Tonopah la: A Quarterly Journal of Prose and Poetry
four poems by Christopher Mulrooney
to Stanton Macdonald-Wright

here are the children
late from the school where they're brought
whistle-sky-eyeing
from the day they're born it seems
like cicadas fly the caps

dark unwelcome world
where it has no moon black night
naught wholesome daylight
we give the clapper water
as it goes by for the birds

here's a mistake scribe
why and here's another clerk
to run up totals
gadzooks is the warcry now
and fudge all our reckoning

the light of smudge pots
scored the television screen
that frost night of old
what there was was oranges
and oranges made the news
 
old woman the sheaf
you carry upon your back
it must have the breeze
and sunlight bouncing from it
and your kimono as well


perspicacious as a cat's-eye
 

the rambunctious marble sits
as the apple in the circle of Tell
behind the mind's eye
and there its broker's diminutions
sit as the dilute emanations
of a well-adjusted meal

but the allure of desiderata
in its flickers dully rotated
by the skin of its passing whiskers
dislodges momentarily
all wagers for a front
and side longing
wherewithal

from which we turn to relief
such as obtains
in the wildflowers on the hill
dropped by helicopter perchance
for naught else by purpose
but to enchant
if need be
else or stars
celestial mechanics
stratagems
biscuits on the tea-tray
owned by the professor of numbers
for the rookery of the ancients
   
 
gouge
 
smack in the eye
the furrows laved with mascara
put a cold fish on it a mackerel
or a cold steak

with a hand
on a fish
or a steak
on your face

walk around doing the Lambeth Walk
 

the salt of the earth
 
as these things go
not so much
the very assortment of it
aggravates as the repetition
here they go
stolid youth oblivious
the staring child of knowledge
and pure entire the elder fool
slapping his cigarette pack like a horse
because the amps were cranked
last night
some band was in town
Frigid Freddys Floozys
or Torn Bonze