Poet Esperanza thinks. Poet Hope dreams.
Esperanza makes love. Hope has a romance.
Esperanza nurses her daughter. Hope bottle-feeds.
Esperanza drinks Manzanilla. Hope drinks bourbon.
Esperanza eats olives and eels. Hope chicken fried steak.
Esperanza loves a caballero. Hope a salesman of doorknobs.
Esperanza says, “I am confounded.” Hope says, “I’m ignorant.”
Hope and Esperanza, like many persons,
are hopeless and hopeful.
Esperanza is waiting for her lover,
and Hope is waiting for the same guy:
Hope married husband 1, divorced,
then husband 2, divorced,
then went back and married 3, who was 1,
(please never say again, ‘Easy as 1, 2, 3’)
1 and 3 is an American printer,
2 an Italian doorknob salesman,
grandson of the Duke of Mantua.
There are societies like Esperanza and Hope,
where a man can have four wives.
Other cultures which allow a woman several husbands
in and out of her cottage. Merrily,
the more animal in us the more male or female,
perhaps the more thinking, too.
Some lion in us, some alley cat.
We speak about knowing our onions.
What about vegetables rooted or flowering—
the potato, flowering and rooted,
the Jerusalem artichoke, the carciofi alla Giudìa?
What about human male and female names—
I’ve never known a lady named Abraham
or a Sarah who is a guy.
If I called myself Sarah for a day, so what?
If I called myself Sarah for a year,
I would laugh more wearing makeup and a dress.
There is or was a theory: woman is a man
turned inside out.
Why do I walk downtown and uptown on the east
or west side of the street?
I make choices for reasons I don’t know.
Esperanza is waiting for me in a café.
Esperanza, my middle name is David.
I regret I seldom use my full name.
My passport gives my full name,
and occupation: writer.
Asked by an English customs inspector
what I write, I said, “Poetry.”
He said in his North Ireland accent,
“You should wear a flower in your buttonhole.”
Will my next book be known or unknown:
Abandoned Poems by Stanley David Moss?
It’s closer to the truth.
And yes, I’ve read Hope Abandoned.
Should my logo be the sloth, the only green mammal,
half rat, half monkey?