A Feast Like This

Sometimes the howl
inside the human heart
is all you hear – the desperation
at the start – and when
the end is near – the inexplicability
of all its riddling middle:

I was a cat today
without a fiddle – having lunch
with two bright teens
as closed as cans of tuna:
succulence all crammed away:
no words of mine could

open them, could cut availingly
through their shut metal –
reveal whatever baby fear
kept them from
some imagined injury.
It vastly threw – unsettled – me.

New York City hit me
sadomasochistically
as I attempted to negotiate
through schizophrenic homeless
creatures in the streets and on
the subway back. Tonight I’m seeing

Liza at the Palace: Judy Garland’s
daughter – sixty-two:
cracked and splayed and sweating –
and, reviews all say,
exactingly released: I need a feast
like this, don’t you?



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