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Destitute Peru

By James Schuyler 1923–1991 James Schuyler

For John Ashbery

We pullmaned to Peoria. Was

Gladys glad, Skippy missed

Sookie so. So Peru-ward, home.

“I’ll sew buttons on dresses yet.”

Nike’s peach-knife nicked little

finger Chinese straw finger-cuffed

to Minna’s Siamesed. Hartford,

how are your wheres, our whens?

Or extirpated traumas’ gifted

guilt smothered aboard a club

car. Lake Ontario spilled

Jo Jo’s knapsack: “Pasternak.”

An alligator ate an alligator-

trapping monkey. We ate because

“it’s dark, it’s air-conditioned”

like lurching to the movies,

shot marbles in lobbies. What

interests? Takes? Escapes? Eat,

moth-light, part and apart, slowly

we slow waiters serve hot plates.

Source: Poetry (November 2009).

Biography

Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Schuyler was a central member of the New York School. He was born in Chicago, Illinois and spent his teen years in East Aurora, New York, before attending Bethany College in West Virginia. During World War II, Schuyler served on a destroyer in the North Atlantic and remained in the US Navy until 1947. Before moving to New York in 1950, Schuyler lived for two years on the Isle of Ischia in Italy . . .

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