Corwin Ericson – 2 Poems


Corwin Ericson

2 Poems

The Hermit Poaches His Egg

My tongue is too wide to describe
an egg. Shell, albumen, yolk

and I’m done. Eggs are humps
of food. I can’t go on, eggs

are hatching in my eyebeams.
It is because I am a primate.

So I desire a cave on a sparsely treed hill
above a body of water and a refrigerator

and a nation of wide-tongued brothers
rudely grooming their sisters who wish

they could come and tidy up my camp
and discuss nacktkultur with a wise man.

I wrote a guide for pronouncing their names
because they all look alike.

They find their way around by talking:
“I always support ardently anything I believe;

I had the best delphiniums in the country,
my husband is often away on business,

My twelve children are buxom comely
ruddy fresh faced cherubim full of vim and vigor.”

Songbird eggs are no different,
but smaller tools are needed.

Dehypnotization

The question was: does one arouse
or arise from said state?
Which also called into question
the distinction between the prone
and the supine, so things were still vague
but mostly comfortable and remained artful.
But we were still worried about the general amnesty.
After all, the lepidopterist née mathematician
was still en tableau vivant, and it was long past curfew,
and a bad time for the anti-widdershins in general.
At any rate, the butterfly net was a nice touch.
In the same way that revolutions are like somebody
else’s alarm clock, I pressed my lips to her bandoleer
and said ‘Lights out, let’s get to bed.’
My bed was a counterrevolutionary dais
and we were all in danger, but she was a daisy about it all.
‘Undressing,’ she said, ‘is the last hope for the left-handed
under duress.’ Embarrassed, I tried to arch an eyebrow
but needed help, so I clapped like a seal and rolled us in the kelp.
We had either albacore or abalone, and that night
things got lovelier when she set us adrift and we cracked
edible marine gastropods with ear-shaped shells on our bellies.

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