A couple of these poems have the word sulk in them,
and sometimes I kind of play with it.
I don't know what I think about this poem,
but it's sort of strange.
It's called "The Little Holy Sulks."
"In the terrible late daylight hours,
when wind reaches every treed river and dry canyon
like fingers in a sore groin, we begin our business.
Past shiny reflections, under shoreline willows,
we push out new breath, shadows growing from our own feet
traveling east.
No use, we say, bees in the motor of the salmon troller.
Dusty log truck.
Long conveyor coming out of the mine.
Sorrow hit the child with his best friend's rock.
Innocence whispered in a mirrored girl's cosmetic ear.
The great pornographer rises before us
in the moon, eyes of a dog in heat, the glowing TV.
Far into night, we finish, slip back downhill,
downstream past used car lots, homes of young mothers
up to feed their children to sleep,
leaving notes in the kitchens, cages, patients.
And the sleeping fathers we touch with love
held all the way from the sea.
Gently, in their rooms with the day's rolled newspapers,
we work pages into their foreheads like clay."