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Having My Cards Read

By W. S. Di Piero b. 1945

Hobos wail a garbage can against

the cyclone links. The monkey puzzle tree

droops its scaly tails above our heads

as she sets up near the zoo’s bonobos,

humping happy in their cages close

to chimps ripping off each other’s ears.

And in the cloud reposing on the sky,

cut by an F22’s long hookah puffs,

the cyan atmospherics rupture into

solarized platelets: her Ray-Bans foil

my own face back at me:

A time of renewals

            though somewhere

                         dark cold woe

                                   You won’t know what’s what

Comes a taste of sea to make her pause,

and marine gusts slice and spook her cards, my cards,

that ﬂurry to the sidewalk, near the barred gate,

breaking fortune down faster as she speaks.

Source: Poetry (June 2009).

Biography

W.S. Di Piero was born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and earned degrees from St. Joseph’s College and San Francisco State College. A poet, essayist, art critic, and translator, Di Piero has taught at institutions such as Northwestern University, Louisiana State University, and Stanford, where he is professor emeritus of English and on faculty in the prestigious Stegner Poetry Workshop. Elected to the American Academy of . . .

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