JOHN F. BUCKLEY

OF COURSE, YOU CAN’T ACCEPT THIS APOLOGY, EITHER

If I were an earnest man, I would hold
you above my head in the inundated

sunlight, I would lift you
toward the crenellations
of a vast canon, at least out

of the moat and into
a coracle filled with salmon
and hideously wise anglers, but

the pressure in my gut threatens
to burst from the strain, so we stay

soppy together, passing gas and time
and poorly handrolled cigarettes, two

saltines almost afloat in a potage
of inappropriate spices and vivid

pimentos, unsafe crackers baffled
by even the simplest locks of hair, the curl
of a finger, the slippery yoke of blue oxen.

Somewhere a hermit casts runes in the desert.
Somewhere an eagle flies business class,
launch codes secure in its talons.

Somewhere the populace, prudent enough
to be daunted, sandbags the banks, and none
of my ensuing nonsense would pass.