In A Country Named After You Poem by Robert Rorabeck

My legs are cold
I feel like an amputee from the civil war,
And my parents
Are sleeping:
I don’t have anything better to say for myself-
You might like my words,
But if you saw me juxtaposed with better men,
Say buzz-cut astronauts,
You might pretend to still love me, because you
Pretend to be a good woman;
But at night while I was away selling fireworks,
You would go to sleep with them;
And that is no good, but something you can
Be sure to believe in;
As I believe in you, pagans believe in animals bare-chested
And fornicating at the zoo-
The West Palm Beach zoo, where I first fell in love with
You,
With my Amazonian goddess, while I watched faggots burning
And smoking as they touched themselves,
As the spider monkeys leapt and flew;
And little tragic heroes grunted with sweat and the flu
As they tried to struggle over the guard rails or the cattle
Guards like
Terrapin or stray balloons on a quest:
And they are almost there, to the silver palace of wherever,
And their friends are beautiful; and I am with them,
And we can pull down the sky and eat the
Fruiteria of the figments of our imagination;
And we spend all of our time
Composing and playing make-believe games in a country
Named after you where it never has to rain.