To A Nightingale from Issue 94
Anonymous as elephant
dung trampled in the straw
of the menagerie beside
the Ringling Brothers
Barnum & Bailey
Circus tent, then
smeared on my new shoe
when I was four—
anonymous,
this unsigned
This brief epistle here—
so unlike your odd,
obscurant and, no
doubt, hallucinogenic
verbal ejaculations
dumped forth upon
some darkling plain
during the tender mid-
night of two days ago,
then trundled up
and hauled to class
on yestereve—
concerning this raw
missive, Señor
Oglesby!—destroyer
of worlds—allow
me to quick-cut
here to repartee—
Bird thou never wert!
nor will ever be—
and what artistic
excretions of le monde
you might have
dreamt exuding
from your so-called
mind are fled forever
through that rusty
back screen door,
retreating fast
down a twilit, bent
and scraggly path
to dwell, submerged
out there somewhere,
buried now, deep
within the dried-up
innards of some
storm-swept
and gray,
splintered,
unremembered
shithouse