Parlez-moi de ces Femmes

I lean against a door, cap in hand,

An unruly beggar, sham insanity and all,

An honest-to-god Abraham-man. 

When I was a kid,

Momma called me

A bantling boy,

A cullion and a wretch.

She said one day I'd hang 
My tattered hat on the leaf-bare
Branch of a backyard rampick.

And she was right.

There's no second chance 

And stars offer no to-fall, 

No all-hope for a new start.

I am not a cuckold. 
I'm not a wittol, a man 
Who knows but doesn’t care.

Maybe I’m a fipple, the underlip,

The plug in the mouthpiece.

All my life I’ve yearned

The nameless thing, the no-word

That traps desire.

That prayer is elsewhere,

Riding a Shetland I never loved,

The one my old man shot

After that leather-mouthed bit 
Biter nearly broke my neck 
On a country highway.

That summer we ate 

That pony, ground-cheval

For all our summer burgers.

I eat that pony still and study
The bonds of the signifier,

Bonds  that bare the signified.

I eat the pony I never loved.

I eat an apple and kill an ant

As a girl eats an apple

And a boy kills an ant.