The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Martha Zweig

Adult Life

Far be it from me, I said, & so it was.
It was so far,
so good. Delicious runny
juices down the jowls, & down
& out with the clot-spotted
bib & the rest of the trousseau too, why not.
Yum still licks my sticky chops & promises
yet lusciouser promises to come.

Whither thou goest I’ll go too.
I go too far & suddenly polite
company frowns surround me, chat shuts down.
Nevertheless I may solo on
& on until the easy cows swing home,
lowing, lowing,
sidling along their own shifty shadows,
saviors, surely, of many a situation.

My dream once jimmied into somebody
else’s dream but both bored me even as I
must’ve them. Passing the time we laid out
schematics of mixed signals to all
possibilities’ exhaustion. I glance
out to sea: clouds pummeling among comic
bits of thunder. Three circling hands’ one
numerous clock face leans in to kiss me.


Big Bang

Evidence departs from the truth with a
vengeance. Flash of its tail & thither the starry hills,    
theoretical wrangling making much too much             
of What’s the matter with you? even as You gonna
make something of it? carps continually.
A struck light staggers: first feats of induction.

Should’ve stayed a factory girl: all day long bundling nerves.
Quitting time rolls around. Neighboring hairdo,
crackling static, oscillates tattle & stigma out past Alpha Centauri, 
biddy’s itchy need-to-know basis. My own personal
business goes without saying: O dark matter, why
can’t we get it together, punch out the boss clock?

Pulses shimmered through Aladdin’s dreamy human
eyelids exiting tip by tip each humid lash by lash
into ambient night. His fictive heart lub-dubbed. Rub up
my tarnish, rub me raw & I’ll flesh you out
your proposition, softly whistles my own bedside
lamp-that-looks-like-a-teapot’s resident genius.

I can’t help it, I shake myself frenetically just like your duck-
hunting dad’s sopping retriever, hence repulsive
galaxies afling in all directions, explains away the Original
Conniption Fit. Thanks for asking but I must be off.
Nothing doing!—its thankless job, doing its best & worst;
nothing less than little more than suspense killing me first




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