Foreign Parts
Meat-eater, salt-licker, piped spring
dribble-sucker, an exiled Bolshevik’s
villa at Viareggio. The beach sheep
shit crumby money, munificent marks,
lire, dollars, Dolorous Daintyfoot,
Proudass, Chinadoll, a three-way clut-
ter, the piazza pizzeria. Mrs. Smith-
Jones, rich, gonged aground a pissoir.
At three the imprisoned poisoner’s tea
tells her rice-cake fortune, it is it.
Who to who? You yew alley ewes knew
goatsuckers in Swedish horse-hide hid
the boathouse key, locked the oarlock,
sung Sam’s nutsy song, Sin Fleet, at
night. Night, ketchup cup, pepper-pot,
bid bound Belinda break her bracelets:
the dirty photographs apostrophize mon-
soons. Swimming snakes shake the lake.
James Schuyler, "Foreign Parts" from Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems, edited by James Meetze and Simon Pettet, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2010 by the Estate of James Schuyler. All rights reserved.
Source:
Poetry
(November 2009)
