d e r e k     h e n d e r s o n

Tender Red

Television

Simples

Tender Red

I’ll let them all know
As a gift to them all
How manic you are
How jivy and limber
Or else I’ll have them
Listen to you
Electrical t.v. in bed.
I’ll stand naked adjacent
How gay my gaze
How live my eye
          And I’ll not regret
          Though the world forsake me
          Or (likely) label me slut
How you gyrate you heaven-sent
Hellion caught in a lick.
Luck all around so here we seem
Tarts every one and how sweet of them
To be on t.v. how edgy for them
To still be staring at us.

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Television—

                        —little spot on her
                           little spot on me
            a beautiful shining
            a noise
            a jagged greeting—
to say: the good life
to say: a waft of breeze
to say: we all are going by car

Instead, her and I lie down:
it is better to sleep
and when we finish splitting the peanuts
we examine their complicated fits and surfaces
we do so.

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Simples

Then I saw the worm on the ground,
writhing soil-ward, stuck under stone,
little dragon, no fire, full of earth,
mold, little eaten gems:
you shall hide your head and your little heart in the center;
might conceal in the sea of dirt you make
a light load.
Weird, I’m clear and nearest
your undulant curl, there I have a dear.
Health, health
under heaven
worm in the ground at the garden’s edge
your life is lean: eely
slither, lithe and loved of sod.

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DEREK HENDERSON is alive and well in Salt Lake City. He is the author of Thus & (If P Then Q, 2011) and, with Derek Pollard, of Inconsequentia (BlazeVOX, 2010). There's a website, too: www.twodereks.com. At present, his favorite quote is from Ezra Pound's "Canto CXVI": "If love be not in the house there is nothing."

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