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   o d e    t o    s e p t e m b e r s    o f    t h e    c e n t u r y    p a s t

--- A N I S   S H I V A N I


I’ve been running the bathtub for you at 75 degrees Since you first pensive penis sprout at ten. So Will, swim like a toad in your porous latte.

I will not be a traitor to my fucking country! The shout goes up over the din of other balding men Singing in similar showers built like prison pens.

Mother, what has made the roosted pigeons of our time Turn into wandering pigs? Trite grunts fill the halls Of higher schooling, and math and crap

Of an indistinguishable kind, rubbery blue, make me cheat At chess with my best friends from Yale. I tell them Their decision to go into foreign service or snooping

Looks good in retrospect. At night, I turn my brownbacked study Upside down, in search of that poem from Auden called “September, 1939,” that he seems not to have penned.

My mother approved each of my girlfriends, from poor Bella To rich Jean. Each of them denied strains of domesticity. Every man is an idiot Ed Sullivan in a tidy suit.

© crossconnect, inc 1995-2005 |
published in association with the |
university of pennsylvania's kelly writers house |