G - L - O - R - I - A

Rot-Orange I - Red-Orange I 20 x 20 cm ink on paper

WINTERMÄRCHEN

Imagine a broken-backed long-haul

truck driver or scab-fisted brick layer,

drunk, a sneer of bottomless contempt

all over his bristly face, grabbing his crotch

while quoting Pound, Eliot, even Patti Smith.

Which has nothing to do

with winter, the year ending

as it always does with every garment

feeling like a shroud. Where doth the worm sit, and why?

I think you can spare us your “thees” & “thous.”

But truck drivers and brick layers

are people too and they think about

the cold of winter and of death

flags of disenchantment

drooping from their friggin’ toothpicks.

Not everyone can afford to visit Italy,

so what is the correct distraction? Baseball

halted in its tracks just as

September slid safely into October

and football is little more than a fist fight

in a snow storm on a profoundly unwashed

Sunday in Cleveland. The costliest diversion

at the moment is our hedge fund pimp’s

collapse into insolvency—the fund is without funds,

and he’s basking in some atoll sipping Brazilian cocktails

while a native girl fiddles with his loin cloth—

only the turkey looks fulfilled, complete,

all skin and bones, even its bread-crumb stuffing—

hanging from a local poet’s sensitive

lower lip—a promise of non-stop nudity.