Gwen McVay
Damn Unsatisfied

that splintered second between the Uh
and the huh of her reply
even then, heartbreaking

Someone with a sharp pencil carries away the letter,
a burlesque of the frogs our selves have been.
Each one is looser in fit,
like a steam engine, and requires the disappearing trick
to function. Put your arms in the wind.

I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way,
says the movie subtitle. I swoon with agreement.
How can I be so hot and so cold? Introduce yourself
into our chalk tetragrammaton, kid’s game,
perhaps one-eighth the depth you’re used to.
Then learn to see while running.

_________________

Sister Statue


I grow exquisitely tired of the penis
protecting itself like an orchid,

projecting in slideshow, a shadow on a wall
which was mine to pretend to admire

like a wrist corsage for a high-school dance.
We Catholics are sticklers for propriety,

and the thing is askew like a dress cut from towels.
We damp down that which we will see

with pocket hankies we twist in our laps.
I grow tired of turning a new leaf.

_________________

Catoctin Furnace


A merry-land, damn it! Let’s go round
the old brick furnace, damp bats gathered

as if waiting for the waltz
at a cotillion, now the brick dust
chokes off what used to be the flue

‘Isabella’ they called it, poured pig iron
(sucking at fire’s hind tit)
and it’s ore-some, the great high ceiling.

You had to stand well back in those days.
You couldn’t climb the back crumble.

Now as it is black bears are in the park,
people camp there. It says so in the shadow

of the tight wall fortified round it.
Air smelled like sulfur. You, coated with brick dust,

survived the toolmaking test.