Robert Beveridge

BLACK-EYED SUSAN

petals
fall apart
in heavy wind
like that
from a belt
cocked back, cracked
across your face

BLUES SONG FOR FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

Look at that
old dog
he only got one eye
 
look at that
old dog
he only got one eye
 
and that sparrow
on the branch
turns somersaults
 
the man
who own the dog
he play piano
 
look at that 
old dog
he only got one eye.

CRISIS ACTOR

You took shakes from monsters and fed them to concertgoers, 
high school students, talk show hosts. You stuck a licked finger 
in the wind and walked east against the fog. You asked for 
miracles not from a god you never believed in but from all 
the other gods no one else believes in, either. You asked for 
extra habaneros on your footlong and mandarin oranges on 
your pizza and you’ll share with anyone who’s willing. You 
kissed a thousand frogs and not one turned into a prince but 
you have to wonder if the next one who pops out of the pond 
will be your own Whit, your own Romeo, your own Uncle Ted. 
You have grasped the basics, now it’s time for the final exam.

WEAKENED

If you were a spider in my dream it’s possible I might have asked 
you to bite me, inject some of that venom, turn my arteries green 
so that when I woke up I would fumble around on the nightstand 
for pen and pad, write lines that would be semi-intelligible the 
next day, try to translate my own penmanship and then take 
the finished product with its bloody green ink and wad it up 
and shove it into my mouth and not chew it but suck on it 
and send it back through my body for another revision

good for the creativity
you said on Sunday
afternoon as we lay
on a bed of our clothes
in your back garden,
no rain for seven days
but mist heavy in the air
 
with a slight green tinge
 
in front of your alter
to Baron Samedi
and the wildflowers
you planted around it
two weeks ago
 
there is a fence between us
and the alley but no privacy
from the windows around us
least of all from your 
roommate’s eager second-
story eyes
 
I want to go back to that most ancient of worlds
 
I draw you into the poem
lines on your arms, belly,
breasts, a mandala whose
words we will forget
someday but the image
of greenblood words
on your freckled skin
is as forever as forever gets,
revives us, opens us,
speaks words our mouths
have not yet discovered
how to form
 
and how your teeth break skin and it feels like the sap of wildflower
 
the altar offers us iced rum
and cigars, a mug of Sharpies.
A daddy longlegs skitters
over a word on your thigh
I can’t quite make out
 
drained, we sleep even 
beneath the eyes of the voyeur
on the second floor