CONJUNCTIONS:32 Spring 1999
Poems and Drawings
John Yau and Trevor Winkfield
PETER LORRE SPEAKS TO THE SPIRIT OF
EDGAR ALLAN POE DURING A SEANCE
Back then which is anywhere in back of now
I was pretending to be a practicing mendicant,
a mower of smaller children, a moratorium in a tuxedo,
while you were acting like a hopeless sponge.
a photograph of a convict whose mind
isn't quite made up, but it is.
Later, I draped the last of my outer garments
over my jockey shorts, and left town in a cab.
I told the man whose shiny head
reminded me of a bottle of wine
Deliver me to the suburban rodeos of
Piccadilly or Paradise
a harbor of idle tugboats
an island of glass huts
wherever smoke hasn't started
charting its progress across a torn sky
Thus, the journal of our journey
began with the opening of faucets;
tear ducts; syrupy vittles; Arctic ice storms;
bowler hats above long thick sleeves;
white haired gymnasts and their smelly pets.
The detectives came later,
examples of their tarnished industriousness
tucked beneath their tongues.
Did you know that I was never called upon
by those who would have known
what I meant
when I said
I was a star,
a stage of deterioration,
a page upon which
someone has drawn
the seven shapes of my name,
their skeletal facades
pressing against deserted streets.
The rest of me--the part you know
as it is also you--
is sitting inside,
watching television,
waiting for further instructions on how
I might dig myself out of the roles
blind biographers have stuck me in
__________
Next Poem and Drawing
An additional Peter Lorre poem and three additional drawings can be found in the print issue of Conjunctions:32, Eye to Eye