The Blue Tower
Tomaz Salamun
Houghton Mifflin, 2011
891.841 S159bt
Trans-Siberia
Every ball is a bloody, beautiful mask of powerful people.
We make up pretzels.
I always did like chickens.
O, slender fez, mildew perching on its fur.
The poet is an oafish celeb on a hood.
Of every wondrous power. On a hood.
I glance over my right shoulder and see
a lake with the canon bathing in it.
The marmots that shot past me weren't
marmots. Conme on, god, sail off to abstraction.
Stepfather! Your mouthful eats soup, you only see it.
Nem Keckeget arrives in Japan and jumps down.
Us Us darn stockings. Here are the teeth of the the
iron comb that still remembers the station
and steam, but for Cendrars no longer matters.
The only thing now is that you can't just
pleasantly say, "if you'd take off that shirt,
too," the way Marci and Hudi said it to me.