from Beloit Poetry Journal Summer 2005

Zeitgeists like this mean more museum heists,

yule logs the size of toothpicks, and a Rol-

ex on all our lists instead of Timex,

which, as Christmas wishes go, is not as

vain, not as opulent, oddly, as it sounds

utilitarian, the greatest good

the grandest goods for the greatest number.

Somehow somewhere sometime something almost

rococo burrowed in the soul not to

quaff from an empty vessel but, like a

psychological corkscrew, take hold, pop

open the bottle to release from its

nascent state the desire to be fulfilled.

Meanwhile, there are culture’s accoutrements,

like rescued tapestries of the past or

K rations in the form of film cans for

Johns and Janes Doe, who, in contrast to an

infinite number of names for numbers,

have not known nor sought the dignity that

goes ink in pen with an identity.

Face it, with film as the mirror of our

era, only the faceless can save face,

drawn to both sides of the proscenium,

characters like actors actors portray

benighted with pseudonyms for a blind

audience that cannot tell them from them.

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