Bob Perelman

Credo in a
kind of American
jewish Hamlet-like bagel,
a bit round
for action yet
leavened enough by
contact with the
near-dead past--you
call it landscape,
I call it
history--to provide
a layered vantage.
Round yet curiously
unconscious in the
center as if
problems with royal
parentage might be
dissolved by fanatic
attention to ideological
festschrifts. Heart beats,
mind floods, whose
news is this?
Turn, turn again,
spread a minimum
of cream cheese,
feed desire its
networks. A you
for all our
little secrets. But
if I have to
vote, kneel, root,
fax & already
feel, as opposed
to an unrehearsed
life, well, slide
over a few
inches & we'll
make room for
each other's public.
Not the heresy
of paraphrase, not
the hearsay of
phrase, but a
general agreement to
differ from ourselves.