[New-Poetry] Hamsteroid

[James Cervantes]

What a great cartoon, among other things.  Are the first three lines
about some poets?  Nah, belay that.  It's too much fun to be about
poets.

- Jim

On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 6:52 PM, <jforjames at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Hamsteroid
>
> Hamsteroid that knows the rudiments
> the alphabet of the marathon
> gnawer of sterile kilometers
> jumping onto a wheel
> I spin in the air
> around its axis welded
> to two cage-walls
> with four paws
> wrinkled forehead
> shiny eyes and snout
> stretched toward the horizon
> in this way I complete endless journeys
> on the round vehicle
> of my solitude
> birdmouse flying inside bars
> it finally alights with a thud
> with my heavy body
> I lie on the bottom of the cage
> legs apart
> small paw on chest
> like Napoleon after Sedan
> Sèvres Sestrière Senegal
> and the hag tells me
> eat the rye and turnip soup
> don’t touch the coffeepot
> it’s not your helmet
> the galloping stops
> everything stops
> away goes the blonde
> lady sutler of the destroyed regiment.
> —Bartolo Cattafi, The Dry Air of Fire: selected poems, translated by Ruth
> Feldman & Brian Swan,
> (Translation Press, 1981)
>
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