It’s Aries season and here’s a poem for Colin Herd’s birthday last week.
🔥♈🔥♈🔥♈🔥♈🔥♈
This Place is Rammed
The canteen was a dream canteen. No, it wasn’t on Mars!
I sat beside Colin Herd in a supervision that seemed to exist
horizoned on the kind of table I want to call cherrywood
is the word for anything darker and
sweeter than pine. He asks
if I’ve been writing lately. A poem, “The old
acid pit of the heart.” I turn sideways
to offer him a Ready Salted Walkers Crisp.
We talk publishing. I am courageous and yet
worry about waiting for lunch.
“O happy birthday!”
it occurs to me
that I am a day or so late.
I know he’s an Aries because
everywhere in the dream I see red.
It’s so busy. We’re not even
just a vibe. The packet
of crisps is obviously red. The flames
in new-lit candles. The irate cadmium
aura of waiters, who should get better pay.
I’m wearing red corduroy flares
like in the Bob Perelman poem
we heard last spring on Zoom. I’m showing
a loss. Is cherrywood red?
I’m stuck in my chair. The sound of the crunch of
the crisp is red. Colin’s drinking
a bright red thing with Campari & grenadine
Denise would approve of. Everything
is totally youthful. Will Colin eat
the big slice of blood orange?
Tell me a glorious story!
mariaology 