“… did not need much
To make us laugh instead, and touch,”
-A.E. Stallings, “Recitative,” from Poetry (April 2005).
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?
-A. E. Stallings, “Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther” from Poetry, April 2005.
Tar babies are
not the children
of tar people.
It is far worse.
The tar baby occurs
spontaneously
nor do we adhere
at first. There is
an especially
unperverse
attractiveness
to the tar baby–
although currently
she is a little sick.
When you start
to help her
is when she
start to stick.
Kay Ryan, “Tar Babies“
