dusk you walk with me
again as it happens strolling by
yards of quiet or clamoring families.
Affable street, & nothing accidental
here, so it makes sense
I like the people we pass by thinking
the sunglasses I wear
mean me a blind man.
Always you grip a white second-hand paperback.
I can almost smell the spine’s
cracked glue as you read
aloud. Pulp–
narrated by a foolish minor princeling
or gypsy tinker, his eyes aquamarine,
squinting through venetian shades into
the bedroom of a scullery maid/dominatrix/police detective
who offers to straddle
the plantation master/diplomat/dope dealer’s head
as he lies there on the floor,
the enticements of her taffeta, spandex, musk,
and blondness
quite clear, & if he submits–one
can only hope–he will, later, pray
to be part of the various
silver-green mosses & tendrils hanging from branches
over-hanging a river. In the dream we seem
the same man & woman who
each day step-out onto our porch.
Ourselves. Meat & potato-eaters,
but favored. We are ordinary,
glad
someone dares to tell our story.
