Diane Seuss Poems

No one says Paris anymore.
There's no such thing as Paris, no
Café de la Paix, no Titian's Entombment
in the Louvre or Hotel La Sanguin
...

and not the calf though it licked me with its tongue
covered in taste buds like barnacles. I'd sleep with my head
on its warm side. Pretend to sleep. Pretend to like to be alone
...

but needed to see anyway, they'd put on their work
gloves and grab a bat sleeping upside down in the attic
and hold it still so we'd have to look at its small eyes
...

Fingernail against zipper.
Apple covered in bees.
It's none of my business unless I'm the apple.
...

Not just cawing but full trills, music rising like swells
on a windy ocean, each bird a chip off of some
brilliantly-colored abstraction, beaks gold as trumpets
...

are nougat but there is something
else though not so sweet, no merging,
no synchrony of watches but a kind of—
...

If there's pee on the seat it's my pee,
battery's dead I killed it, canary at the bottom
of the cage I bury it, like God tromping the sky
...

transparent stomach fat as a coin purse. Beak too big for its face, like a baby
wearing huge sunglasses. Tuft of white fuzz, oh darling old man. Always
...

it was the barber and the undertaker who got into the heart
of the village earlier than even the firemen and the pharmacist
the barber would call hey pauly that's what he called paul
the undertaker and they'd head for marge taylor's place
...

thatched roof like the one on Stack's garage and inside
six stools covered in split red plastic, five booths, a cement
floor (I'm being honest about its frailties) and an oil heater
the kids gathered around drinking their cocoa, no I didn't
...