ROCKET CAR
Last night, Lora, everyone dreamt
About me. Okay, just an ex-girlfriend
Who wouldn’t tell me anything
And my boss, who claimed I had
A cool rocket car. Like in the Jetsons,
She said. I suppose that is good
Enough. Look: in real life,
I have a billfold full of petty
Expectations, the currency
Of small states in ever reducing
Denominations. Here is a note
The size of something Barbie
Would take out of Ken’s wallet
The morning after. If you look
Carefully, you can almost
Make it out. I think it is worth
A third of something that is a third
Of something worthless. So at this
Point, I am happy to settle for
Rocket cars and living
The glamorous unkown
In someone else’s dreams.
SECRETS OF THE SEA
Science tells us that the common
American Lobster, Homarus
Americanus, can hold a grudge for two
Weeks. After that, all is forgiven.
Seriously. Ask The Journal of Animal
Behavior. They published C. Karavanich
And J. Atema’s article on the subject
In 1998, so it must be true. There are,
Therefore, no lobster Hatfields or lobster
McCoys. And if a lobster archduke
Is assassinated by a Serbian
Lobster in an undersea Sarajevo,
The whole mess boils over
In fourteen hardshelled days,
And if the plot took longer
Than that to hatch, it never took place.
That’s why lobsters don’t bother
With chemical weapons, none of them
Ever get out of organic chemistry,
They all fail their midterms and get made
Into rolls. Of course if the grudge is
Immediate, all bets are off, the little
Bastards will pull each other to pieces.
Science has no name for this, but cooking
Does. A lobster, utterly denuded of all
Useful appendages is called a bullet.
Surrealism suggests that lobster bullets
Must be loaded into special lobster guns.
Salvador Dali shot Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
With a lobster gun at the Armory Show
In 1913, after Marinetti claimed lobsters
Had no future. Indeed, Carlo Carrà’s August
Manifesto contains no mention of taste
And therefore, no mention of lobsters.