she’s smoking a

cigarette and talking

to the cook.

“waitress,” I ask,

“can I have the

check?”

“oh yes,” she

smiles.

I go back and sit

down.

she arrives with the

check.

she’s signed her

name at the

bottom,

“thanks!

Carolyn.”

she has drawn a

little smiling

face.

she puts the check down

on top of a wet

spot.

“more coffee?”

“no, thanks.”

“was everything all

right?”

“yes.”

she walks off.

I leave a tip, go to

the register,

pay the bill.

the owner is

behind the

register.

she takes my

money, hands me

the change

without looking at

me.

she is an older

woman,

a bit on the

heavy

side.

still looking at

something else in front

of her

she asks,

“was everything

all right?”

“yes,” I answer

and I go out the

door and into the

street and into the

world,

never to return

there again,

not in this life

or any life.

I find my car,

get in, drive away

thinking, now if

that wasn’t hell

then hell isn’t going to

be

so bad.

poetry readings

poetry readings have to be some of the saddest

damned things ever,

the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,

week after week, month after month, year

after year,

getting old together,

reading on to tiny gatherings,

still hoping their genius will be

discovered,

making tapes together, discs together,

sweating for applause

they read basically to and for

each other,

they can’t find a New York publisher

or one

within miles,

but they read on and on

in the poetry holes of America,

never daunted,

never considering the possibility that

their talent might be

thin, almost invisible,

they read on and on

before their mothers, their sisters, their husbands,

their wives, their friends, the other poets

and the handful of idiots who have wandered

in

from nowhere.

I am ashamed for them,

I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,

I am ashamed for their lisping egos,

their lack of guts.

if these are our creators,

please, please give me something else:

a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,

a prelim boy in a four rounder,

a jock guiding his horse through along the

rail,

a bartender on last call,

a waitress pouring me a coffee,

a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,

a dog munching a dry bone,

an elephant’s fart in a circus tent,

a 6 p.m. freeway crush,

the mailman telling a dirty joke

anything

anything

but

these.

4

twisting the cap off the tube of night

journey to the end

there is this fellow in the Netherlands who sends

me photos of Celine and boxes of marvelous

cigars.

well, I am a dog: I enjoy both.

the cigars go well with my red wine and I never tire of

Celine or his photos—a very good face on that fellow

Louis Ferdinand Destouches.

(we have some famous modern writers whose faces look like