Edward Mayes is the author of five books of poetry including First Language (University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), which won the Juniper Prize for Poetry, and Works & Days (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), which won the 1998 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. He is coauthor, with Frances Mayes, of three books about Tuscany: In Tuscany (Broadway Books, 2000), Bringing Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style From the Heart of Italy (Broadway Books, 2004), and The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes from Our Italian Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, 2012). His poetry has appeared in The Southern Review, Poetry, The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, Colorado Review, Southwest Review, and Crazyhorse.
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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