Robert Rorabeck Poems

Young felicity beaten in to a court outside my window:
I have a hunch, she likes it when I buy her breakfast;
But she doesn’t like it when my pain
Bares her name, like stains on a centerfold,
...

Putting off here, pulling up into a park
Of elbows and graveyards filled with grandmothers and
The old axels of their swings:
Trying to plant roses: roses, or anything:
...

What I haven’t said grows around the house,
Fills up the children’s games,
Engorges the canal until the otters know Christmas
And the housewives leave with divorces:
...

What I haven’t said grows around the house,
Fills up the children’s games,
Engorges the canal until the otters know Christmas
And the housewives leave with divorces:
...

Mirrors in recreational vehicles deep in the middle
Of the day:
Alligators touching themselves: and I am starving,
Starving:
...

Up in the candelabrums of the lighthouse
We do our good work for Indians
Or anyone who wants to come in to kiss our
Scars:
...

For however long I will have to travail underneath
The prayer flags drying their
Laundry across the forever mountains: I will.
I will- And I will bight my knuckles,
...

The reindeer who look like sound systems
Entering a closed down store:
Smells of grass, and the promises of a false sea:
Or anyways,
...

It doesn’t hurt when it rains: it sounds
Repeatedly staccato- daydreams in a classroom of
Freckles,
The old joys of kindergarten: and now I live alone,
...

Enough of this and then everything:
Back at home- loneliness: the fish bones of a
Cat waking up in a devoured nest:
Secret vanities in the pitchfork pines;
...