Larry Sawyer

BABY DEVILS

Unattributed feelings sprout
yes, you know it well, how they
shout
these shopworn hooks
(midnight in the laundromat)
and the looks you sometimes get,
although the projectionist
wants science fiction
we get neanderthal president.

My beef with body doubles
how they resent direction
you know they want the lead:
I mourn surface tension
its sloppy assault on the senses.

Put this in parentheses
that all my words
those baby devils
part like daffodils
at the first sign of attention
and then for all their sexy nonchalance
act so untoward.

THE ST. LOUIS OF BEING

Night was a beautiful television.
We were only recently home, or even interested.
On the roof of Christmas some prankster asks,
"Well, do you?"

Our frustration answered for us.

Whatsa suitable activity for retirees
on the make and so easily
attenuated?   Get the most of these

features, it says, bowling for pierogis.

I would like to fabulously float, ensconced in
electricity like a single naked bulb.

[Meanwhile: holidays w/octagonal forebears.]

DEALER

My eyes sprout 1,000 buds at the sight of you
as you burst into flame and look like a frightened doe
there in the middle of a forest of paychecks.
My phone is on stoneage as we sit inside a baggy of silence.
I clear my throat and it sounds like a siren.
My reflection in a mirror resembles a werewolf.
I have two large stereo speakers for hands.
I lounge on the couch surrounded by canaries
singing who brought you here and why, but
my ears hear nothing but the puking guns.
The smoothness of that chamber is my secret cathedral;
emerging from daylight's barrel some new man.

Larry Sawyer edits milkmag.org, curates and hosts the Myopic Poetry Series, and is the co-director of The Chicago School of Poetics. His books include Unable to Fully California, Breaking Lorca, and Vertigo Diary.