from 'The Sonnets 2 Orpheus' by Kent Leatham

13.

             “Voller Apfel, Birne…”

Crankshaft, cough syrup, debit card, app,
Ponzi scheme, Lipitor, Levitra, açaí…
Strange fruit. And still there’s no word
to describe the way she… and then…

Do you call it language during the act?
Is it still an apple when it’s in your mouth?
What about hers? (Did you know fried rattlesnake
jumps in the pan? What’s the word for that?)

The audience gathers for the silent film,
but it’s just someone reading an audio book
in ASL. (“Oh hydrogen jukebox…”)

Reconstituted by Google, Sappho’s poems
all turn out to contain the word “???????????.”
Do you remember her kisses? Were they bittersweet?

'To my dear and loving husband' by Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672)

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was a happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the east doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompence.
They love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

'I have a gentil cock' by Anon (early 15th century)

I have a gentil cock
croweth me day
he doth me risen early
my matins for to stay

I have a gentil cock
comen he is of great
his comb is of red coral
his tail is of jet

I have a gentil cock
comen he is of kind
his comb is of red sorrel
his tail is of inde

his legs be of azure
so gentil and so small
his spurs are of silver white
into the wortewale

his eyes are of crystal
locked all in amber
and every night he pertcheth him
in my lady`s chamber

'The Bemusement Arcade' by Sam Willetts

A dream of the “Penny Falls”: a heap of days

as pennies, life’s small change, and a mechanical

shelf nudging them untiringly towards the drop –

but so slightly, you know they’ll hardly fall.

That’s how time was when I was young:

a negligible pressure. I’d wake each day

to find my heap of time as good as undiminished.

So how did I miss the niagara-cascade?

The thing’s rigged, or I’ve been dreaming –

the heap of little days much smaller now,

but my pockets nearly empty, and no-one here,

and the sea so high and dark outside.