Once A Wolverine Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Filibustering in the muck of
The hyphenated stars, lying down
Associating with death in assassinated
Playgrounds;
Girls I love like porcelain dolls riding
The hoary terrapin through the
Thunderbrush,
Yelling out absinities like Mickey Mouse;
And everything about me feels naked,
My nails torn about from the earth of
My work,
My sister slipping away beside me has
Lost her hands,
Her nails painted like bruised pears,
But I cant help to think that my nails are
Prettier,
Rubber balls in the sky
Moving west again across Florida-
I can almost smell my dogs- good weather
Dreaming of girls up in steamy glaciers
Who never would have thought
They are marsupials clutching the young-borns
Like hairless kittens to their breasts
When they have a zipper underneath the jacket’s
Tundra
Where I might be allowed to dig in with lips
And tongue, the little ballerinas of hangman farmers,
If she were to discover again that I was
Once a wolverine.