Before Dawn on Bluff Road Hollyhocks in the Fog by August Kleinzahler

Author:August Kleinzahler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

BAY LULLABY

Tuesdays are bad for sausage and flowers,

rain

sweeping in off the sea, foghorns

lowing like outsize beasts

shackled to cliffs at the mouth of the Bay.

You hear them from under the movie marquee

before going in to dry

off in plush, alone

behind two old ladies, that song of a wanton from long ago,

“Temptation,” filling the empty room.

Across the city’s northwest quadrant,

two, maybe three miles in,

drifting through holes in the traffic and rain,

you hear them warning ships off the rocks,

moaning like fettered gods.

Lilies begun to curl

and meat gone sad at the delicatessen,

trays of wurst,

fat seeping into the skins

before Thursday delivery and the big weekend.

As morning’s first trolley clears the track,

the cat’s petite snores,

my love’s upper lip beaded with sweat,

you can still hear them,

out there in the dark,

mingling their calls in the rain.

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