On A Drizzly Doorstep Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This is French who cant speak it,
Rimbaud without his tongue- I got a C
In the language of love,
A C+ in logic, and horse semen that has
Gone bad waiting for my truck in Show Low, AZ:

I look at myself in the mirror,
I look at myself again, at another angle, standing
In the corner- I can’t tell by the way people are
Looking at me, how the dogs lull their tongue-

Right now on the back of the buffalo, father is putting
The forks on the tractor to unload the tons of hay
Stolen from Silver City, NM,
The sun is kissing Molly’s Nipple,
And someone just shut the door upstairs without
Saying a word-

The lady at the post office is bovine though congenial.
Still, her restaurant finally went out of business, and
As she smokes, she blames the German cook, who else?
I tell her I am moving to Saint Augustine,
Into the canopy of ghosts and nuns, where the conquistadors
Bugle bright plastic birthday souvenirs for the semi autobiographical tourists-

My ex-lover does the Kaddish as she does the laundry,
And she serves her new Hassidic husband potato latkes which they both enjoy,
And when they make love, while the detergent desalinates in the thumping
Washer, does she think how my hips used to poker as their hips conjoin,
As she drives away hitched to his last name, like the inbreeding of royalty-

Outside until mid afternoon the mezuzah sits alone,
The palm trees whisper as the wind blows
Them casually in the landscaping of the cleft lips of the carport in Royal Palm Beach,
And down the road there is an unused library, and a park where I
Have sold pumpkins and Sparrow Lane, where a girl I never knew
Grew up playing in the humid detachment of a latchkey childhood forgotten
On a drizzly doorstep.