"Candidate"
Listen to Frank Bidart read this poem.
an array of photographs you have ironically but patiently made ********** Those promises that make us confront confront it best when we see what it you put back on the mantel nasals, Piaf regrets NOTHING: crazed zero. Undisenthralled you otherwise and remain itself. both your wives is detonated, collapsing; There's your open mouth A good photograph tells you everything You are embarrassed by so many
on each desk mantel refrigerator door
little temple of affections
our ambition, pathetic ambition:
promised die. Your dead ex-wife
when your next wife left. With her iron
by the past, the sweet desire to return to
regret what could not have been
There, the hotel in whose bar you courted
in its ballroom, you conceded the election.
conceding.
that's really going on is invisible.
dead flowers. They lie shriveled before you.
Enterprise vs. Millennium Falcon: Which is the Fastest?
Eleanor Roosevelt's License to Pack Heat
Is Your State Bird a Stupid State Bird? What It Should Be Instead.
Frank Bidart's most recent book of poems is Star Dust.
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