Robert Rorabeck Poems

I’ve been Alma’s champion:
I’ve been Alma’s slave:
And I’ll be Alma’s Alma’s
Anything:
...

I was staring through the space of unicorns
And listening to the captivated sea
Just before I was just about ready to fall asleep;
And I remembered Alma’s hair tumbling through the
...

There are so many things that can be said
To be right, that I can’t remember,
And tonight might as well just be any other night:
The stars are just as bright,
...

Afternoons of burning up, of sorry reflection in the broken
Promises of penultimate glass,
Or whatever it is I have been up to, trying to summon you
Up from your grotto,
...

I have sung you into being through my little doors
Of glass,
As it was butterflies that I had tamed and taught how to
Walk and dance,
...

Airplanes like school buses leaping above my house
While I hide deep in the burning armpits of these palms,
Listening also to the roaring of lions,
And then to the pedaling footsteps of housewives returning home,
...

The world was held fast in green tourniquets of new
Envy,
I held these pictures of you at arms length and wept and
Thought of fire pits and the ways
...

I was told the books were dark green because they were
Born that way
And when they cried they opened that way for their lovers,
Like butterflies smeared into a carpet where the
...

If a serpent lives in my house with me
Let him live,
But take from him no fruit or gift that he might offer
To you,
...

Driving to the east, driving home the sky was
As gray as gray rhinoceroses- I even drove past Alma’s
House,
And Alma’s roses, because she didn’t ring me all today:
...