Daniel Nester (Albany, New York, USA): Two Poems

I WILL TEACH YOU, SIRS, WHAT CENTURY IT IS

Enough about harvests. You never farmed
lint off your armchair let alone a farm.
Even antiques have games that don’t last.
You hammered your village sore.
That is why you must unjoin from all this.
That is why cavemen ran inside caves.
Someone went crazy and ran into the caves.
That was the whole idea. If judgments creak
it’s not because of flowers for a girlish alternative.
We got real girls for that. It’s because the distinction
grows from the teachers who made a point
to be teachers. Not to be as poor as real poor people
are poor. There’s nothing peasantlike about that.
Talk about something. Talk about what’s
in front of you before the country falls in.

FRAGMENT IN FIVE ACTS

1.
You made me stop when
your turned on point with
a dish of sandwiches.
I can’t understand that.

2.
I took a free preview
of an adult title at my hotel—
and it turned out to be
a bawdy Virgin Atlantic ad

3.
This is where sestinas start
to get boring, Tony says.
There was a heaven I had
in my hand once, right in my hand— it was

4. garden-earth-full and shadowy
back-ups. My mind chatters now
when I think of it. And now it’s gone.
From the mention-start I thought

5.
we were friends. I thought nothing
reminds me of fatherly things.
But I’m wrong. It’s everything.