—for kind teacher Allen Ginsberg
Two pair black leather
shoes lined up untied on turquoise rug under
a pine coffee table
Who is this nameless
woman? Tell me or fuck
you! I don’t want to read
your poems
Crooked smile
Flox
Purple shocks atop pale green stems
in depression-glass vase next to a ‘96 Bombay Gin
with rolled cover, Poems for
the Millennium, and “here”
penciled down to eight lines
at this stranger’s table
there’s so much
I don’t know about you
clouds press mountains
to the sky slopes
dotted with blossoms
on a grey log overgrown
with grass we decide
sitting there in the wind
And I still have annotated original
safe in cabinet by desk
Diet Squirt
at his square table, manila
folders stuffed with dittoes, four days of
New York Times stacked by open porch door
I remember his grey mechanical pencil
I don’t get paid enough
to read this kind of shit he says
with crooked smile, I respond
can I use that quote on the back
of my first book?
Chris Bevens | pedalpoet 