Stug Jordan

When can we be lazy?
like two dogs, with eyes half open;
stretching our legs through the grass,
laying; getting almost nothing done.
...

'Was told it wasn't he but was,
but promised it was she, was not;
they struggled to be we, and just forgot.'
...

A song for the innocent loner,
the plough-hand and fish-boner:
his slow pipe
lowers as he listens
...

Older body parts are the accessories for littler lives:
Older arms are the slings to be carried in;
Older legs are the stilts to stalk the earth with;
Sometimes an older hip is a convenient seat;
...

I reached out
as we slept,
slowly waking
finding the bed,
...

On an august night, a half-rain
stumbles glass; the child-bride,
in a bruise of love, endures her pain;
her eyes obscenities as she cries.
...

He looks
my way like a bull:
a hungry animal
reminds me of his face -
...

Back of the hunched black house,
a garden’s white water
in a slow fountain, a sugar bowl.
...

Retired from the fields of corn,
the old scarecrow stands
abandoned on the lawn;
old ropes, binding his hands.
...

Admiring death from afar;
A bicycle-shape closing
On the foot of a hill,
Where bird-drawn wings panic
...

I am not a poet.
I have not been to university:
no old lecturers have singled me out
for special things to come,
...

Just to think how close we came to ill repute
by signing off our names, to hold heavy hands
in the long corridors of the magistrate’s court;
or to have the weaker of the two sold to the vicar,
...

He wakes up to rain on his window,
the wash of gutters and drains
in the street; an early car starting;
the yawn of a garden gate –
...

And Adam said he would prefer
To be alone,
Anaesthetised on god’s table
Before the operation,
...

The path knew before the footstep;
even before the ghost of a shape
passed above the stones and mud.
...

I look at her family as though
I had been born into it,
to imagine her ancestors as mine,
and that our relationship is almost incestual,
...

Gotti loved Letti,
and a house to let they got,
and Gotti was pretty.
...

Lucky is the rain,
For its concealment is sublime,
When absorbed by openness
And rid of counterparts;
...

1.

Three months had already been spent
When he read a newspaper for the date;
...

She listened to them call the swelling
Of her pregnancy a bundle, like laundry
Unfolded before washing, to be spun
Around her belly:
...