What obscure wound would you qualify
it, dear Master, to be limned by John LaFarge
and hung at a station of Mexican busboys
amid lares and offertoria,
tutelary gods as golden bowls of chips and
nuts and yes, trail mix?
At these snacks you fix your
beestung lips, as Hispanic waiters cry
joyous hymns across a trap to
satisfy bell-ringing Quasimodos who are rich.
Clamoring for more, former spies outvy
each other in deadly dull hobbies.
Mommies long dead, they wash
their own mouths out with boy’s room Listerine.
Survey the scene, young Henry in profile,
balding like Courbet’s Baudelaire,
your cheeks blood-red from
circulation that does not yet beat
for an Icelandic stud.
Here sages chow down
in a library, ignoring passion between
the pages. What is needful in their careers
is the privilege of ingested dross,
overseen by misty frigidaires
stuffed with novels by Auchincloss.

to the previous poem