Matter, The

Taxpayers, draftees, the music in our heads sounds good

enough, a bumping book bag slung around his shoulders.

On a yellow legal pad, he jots

white the string quartet jittles:

ponds pop with the o-

mouths of starved carp;

sad Hispanics fish illegally,

their lines jerked delicately,

he'll have to let his sick muscles die, go home.

Even cigarette smoke fails to cling to shirts forever.

Pretty pure white pear tree petals, fallen, cannot cover

the body of that squirrel curled in the gutter.

During Lupercalia, priests in wolfskins,

goading Rome's small populace to re-

produce, dipped feeder mice in gesso,

flung victims against canvas again, again, o heavens

yes. He do believe

the sun is the hot tip

of a bright red penis-shaped gag candle (blow it

out, we can't) atop our wedding cake of clouds.

CHRISTOPHER DAVIS'S third collection of poetry is titled A History of the Only War. His second book, The Patriot, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 1998.

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