Tangle Tangle


Today I have lunch
with the king’s bishop pawn. I’m torn
between the shadows of patriarchs,
the urge to knock the whole
board over. But a call comes in
from another district. The white rabbit
stopped taking her Lithium last week.
I have to mop up the mess.
Poems are burning. Ticker tape and ash
slip from the sky, jumpers I can’t rescue.
They keep falling flat. They are the sidewalk
and the pigeon droppings
splattered on the sidewalk. I walk on both,
no sense in my step. Check.
And countercheck. My parachute tangles
with the power lines. Alley cats laughing:
Trumped again, as in aces high
but for the trump that sweeps the deal.
If not diamonds, then clubs. Somebody calls.
The boy at the dike is springing a leak.
Either way, I’m forked
by the white queen’s rook. He’s robbing me blind.
No one’s explained that rook is crow-speak
for swindler and goniff.
I’m just supposed to know. Like the dirty jokes
I’ve pretended to get since seventh grade.
But other precincts have need of my services.
A skinflint consumed with a morbid fear
of tree stumps. A tour guide beside herself
in transcendental dysfunction –
a slipped tongue, no words for beauty.
She’s late late late. The bus is pulling
away from the curb.