THIS SIDE OF CHICAGO
errol miller
This summer
I can no longer afford
to live in America: the wildest kingdom
is before me, stalking, stalking, stalking
Sunday, hot and cold, Sunday's salad
is hickory nuts and Southern authors euphoric
beating on my tarpaper palace all like forms
suffer with me, I am the point man
for literature, my old boots and leggings exposed
I remember living under an assumed name: life
it is only an accommodation for now furnished
with red wine and creaking night-lanterns
vaporous maidens have told me lies
and now a blue nun waits for me
in soundless tomorrow, a loony mistress
she is bald as newborne pigs, she is
removing all God's china from his cupboard
I imagine me dead with bills paid
Space Age it is a New Age
it is an awesome distant charting
setting me straight I compose Tristar Ballads
fluttering, my heart, my pen, my
Arizona Sweetheart is out there somewhere
all the comings, all the goings, hanging on
if I can stand the solstice heat.
