I want to skip ahead now to some more recent poems.
I'm reading from a book called The Alligator Bride, which
selected from three earlier books which
I've been reading from.
But now I want to read from The Alligator Bride section, which
is the last part of the book, and then
go to "The Yellow Room" and some new poems.
I want to read the title poem, "The Alligator Bride," now.
"The clock of my days winds down.
The cat eats sparrows outside my window.
Once she brought me a small rabbit
which we devoured together under the Empire Table
while the men shrieked repossessing the gold umbrella.
Now the beard on my clock turns white.
My cat stares into dark corners missing her gold umbrella.
She is in love with the Alligator Bride.
Ah, the tiny fine white teeth.
The Bride, propped on her tail in white lace,
stares from the holes of her eyes.
Her stuck-open mouth laughs at minister and people.
On bare new wood, fourteen tomatoes, a dozen ears of corn,
six bottles of white wine, a melon, a cat, broccoli,
and the Alligator Bride.
The color of bubblegum, the consistency of petroleum jelly,
wickedness oozes from the palm of my left hand.
My cat licks it.
I watch the Alligator Bride.
Big houses like shabby boulders hold
themselves tight in gelatin.
I am unable to daydream.
The sky is a gun aimed at me.
I pull the trigger.
The skull of my promises leans in a black closet,
gapes with its good mouth for a teat to suck.
A bird flies back and forth in my house
that is covered by gelatin, and the cat leaps at it, missing.
Under the Empire Table the Alligator Bride
lies in her bridal shroud.
My left hand leaks on the Chinese carpet."