POEM
Poem (The day gets slowly started)
The day gets slowly started.
A rap at the bedroom door,
bitter coffee, hot cereal, juice
the color of sun which
isn’t out this morning. A
cool shower, a shave, soothing
Noxzema for razor burn. A bed
is made. The paper doesn’t come
until twelve or one. A gray shine
out the windows. “No one
leaves the building until
those scissors are returned.”
It’s that kind of a place.
Nonetheless, I’ve seen worse.
The worried gray is melting
into sunlight. I wish I’d
brought my book of enlightening
literary essays. I wish it
were lunch time. I wish I had
an appetite. The day agrees
with me better than it did, or,
better, I agree with it. I’ll
slide down a sunslip yet, this
crass September morning.
Excerpt from Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler, edited by James Meetze and Simon Pettet, to be published in April 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2010 by the Estate of James Schuyler. All rights reserved.
Source: Poetry (November 2009).
This poem originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Poetry.
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Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Schuyler was a central member of the New York . . . MORE »
