Difficulties of a Heavy Body Poem by Rosmarie Waldrop

a sense of
his thirty-third year
takes
his elbow

*

any kind of
he says
sniff
must be allowed to mature

*

an accident leaves him
and finally
the swallows

*

by way of
curiosity he is no hand
by no means
to depict
a woman

*

often he knows
a crowded room

*

just out of
his mother
he falls between the pursuit
and a case he'd sooner forget





*

he has a
female muscle
camouflaged
for impact

*

streets enough
to welcome snow

*

he knowingly succumbs to the
brown sitzbaths

*

his wife touches
a foretaste so vivid that
the sheen of
timber upsets

*

in going
this sort of
persistence

*

difficulties of a
heavy body
placed in
alternating gestures