November 12
BY JESSE NATHAN
Matins nones vespers also begot
alarm clocks and surveillance
so I sing dear abusive muses of the stopwatch and the cuckoo
oh please if you would
untether me like an animal on a hillside
let me be Hesiod
tending his goat one second
scribbling proverbs and fables the next
even if sometimes the goat escapes
let the goat escape
November 20
BY JESSE NATHAN
From your Mission rooftop, the city all laid out in mist.
Twin Peaks and a blinking alien. Schools and theaters,
Buena Vista hill studded with a pink sanitorium
refitted to luxury apartments.
Twilight. Venus says hello.
I say the career of a poet is like a streak of light,
change is meaning.
Rock’n’roll, you answer, is always in the present.
There are things, you add, of no
moment to the world
that are everything to me.
Without you, I’m thinking, I’d surely turn parrot
who plucks out his head feathers
and looks a little vulture