Robert Rorabeck Poems

Unfortunately,

I’ve had to live without
You for so long
...

There is a viper in the tall grass
Slithering toward her pink
Arched-a@s.
While the sun in his high house,
...

To my sister Christine Carroll who gave us coal in our stockings for Christmas. Who gave me hard-ons both times she road next to me— For getting hit by a car and fired from the pizza joint, for wearing a black dress to see me off on my last day.

To my sister Vanessa, because your name sounds like clothes coming off –For your name which might fit onto the faces of woman I haven’t met, because your neck tastes like the color of wine and sex in rows of fertile ploughed earth.

...

We will live in our own property,
Separated by our bodies, our
Secret hungers steal into the
Chicken coup after the magic ends;
...

Your roots never charmed me
I did my best
to prefer the silence of numbers
laid out so I could see them
...

What can I do to save
My God?
The cheetah has eaten his
Left leg and he has done
...

Amber hair which ends dip drunkenly
In amber beer,

Frame amber eyes which gaze drunkenly
...

I saw the parade of envious dreams
Board the colorless ship with fish bone
Sails and the tigers the color of cold amber,
The way you looked up from the
...

Should I try to write you a sonnet
Named after you—I believe I have
Done that before, but it only made you
Concerned, so your fingers crawled away
...

My mustache curls up at both ends
And men that I meet out walking
Tip their hats to me and call me monsieur,
And women out strolling their children
...