August 22-28, 2016: Nick Abanavas and Keith Moul

The Last Annual Hum-A-Long

Rap-tappa-tap
tappa-tap-tappa-tap-tappa
ratty-at-dat-rappa-tat
tappa-rat

The whiz-bang of heavy semi’s
rolling on wooden wheels
throttles across West Broadway
herding toward the light called…TUNNEL.

Between tides
the river stutters
drip dripping leaky faucets
as Frank n’ Stein sizzles, tapping
a third rails source
that the monster might live.

At home
no vacancy summons interest
for stale, half-empty shelves.

Eat Out!

At an All Night Movie

sBy this time, it’s hard to tell
why the Russian mouth eating
English (Oscar Homulka)
consented to say its lines.
The director must have lost
his ear or failed to review
the film, or, perhaps, fallen
asleep like these movie fans,
and snored.
……………….I see the second
feature for the third time.  I
will not sleep.  I will not die
into the motion of that mouth,
the chewing of this language,
the slumped silence in these seats.
 
Outside fog clings to street lights,
silver calyxes of flowers
used to cold and fast growing
beneath the civic headstones
of night.
……………All of us–the man
wish a diseased cough, the man
who throughout six shows and three
intermissions has not moved
from his broken seat, the man
with a mouth like Homulka
who hasn’t said a word, and
perhaps hasn’t eaten–all
view the picture from behind
rows of headstones, until morning,
like some director, orders
the flowers cut and printed
and all things covered in fog.
 


Originally published in "The Lamp in the Spine,"
No. 3, Winter, 1972, pp. 70-71.