Stephen Yenser

Poem

“I want words meat-hooked from the living steer” —Robert Lowell

Recumbent on the king bed where you gaffed mixed figures—literary lion (or sphinx) as odalisque!—you handed me a draft of your new poem, on Circe and Ulysses

(her avatar was downstairs mixing drinks), and fixed me with your understanding glare, a curious big cat’s, mane of gray hair a wild halo framing the black-rimmed glasses

you’ll wear in the New York taxi, dubious to be sure but thinking perhaps to close, by any bloody hook or crook, your hero’s circle (taxi: task and tax, done and paid), thinking to lie down in the bed you’d made, thinking no man is Odysseus.