Wanda

I run a reasonably tight enterprise:
while I ply and exercise the wry
intricacies of fantasies in sleep at night,
my bright amanuensis Wanda
sweeps into her office with the artfully

cracked wall towards whose small
aperture the moon creeps through
deep sky to make its call – to whisper
code to Wanda who, in shorthand,
writes it all in orange ink and leaves it

for me to think over in the morning.
The doorman tells me she’s a peach:
she teaches him odd tidbits when
she comes and goes (transliterating
moon-talk as one might suppose):

elaborately coiffed, last night,
for instance, she revealed to him
the French for “I am thirsty” is “j’ai soif” –
he evidently looked a little dry –
and while she looked him in the eye

bestowed on him an ample flask
of moon-shine – whistling a tune, he said,
that sounded not unlike, but rather
better than, Debussy’s Clair-de-Lune.
We find Wanda quite a boon.



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