SAMPLE POEM

Steve Fisher Continues

I.
I wake up screaming.
I scream scratching the dog’s belly in bed,
scream seeing the third pillow has fallen to the dusty floor.
I scream during breakfast, wet bananas on lips.

Shaving, I scream. I scream cleaning up the bloody mess.
Scream when the neighbors pound, when the police
come knocking.
I scream on the walk to work, yard ladies gyrate
gardening shorts,
Arabbers hurl eggplant torpedos at me, their horses stomp, dogs bark.

I scream the news grotesque,
football game shooting in Anchorage,
Middle East imploding.

I scream under Manhattan like undigested pork.

The previous day, screaming, I crossed
a small lake in the countryside on a rowboat.
Screaming, I ate a picnic lunch, ants
forming a moustache above my screamhole.

I scream quietly during a polo-shirted
golf match, a drink umbrella catching
on my sore uvula.

II.
In the evening the sky flames up with rockets
as I sit down to an outdoor meal
with a manufacturer of dolls’ voices
from Newark,
the fauna and wildlife and scout troop
suddenly a parfait of gelatin beside the yarn trees.

For three days I can’t scream as I lay in bed
and listen to the dogs amidst the trees,
the sound of gamelan. I saw lizards
on the walls of my room and
I awoke one morning to find that the
lizard on the light switch was
nothing but the janitor’s wrinkled hand.

Eventually I will regain
enough strength to put it away
with Percy Shelley’s heart which I’ve
preserved in linen all these years.