At 11 Tomorrow Morning

Here is the poem for this week, which should be the poem for last week, only, it is late. I think this poem is similiar to the last poem ("I Cover the Waterfront") in aspects of style and the way things are being said. I like the idea of taking what is said and what is unsaid and putting the two together in the same line. Perhaps this is what I'm doing in these recent poems. 

 

At 11 Tomorrow Morning

 
At 11 tomorrow morning
The wasps are at war in the kitchen.
When I take a ladle like a tennis racquet
Their bodies change yellow to black.
That blood soaked military flag
Is really the shadow of a bath mat
On the washing line.
                                  I’ve much respect
For those makers of bath mats and war. 

I Cover the Waterfront

Here is the poem for this week, "I Cover the Waterfront". The poem takes its first line and title from a song performed by Billie Holliday but written by Johnny W. Green and Edward Heyman. I actually think that this here poem is the one I have been trying to write for the last month or so. Whatever, its the best damn poem I've written for a while.

I Cover the Waterfront

I cover the waterfront
And write obituaries for long words in the summer.

My desk is alternately a pigeon’s wing,
Postcards, a pomegranate.

Since arriving I’ve been an orange sunspot
Putting the locals off their glasses

In this landscape that is otherwise white.