Edward Mayes Poems

In London, 1973, watching Ultimo Tango a Parigi
From the theater's balcony, might I not have
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Because the queue was far longer for the question
Session than the answer session, we switched
To the answer session. It was right to swerve,
Since who asks about the snap, crackle, and pop
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To those of us who would rather be alive
Than not alive, unbaked rather than baked, ruth
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The shutters close slowly in the camera
Da letto, siphoning what light there
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After we found the sack of tchotchkes in the garage
Next to the Ntozake Shange souvenir poster
And the three jars of chow-chow from last year's
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That Gabriele from Cortona at thirteen,
Former Romanian orphan, would shoulder
A fisarmonica at the edge of a wheat field
And play, the sweet squeeze, the pleated
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I have only watched someone turn the auger,
Cutting through the obvious ice, in a belief
Of that which is swimming below. Neither of us
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We remember now it was Luis Buñuel Portolés
Stropping his razor in the first frames
Of Un Chien Andalou, the moon split in two
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Until today I hadn't thought about Anthony Hecht
Arriving at Flossenbürg two weeks too late
To save Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his neck as
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That can't be used for any other purpose
Than to change what it has been thrown
Upon, as when the egg whites clarify the stock,
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