Colder
Playing Hot and Cold
we hid a silver dollar
and, being young,
we heard no warning
in the splutter hotter;
we thought nothing
of exhorting each other:
You’re burning up,
you’re burning up.
Sometimes, I saw
the coin resting
perplexingly
on the turntable’s dial
and leaned away just
to hear the syllable
in slow motion: cold,
the vowel gelid,
a molecule made sluggish.
Now imagine that coin
to be a feeling–rage
or grief or love, anything
that might burn you up.
I want to be colder.
Hammer and Tongs
Sing in me the brash effort: percussionists mid-melee–
timpani mallets swung wide and wild, the gallop loosed
on a boardwalk xylophone.
Sing in me the crowded key,
the dribble-drive, the pick-and-roll rodeo, the Musketeer,
the Volunteer, Spartan and Trojan, Crimson Tide.
Sing,
O Muse, the smith forging horseshoes, magma omegas.
Sing the smith drumming armor, cymbal on anvil. Sing
in me, Muse, and I, too, will go at you hammer and tongs.
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