Maybe something to mix it up a bit-- my newest book
is made up almost entirely of ghazals.
And ghazals are a North African form,
and you have to watch very closely,
because they're-- or you don't have to watch very closely,
because they're made up of unrelated couplets,
or the couplets are related metaphorically.
I'll read a really rank one first.
This is a poem that's not part of the poetry in the schools
project.
This is a poem, too, that--
not to be appalling and middle class,
this is the poem, that when I write it,
I have to explain to my wife that it's not autobiographical.
It was written on a trout fishing trip in Montana
a few years back.
It's called "Cowgirl."
A real girl, you know.
It's not like James Dickey's "Sheep Child,"
but a actual honest to God type rodeo
queen, not a queen, queen, but a rodeo, rodeo queen,
and withdrawing slowly behind the curtains.
Anyway, "Cowgirl," a little short ghazal,
or not even a true ghazal, as Diane will remind me.
The boots were on the couch and had
manure on their heels and tips.
The cowgirl, with vermilion udders and ears that tasted
of cream, pulled on her Levi's.
The saddle is not sore in the crotch,
with its directionless brain, is pounded by hammers.
Less like flowers than grease fittings, women
win us to the life of holes, their negative space.
I don't know you and won't.
You look at my hairline while I work, conscious of history
in a bottomless lake.
Thighs that are indecently strong and have won the West.
I'll go back home where women are
textured as marshmallows there.