Poetry

Fall 2008

 

 

Hilary Sideris

Tail

I can't help thinking tadpoles began
as podtails, coming full circle

like cats that flee & chase themselves.
Cars skid & spin outside on Ocean

Parkway, while inside on cable, oxen
born to end in soup swat flies.

White-handed gibbons, black-capped
capuchins, soulful, brown-eyed, chosen

to represent their kind stare back from
Mammals of the World, as I scribble Unite.

Last night you touched my coccyx:
How do you call this in English?

 

Blot

Ammonia for chocolate, aspirin
for sweat, lemon & tartar
for rust. Meat tenderizer

for blood. For grease, more grease
works best. From pinstripe,
herringbone, seersucker

in summer, tropical wool. I'll follow
instructions closely to remove you
& halfway I will.

Sop with a soft, absorbent cloth,
obscure you as clouds
do the moon.

 

Sviluppo

What a weird word
looked at too long

in my Easy Italian Companion
at the Church Ave. station.

Definitions I daydream:
holy sieve, svelte wolf.

The F doors open, a hirsute man
bearing the news in Urdu

shuffles off, elbows akimbo,
as my index finger hits the gloss,

development. I stare at C-H-U-R-C-H
spelled out on terracotta tiles

until there's nothing but CH and UR.

 

 

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