Jeffrey Calhoun

Revisiting 'Transgressions'

He thinks about how important the sinning was
Jack Gilbert

Lacebark elms hide a smile
when cicadas complain about a short life.
An ambulance, a crushed throat:
after a few beers it's easy to confuse
the origin of a throbbing chorus.
A figure sits in the cold of sin;
we discuss Cioran, his Anti-Prophet,
and then have a duel of salivas.
I offer that Voltaire was onto something
when he solved Candide with a garden.

Fate of a Twenty

I stoop and rescue the twenty from the sidewalk
prison. I imagine buying Candide,
and skipping Voltaire's words for the naked woman
seducing from an illustrated page.

I drop the bill in an empty guitar case,
walk home listening as a homeless man's song fades:

If this is the best of all possible worlds,
lady in Gucci, please choke me with your pearls.

I Borrow Leopold's Eyes

The Silphium had bloomed late,
but now they have been cut
by a road crew on the grounds
of a cemetery. Shreds of yellow blooms
sit in my cupped palms. I deposit
shards of plantstuff in the sunlight grasping
the tombstone of a woman named Eve
who died young and left orphans.