Red glow on the tables, spider chandeliers, Nymph and shepherd raising electric tridents against the plaster wall (guardian spirits of antique meadow and warrior town) The jukebox beating out the magic syllables A line of painted boys snapping fingers & shaking thin Italian legs, or rough dungarees on big asses bumping and dipping ritually, with no religion but the old one of cocksuckers, naturally, in Kansas center of America the farmboys in Diabolic bar light alone and stiff necked or lined up dancing row on row like Afric husbands & the music's sad here, where at the Sunset Trip or Jukebox Corner it's ecstatic pinball machines--Religiously, with concentration & free prayer; fairy boys of the plains and their gay sisters of the city step backward toward the bottled tables, forward to the center of the concrete floor, illumined by machine eyes, screaming drumbeats, passionate voices of Oklahoma City chanting No Satisfaction Suspended from Heaven, the Chances R Club floats in solid space rayed with stars on an avenue in Wichita traversed with streetlight | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN A CUBAN GARDEN by SARA TEASDALE LILAC: FIRST EMOTIONS OF LOVE by ROBERT BURNS CHANNEL FIRING by THOMAS HARDY THE LATTICE AT SUNRISE by CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER PEACE ON EARTH by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS DEJECTION by GRACE E. ALBRIGHT TO THE MISS WEBSTERS, WITH DR. AIKIN'S WISH by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD THE OPTIMIST AND THE PESSIMIST; A DIALOGUE by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) |