And two more new poems.

By MARC VINCENZ.

Come Dancing with Me

Where are you headed with all that cargo? One often heard of those who made it. The messages filter back over the years, sometimes this way.

He eyed me with a caterpillar resting over his socket. I could almost see that caterpillar smoking a cigarette after sex.

All mankind, the caterpillar said, walk straight into metaphors like walls. Within these winding hills you should be able to get something straight. And it’s because I’m positioned at a curve, I should know.

Let the burden carry you toward me. I’m light on my feet.

•

Seeking a Publicist

You can sing for your crumbs, Odin:
The grass is still green in my golden belt,

you think: what an unspeakable world:

The Emperor swore to restore the balance,
all his great benevolence unfolding between his wings.

What a sublime world, he intimated,
raising a polka-dotted hankie to his lips.

You have been surrounded
by the dull and the obtuse,

the wafflers and the warblers,
the whine-whingers, the gin-and-tonic-ers,

but you know how to sing for your crumbs:
I hadn’t had time to notice it before, but

the gods dish out to those who seek fame.
As soon as I have polished this up, maybe

while the weather is still nice and warm,
something to think about seriously.

•

Harry Houdini

A cat scampers
through shrubs,
over leaves, out-

side the blue-
backed sky
and the clatter

of stones
in the woods—
further off

an engine growls.
What do you hold
in your hands?

A pole to prod
your way through
the chicken wire?

To beat off
the starving bears?

Look down to
where solid matter
meets the floor,

behind tabloids,
registration numbers
in election years,

or the hungry who die
by the millions,
even where em-

phatically magical folk
live, or the some-
timers, the marginalia—

those pretending
to hide in the interior;
quite often,

in fact, look back
into the bloodshot eye-
ball of time—

tree after tree
in our strange groves
where the wind

whistles questions
and a blue-backed sky
growls outside

in the sky-high
dwelling; sneers
in the mirrored glass,

and says, Shall we give
them the sun
or snuff out the stars?

♦

MARC VINCENZ is an Anglo-Swiss-American poet, fiction writer, translator, editor, publisher, musician and artist. He has published over thirty books of poetry, fiction and translation. His translation of Klaus Merz’ selected poems, An Audible Blue (White Pine Press, 2022), recently won the 2023 Massachusetts Book Award. His latest poetry collection is The Pearl Diver of Irunmani (White Pine Press, 2023).

Image: La Danse by Henri Matisse. The State Hermitage museum. General Staff building. Saint Petersburg, Russia. sforzza – stock.adobe.com.