"My People," by Langston Hughes

"Tobaconnists," by Karl Shapiro

"Thy Body As It Is," anon.

"An Essay on Man," ii, 1-18, by Alexander Pope

Nude Up and Get in a Pile

It may have been a line
from North Dallas Forty.
Anyway, we’d quote it
at the bar and laugh.
The thing is, pre-AIDS,
you might think you
were headed home
in a silver Camaro after
the bars closed
in California’s inimitable
Central Valley.  Then you might
stop at a red light, two lanes,
and two women you knew
barely might laugh, roll
down the window, and
suggest, “Follow us.”
And, wow, there you’d be,
nuded up and in, no,
not a pile, but an expansive
naked arrangement of
three or four or five.
It was a gas, a blast, a trip:
listen to the lingo change
down the ages. Olive oil
on large breasts, the
several positions, good
clean fun. Of course, in
an apartment of your brain,
you knew the party had
to end—that night; and for you;
and for a generation.  Microbes,
maturity, and so on. None-
the-less: at the stop-light,
in a Camaro, a little loaded
on whiskey and weed and
maybe a line: the light,
the spark, of mischief.
Good clean fun in
an era everybody and
his mother, as we said,
would not just forget but
not know existed.

*
*
hans ostrom 2013

"Everything Is Looted," by Anna Akhmatova

"Friends Who Have Failed," by Alan Williamson

"As a Good Tailor Knows," by Jason Shinder

"How Strange," by Gwenolyn B. Bennett

Hiram Displays a Bad Attitude Toward Popular Cinema

Hiram, in his cups, which had been full
of vodka, says, "Let the miserable blob
lay. Lay the miserable fucking blob. Lay
miserly blob. Hey, Miz, lay Miz, Fizz Miz."

I can fill in the rest.  It isn't so much
the genre of musical, or the tears
being squeezed out of melodrama
like hot fat from cooked bacon,
or the celebrity-actors shoved out
in front of the cameras like mannequins
with entourages, or that the Public
eats this shit up, it's the combination
of all five; and more--that gnaws
at Hiram's sense of what is all right.

 "The whole fucking thing . . .," Hiram mumbles.
The combination. The combinations.
That's what gets a body down. In an age
of Packaging, Hiram opposes the Package.


hans ostrom 2013

"Some Hands Are Lovelier," by Mae V. Cowdery

"Dusk," by Mae V. Cowdery

Mentioned Honorably

This is to inform
you that you received
an Honorable Mention
in the recent publication,
Who's Who In Global Obscurity.


hans ostrom 2013

"Paul Robeson," by Gwendolyn Brooks

"Palm," by Rainier Maria Rilke

Sudden Infinity

not sure.
do know history's owned.
driver's ed.

the allies. you remember them.
cut the heads off.
indescribable scene.
sources say myth.
sources say fear.
sources. say.
sources. "the thing is,
he had to have known."

percentages on the back end, said
my friend in Hollywood, which
does not give
does not give
does not give
a
shit.
in other news, we, collectively,
have raised the average
temperature.
what to do?
 did you say, "what to do?"
well then to that i say,
yes, let us ask and let us try
to
answer


hans ostrom 2013

"Dawn" by Angelina Weld Grimke

"Man in a Hole," by Hans Ostrom

Man, Bicycle, Shirts, and Crows

With his right hand, a man
pushed a bicycle. With his left
hand he carried five white shirts
on hangers, covered in transparent
plastic.  Three crows yelled.
They said, Get on that bike
and ride, brother! Wear black,
wear black, wear black!


Hans Ostrom, c. 2013

"Orchard in January," by Richard Wilbur