This other speaks of bones, blood-wet and limber, the rock in bodies. He takes me to the slaughterhouse, where lying sprawled, as a giant coil of rope, the bowels of cattle. At the county fair we pay an extra quarter to see the hermaphrodite. We watch the secret air tube blow up the skirts of the farm girls, tanned to the knees then strangely white. We eat spareribs and pickled eggs, the horses tear the ground to pull a load of stone; in a burning tent we see Fantasia do her Love Dance with the Spaniard - they glisten with sweat, their limbs knot together while below them farm boys twitter like birds. Then the breasts of a huge Negress rotate to a march in opposing directions, and everyone stamps and cheers, the udders shine in blurring speed. Out of the tent we pass produce stalls, some hung with ribbons, squash and potatoes stacked in pyramids. A bucktoothed girl cuts her honorable-mention cake; when she leans to get me water from a milk pail her breasts are chaste. Through the evening I sit in the car (the other is gone) while my father watches the harness race, the 4-H talent show. I think of St. Paul's Epistles and pray the removal of what my troubled eyes have seen. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...EPISTLE IN FORM OF A BALLAD TO HIS FRIENDS by FRANCOIS VILLON THE WITCH by MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE RAIN MUSIC by JOSEPH SEAMON COTTER JR. THE BATTLE-CRY OF FREEDOM by GEORGE FREDERICK ROOT THE FLIGHT OF LOVE by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY ON THE ART OF WRITING by PHILIP AYRES A SONG OF RICHES by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE LOVE SONNETS OF PROTEUS: 34. REMINDING HER OF A PROMISE (2) by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT |