By Her Insociant Perfidy Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Her husband’s little boy’s little fingers
Making plastic ships do sarabands on the couches
Underneath the virgin by the doorway
Of their highly mortgaged house,
As the wind tries to defy the vespers, as I know that it
Does,
While even into the canals of south Florida some sort
Of autumn comes.
But the words still go away like leather tramps without
Stanzas,
Like feelings without Mickey Mouse:
The conquistadors disrobing and chasing mermaids
Through their prayers,
The first pornographies brought to this country;
While I sat beside Alma today for breakfast: it was all we
Could do,
Because her insides were bleeding, realized from old Mexico,
Her bare arms as copper as revelry horns
And good hood ornaments speeding towards the cowboy
Shows which seem to be coming up like dusty flowers
Over the higher basins like velvet fireworks which
Make tourists crook their heads until
They get too hungry, and crawl away for ice-cream;
But I disappear with her all day, wherever her thoughts are
Leading me: the light in her eyes all turned out so that it
Is too dark to tell if she lies when she doesn’t say
That she loved me,
And I think of being nearly beside her, and how she likes
Feeding me;
And it becomes the job of my art, savagely needing,
Waiting her to forsake me, so I must immolate like forest
Fire on a birthday with all of my singularity of wishes
Betrayed by her insouciant perfidy.