Rotten Days in Late Summer by Ralf Webb

Author:Ralf Webb [Webb, Ralf]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141992747
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2021-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Fox the Talking Head

after ‘Fox and His Friends’, dir. Fassbinder

My compatriots have all quit. Left for Paris,

or prison. The cashbox got confiscated.

If the word is repeated often enough,

you don’t even know what it means any more:

Cash-in. Cash-up. Cash-rich. Cash-strapped.

All I had left, I kept inside my sock.

And then I got lucky, which I deserved,

as much as anyone deserves anything.

I’ve waited my whole life to get lucky.

Still, I stayed unwashed – why wash? – until

the new men began to flatter me. It’s tough

to distrust flattery, when it seems sincere.

I fell in love. This kind of love was an economy.

I didn’t realize that ‘ours’ meant ‘his’,

so I bought us everything that he wanted.

That stuff didn’t matter. Only his happiness.

They don’t tell you that a man doesn’t have

a tidy head just because he has a tidy closet.

Learn, learn, learn, he said. And I tried my best.

I climbed the carpeted stairs, wearing

the correct slippers, and ashed in the right places.

It’s like my kindness was a fly, trapped inside a jar,

and his hand was wrapped around the jar.

Cream suits and antiques … I made such an effort.

God, chief, so many people are closed-hearted.

What is a heart but a muscle, and blood

a type of currency? He siphoned my blood,

and ate up my muscle, with a turtle soup.

I watched him do it. Signed my name on the line.

Everyone’s to be had. What a pity.

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