Nov 26, 2010

Harsh Job Yen (J. Ashbery): Exercise

This sitting and typing, I'm done with it.
Dry brows in artificial light, the click
of calloused pads in shuttered rooms.
Shy monks stroll the boulevards, scribblers yawn
among pidgeons. There's no hunger without shape,
no ennui stranded in its vacuum.
I watched two men hauling garbage
behind the diner, mouths
pursed around their simple vowels. Qwerty
is enigma.

The higher primates will happen upon Lear
soon enough. I've had it.
I want inspector's gloves, safe temperatures,
bleach, fifty parts per million.
Quiddity waits in the third sink
in quaternary solution.
You kill mice.