The Brooklyn Rail

The lumbering bumblebee is out

Buttering up its bronze thighs

With pollen’d orbs of echinacea.

It’s a period piece, a

Gap in the goldenrod, dud

Erasure against vetch-trifle’d embankments,

Hap what hap might. Toot

A coup I got ‘promptitude

O’ the toong’ and I

‘Misewell’ make something of it.

Madder ‘n a mad hen

Is how I been lately—

One summery day a redhead

Hopped off a blue bicycle,

Order’d a scoop of mocha-

Chip. Her razor smile. Period.