Their Rarifying Dooms Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If I’m so cute you should probably
Kiss me,
Like the duchess who plucked one of
Those gooses to
Make the headdresses for one of those
Chiefs;
And you know, the lights are finally all out
And the traffic has run down to a trickle.
I believe the canals have stopped
Entirely, they are so shallow.
We can go to sleep together after our lips
Are done playing football,
And the sport of our sexes’ spawning sagging
Like cerulean tents badly beaten in an
Appalachian rain storm:
We can pretend to be hiding out in the Washington
Monument like two young skeletons in
Cahoots giving each other Pyle driving glances,
Knowing that maybe there is a way to get through
Lincoln’s beard,
Leaving Virgil and his rotten slaves to the ice fields
Over the lawn
Where the crickets are momentarily not breathing:
Even the flags like the trees are unbending from the coat
Of a revolutionary morning,
But all the patrols are tucked softly into beds nearside
The tourists,
And in the morning they will be going home, snug and fattened
Into trunks of trains,
Returning to the carports and washing machines in the blue
And crystal grottos where they are still growing
Like our misfortunate dreams,
Like goldfish agog at the curling irons and little sisters
Petting the gray cats of their rarifying dooms.