Evaporation Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Divine providence, a prostitute for a month,
And seven kids,
A lucky number: The hours spend to lunch
And fornication,
Moving through the motion pictures of our nation;
And when once it gets cold,
It freezes; and I can’t look at my face-
I can’t do most things anyways. Even in school I couldn’t
Spell,
And I was always the tremulous procrastination following
The tardy bell-
I experienced a certain noirish- vertigo while copying
My rushed plagiarism of her eyes.
Then I stood up and masturbated to the pledge of allegiance-
Out in the laundry mat of the student parking lot,
I followed the suave tortoise to its narcoleptic victory;
I.E. I slept underneath the mortally wounded bus:
I failed PE;
But despite all of this I loved her throughout the trials and tribulations:
The blue-jay eyed bully who pummeled me in the gut
With her inky quills, her tomahawk sensation when I saw her out
In the playground’s field kissing other swells against their
Wills,
Until she drifted away and found the poor sap she would marry;
And I sort of drifted after her, like a mollusk dried out of its
Shell, a stage of evaporation of the sky,
Not in any noticeable sort of hurry.