Gotlieb’s Column

An afternoon off work bellies
around in the head like
a split melon, green, glistening —

God, what

does one do when
the weather’s immaculate, sweet
as foresight in winter? Buy a Globe,

swagger down 8th Ave. past
plaster lawn lions at noon,
pawing and toothy, a spilled

mall cart lies like prey picked
clean or a Catch-Alive yawning
for fat urban coons.

I sloughed off
my “Focus” section in the first
trash I passed; let her prattle
like rats amid wrappers and tin —

her paid-for trip to Majorca
moulding to fuzz, her day
at the track, his new spats.

The richest banalities shat
out and printed, but fuck it —
today I’m out from under it,
different,

a puffed-up pleb tightly
     wound, like I could
        bounce my wan body off
this tensile light, feeling

buoyed, notorious, Castro’s
beard, so full, so sprung
from a trap I could honestly slap
the face off my owners —