Thin in white sings nonsense,
vowels and consonants parading
like a stoned high school
marching band. Then fat in red
wails phony blues, wishing
flushed pensioners would give up
gossiping for dancing. Beans
or beets for bodies, beer
shames less. Yet a bottle
blonde, sun-sullen, leads
her skeletal buddy prancing
in what remains of shade.
On his toes as if to trick
feet into hooves, eyes deeply
elsewhere, he staggers out
a beat to grieve the satyrs.
J. Tarwood has been a dishwasher, a community organizer, a medical archivist, a documentary film producer, an oral historian, and a teacher. Much of his life has been spent in East Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. He has published four books, The Cats in Zanzibar, Grand Detour, And For The Mouth A Flower, and What The Waking See, and his poems have appeared in magazines ranging from American Poetry Review to Visions. He has always been an unlikely man in unlikely places.