Ira Sadoff
Something Vagabond Stokes the Furnace

The skull, when it’s not whistling

like a kettle, is stocking up

on unshelved tremors: we can only unfold

the map and search out A Storm

  

Is Coming.  Before that there’s shouting

OhLaLa in the convertible, scratchy music.

I too liked the volume turned up.

Her eyes closed, taking in

  

being taken care of:

a flash bulb went off inside her.

The light sizzled then went out.

Not only the detached private parts,

  

but word choices.  They were shot glasses

on escalators.  The mind is a fracas

with bristles: the tongue a series of pauses.

In reality, if you can imagine in reality,

  

we short out every couple of minutes.

I’m lost, are you?  I think of the sky as property.

And what I like about the primitive, exotic,

under-the-dress part, is just a sentence or two:

  

we had Milton in Sunday School: no need for Dante.

 
Found In Volume 34, No. 01
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Ira Sadoff
About the Author

Ira Sadoff is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Barter, and Grazing (U. of Illinois), a novel, O. Henry prize-winning short stories, and The Ira Sadoff Reader (a collection of stories, poems, and essays about contemporary poetry).