Monday, March 03, 2003

214

THE UNMISTAKEABLE CHILDREN'S-BOOK QUALITY

The taste test inside you generates votes
Against democracy, and in the heat waves, even,
They're advocating a truth-seeming as different
From truth serum as a restaurant where snacks
Are added to snacks (a sort of late-night dim
Sum) is different from where they have the girls
Shift down the platform every ten minutes. I say
The business of America is anybody's, and therefore
Nobody's, and I sit through the indoctrination
Twice or three times, in the rocking chairs
Deep inside the death star, to get my worth.
It could be right the first time, it could
Be written, but nobody speaks to me
And I am used to the way the room gets bright
When the breeze off the river turns the trees
In the courtyard. Paper slides under door.