Sinister: "SQUAWK!!!!!" said the Poetry Parrot, "Tis Monday!"

[Erin Lewis]

Hey kids,
     While I was picking a poem for you lovely listees to read, I came 
across the latest issue of Pulse! magazine, and found a TOYBOATS review.  
It's so bad that I refuse to reprint it, but I will tell you that the 
adverb count was somewhere in the high 20s (it was only a two paragraph 
article), and the reviewer especially liked the songs "Spacebaby Dream" 
and "A Summer Wedding".  Hee hee, says me.
     Onto the poems.  I will preface the first by telling you that 
diverticulitis is a weird illness with which you can't eat any nuts or 
seeds (no strawberry jam, even), because your colon will swallow them up 
in tiny pockets in its lining and turn them into little monster 
appendages.  So people who have it freak out if you give them baked 
goods, knowing you've probably spiked them with seeds inadvertently.
     The second excerpt is from a poem I found when I was far away from 
home, and it made me cry.  That and sourdough bread were the only things 
that made me want to go home.  And if you've eaten sourdough bread 
anywhere outside of California, you've only eaten white bread with an 
inflated ego.
     AHEM.

"Eating the Cookies"
by Jane Kenyon, American poet, 1947-1995

The cousin from Maine, knowing
about her diverticulitis, left out the nuts,
so the cookies weren't entirely to my taste,
but they were good enough; yes, good enough.

Each time I emptied a drawer or shelf
I permitted myself to eat one.
I cleared the closet of silk caftans
that slipped easily from clattering hangers,
and from the bureau I took her nightgowns
and sweaters, financial documents
neatly cinctured in long gray envelopes,
and the hairnets and peppermints she'd tucked among
Lucite frames abounding with great-grandchildren,
solemn in their Christmas finery.

Finally the drawers were empty,
the bags full, and the largest cookie,
which I had saved for last, lay
solitary in the tin with a nimbus
of crumbs around it. There would be no more
parcels from Portland. I took it up
and sniffed it, and before eating it,
pressed it against my forehead, because
it seemed like the next thing to do.

--------

>From "San Francisco Blues", by Jack Kerouac:

*37TH CHORUS*

I got the San Acisca blues
Singin in the street all day
     I got
     The San Acisca
     Blues
Wailin in the street all day
     I better move on, podner,
     Make my West
     The Eastern Way-

San
  Fran
Cis
  Co-
San
  Fran
Cis
  Co
    Oh-
       ba
         by


*38TH CHORUS*

Ever see a tired
     ba by
Cryin to sleep
     in its mother's arms
Wailin all night long
     while the locomotive
Wails on back
A cry for a cry
In the smoke and the lamp
Of the hard ass night

  That's how I
    fee-
       eel-
  That's how
       I fee-eel!
  That's *how*
       I feel-
What a deal!
Yes I'm goin ho
               o
                ome


-------------

Love, Miss Erin

P.S. For next week's poem, I pick Abi, the cardie-wearing mouse rescuer 
who says the Superlambanana is a slide  :)





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