after “American Sonnet 51”

while living in
Watts, i wiped my
eyes last
first the girl, boy, boy—re-incarnation
just a rotary ringing, i
heard sob, ring, weep, ring; i inoculated
Coltrane into the boom box so i could hear myself

think. in those days i worshipped
the big tipper, the 323, the copper breasts in
the magazines, the
scraps on which to erect a temple

first, then a sonnet, i
waited, and the old phone rang, and as always
the children cried, and i wrote ‘till the pencil wore

      down past the ferrule. ‘till my
      fingers burgeoned calluses mink,
     ‘till the lining of my good coat
     was all scribble, clementine ink. and to
     think i spent the long lines at the
     grocer, the liquor store, the laundromat
     running from the noise and
     the orange juice the kids drank,
     the snot pale
     as a good champagne
     that’d drip from their flared nostrils—with  
     two napkins: one with my
     poems, the other a quick recipe for soft-boiled
     paprika sprinkled eggs.