Robert Rorabeck Poems

All of it failing into a fire- while the fish leap
At first lucky,
But then expire: before the lips of the fox
Who leaps, it sears:
...

About the milky rind of the green hills,
The low song plays-
And the girls come out and dance atop of
The comely graves:
...

Soft carnivore, soft as an egg:
Eat me, as if I were your cousin, a gymnast in your mouth:
See me going my way deep inside you,
Nourishment to burn you against the snow:
...

Sad ribbon left on the vanity,
Who place it taken by the preferred barrette:
Come and stay with me,
Even though I too prefer the barrette more:
...

Silent auction of the lips,
Pursing- pensive, persistently disenchanted
And almost wet,
The way the fox’s lips must feel as he leaps
...

If I am here, up in the chambers of that valentine,
Trying to come out fully formed
With shield and pectorals to match any hibiscus:
If I was to
...

Playing around with elbows before
School starts with the big boys- and with
Baseball and possibly alligators,
Because they are all right here, underneath the
...

When blue gills sleep they dream of
Feral dreams:
But they are always of blue gills in
Blue gill streams,
...

I stand in you the shallowness of echoes
Waiting for the bus
As the lions yawn- and your children whose
Pink ribs are as if candy
...

Pageantry I am: stallion, peacock- fluttering
Almost as if I could fly above the roof tops,
Stuttering,
As if it were my job, pretty in my loincloth draped
...