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University of Northern Iowa
TickAuthor(s): Kenneth HartSource: The North American Review, Vol. 290, No. 2, The National Poetry Month Issue (Mar. -Apr., 2005), p. 12Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127342 .
Accessed: 12/06/2014 17:15
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NAR
SUEGUINEY
Pas de Fromage
From across the room
I can smell the cheese
which I don't allow myself to eat.
Two mounds like breasts
beckon at me
from a host of blocks?
square, rectangular,
creamy, white,
speckled with regional herbs.
All fragrant beyond belief.
I don't let myself touch.
But I dream nonetheless like some old man dribbling in a greasy raincoat,
hidden around a brick corner,
smoking a soggy fag,
alert and alive but
alas, oh alas,
bereft.
KENNETH HART
Tick
Little Hindenburg
holding on at the teeth, its purplish gray body ballooned to pea-size with dog's blood.
Wobbly, wartish, flopping, tied to the skin under black fur, set to pop if squeezed or yanked wrong:
you part the hair, must pinch the flesh,
lightly, raise it like a rug's wrinkle, then pluck with the other finger and thumb.
Slow, beery, drunk on pumped syrup from the heart of an animal
who seems all heart, now it can rest in your palm?
don't be afraid; it slowly kicks its tiny feet as a fat infant
stoned on mother's milk. It rolls
on the deeply creased tide of your life line
which a shawled reader once told you was long, and next to that, the heart line, which,
shaking her head curiously in the candle glow, she said,
though also deep, leads away from your head.
Let the little blimp rest there
in the palm's pink cradle a moment longer before you flush it?its elastic skin
the color of an ostrich neck; let it not be
anger's target, fear's symbol?woozy on the blood that loves you.
FINALISTS JAMES HEARST POETRY PRIZE
12 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW March-April 2005
This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:15:43 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
