New Writing

Rodney Koeneke

#19

Consider the lilies
disappearing world presidents
shiver me flivvers
on a flanged minidisc

I sleep, but my heart keeps risotto
in a perfect sitcom kitchen
abutting a resolution
to slalom like Olympians
past the moguls of surplus repression

My sensei, Uncle Virgil
wiser than Kabbalah
distributing free samples
in the precincts of karmic disorder

Winter, winter comes to mountains.
Snows, snows shut the falls.
Long have I waited
at the star-studded galas
now my benefits have expired

and I work with eucalyptus
at the local necropolis
rubberizing catafalques
intaglio’d in polychrome

Rodney Koeneke reads at SPT with Mytili Jagannathan on November 21, 2003