POEM
Confession
Reginald GibbonsDown in the blue-green water
at nightfall some selving shapes
float fluorescing, trance-dancing,
trembling to the rhythm of
theodoxical marching-
music that they hear over
the mere noise of the breaking
tide. Above, stars in certain
places; along the shore roads,
cars carrying people on
uncertain errands, sordid
and sacred and all the kinds
in between. Halogen-lit,
a woman gets down from her
all-wheel-drive velocipede,
enters through an obeying
door a cyclopean store
to buy unintelligent
fresh fish and other objects
whether formerly alive
or formerly dead, she comes
out again, a poor man calls
to her, selling his no-news-
paper; the disastrous head-
lines smile and nod, they announce
the plans of steel patriots
and undertakers, ad-men
and fallen vice-generals,
doping their stolen crusades.
But the woman has learned, as
I have learned, as all of us
must keep learning if we are
to be good subjects, how to
make of a newspaper the
mask of a locust, calmly
put it on, and begin once
more to eat everything up.
Source: Poetry (December 2003).
This poem originally appeared in the December 2003 issue of Poetry.
BUY THIS ISSUE »
Born and raised in Houston, Reginald Gibbons earned his BA in Spanish and Portuguese from Princeton . . . MORE »
