From "The Stripping Point": 

 

Decide on deciduous or remain ever green

My love     for envy is not your color

Today     un dieu des mauvais cheveux

Medusa could use a snaky excuse

Hotwired straight to the stripping point

Vanishment in ravishment will produce a

 

Rather than begin with “the day”

And its “attendant anxieties”

Disappointments     perverse

-Ities     we’ll call on something else

(No wonder allowed in these pages

No wonder the pages allow it) to travesty

 

The burden of the day extends itself night-

Ward     marl of munificence    sutured sounds

Reverberate in the oubliette of obligation

The nocturne drops into gear     down- then

Upshift     and the song asserts itself

Impossible arias foundering on the shore

 

A blanket of blankets swarms the bed

Ten degrees and cropping     six sheets to the wind

The door frame chipped and tawdry

Who succumbs to coming     twice in an evening

Tram or bus     tram or bus     tram or bus     tram

Or bus     tram or bus     tram or bus     tram

THE STRIPPING POINT
Brian Henry
$14.95; 5 x 8; 164 pgs.
ISBN 978-1933996-01-1