qarrtsiluni

Zzazzip. Old Gladhappy here. Another
year. A window on the Thanatopsis
Express and you the engineer with a
whistle, a party favor, its zzazzip.
“Vamoos,” you spit at the photographer
until photographer gets the picture:
the cowcatcher’s on the caboose, the train’s
stopped, this shot of you with the look of a
Ray Carver under the weather, on the
q.t. about where you’re coming from (the
pane of a phone booth?). What’s there but to dial
O, though slow to do so, to disclose woe
no noble plotter ought to opt to pose;
moreover, was it not John Gardner who
laments, Sure death for the poet is to
keep the wound closed? Chivas in one hand, Georg
Jensen briar in the other, there you are
incarnate, austere, Sir Carver Gardner.
Holy steak and cake! Holy omnivore!
Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher!
For what? For the gusto? Or for “it,” what-
ever it is sits in the gut so low,
drives you to chug and smoke, and causes the
camera to capture by missing it—point
being the point of being’s not to quit,
addict of the rush in hissing, “Screw it.”

by Karl Elder