An Excerpt from “Carp Ascending a Waterfall”

by DON SHARE 

 

Grudging and begrudging me snow

       here where the broken water runs

(Grand Theft Auto… Shark Attack Pictures)

       and not in exile I reflect

that nobody in Ovid turns into

       their mother or father

gets diabetes / asthma / and/or thyroid

       problems, he had no

blog: I leave you mine, a hoarse man

       of the Apocalypse.

 

Or as Stein said, as Stein once said,

       what is the use of being

a boy if you are going to grow up

       to be a man… all I can say is

from Agincourt to Foodcourt, peel it and see!

       (Raisin in the Sun….

Stay Home Moms… Heidi Klum…

       The Ten Most Memorable

Pieces of Space Junk) – you can’t copy-

       right titles: something

is fair use or public domain if you don’t

       have to prove it isn’t.

 

She was nice looking, so I looked

       at the nicelookingness

as the wind entered the train and walked

       around like a person

or the red-haired fox we see everywhere.

       Such are our non-traditional

allies, but Laconia where they all live

       is the opposite of Franconia.

I am laconic and frank myself (Dumpster

       Diving… Burger Recipes),

I let the chips fall where they may  (Lasagna

       Recipes… Hepatitis C).

Why does everything cry, or want to?

       (Real Housewives…

Dungeons and Dragons)  In answer

 

To which I propose that your top searches

       will not be recorded.

Your house is killing you, your child

       wants to keep you both together

the body wants to go, and I wish I would, then

       (Simple Living)… house fall down.

You don’t want me to see what I don’t see: OMG!

       (Neighbors Wonder How Captivity

Went Unnoticed for 24 Years).  Scalded and scolded

       in the kitchen, the dreamtime archive

of ancient Greece tells us we’re supposed to be

       solid gold for our kids, not hollow

chocolate Easter bunnies from the Jewel (“I’m self-

       ish, but in a good way!”).  (“I go

to your house and I don’t even get a fucking

       glass of water.”)  The cracks

in our ceiling are the avuncular handwriting

       of earlier tenants’ last hours

and they spell out the question of whether

       God sees us, and how.

 

Don Share is Senior Editor of Poetry. His books include Squandermania (Salt Publishing), Union (Zoo Press), Seneca in English (Penguin Classics), and most recently a new book of poems, Wishbone (Black Sparrow) and Bunting’s Persia (Flood Editions, a 2012 Guardian Book of the Year).