Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


THE BUTANE EGG by JANE MILLER

First Line: WHERE ONCE I HUMMED LIKE A METROPOLIS
Last Line: IS A COMPLEX INTENT.

Where once I hummed like a metropolis,
after I saw the bodies there was this feeling
of living in a foreign country, heated and
sealed like a humid summer day, one door away,
the one blown off, and in the middle
of the bridge -- where we put it -- two huts
painted green. My eyes.
My mind wasn't normal,
the sacrifice grew bigger because we feared admitting it,
like having a husband for a minute.
Why that feeling has vanished I don't know.
It was a small photograph. I suppose that makes us
every reason to start with.

The future is a gesture that stimulates
the central nervous system -- a new lyricism --
as much theater as you or me,
as once public TV was our projection,
now with an instant's notice
we are each other's project.

Among the few we one day came home bare
to sit by the brazier until the muddy smell
and shell shrunk in a classic calm.
Every time we stand up it seems a toy boat
tips to the left.

-- I've been waiting for you.
-- I'm always floating toward that crooked smile
on your face.
Will you be jealous if I tell you about this valley,
about being older, more dead, clearer
in memory? Our brakes squeal
without looking at the accident.

It's not as if lying in an open
hydrocarbon -- the only really feminine thing in my life --
replaces several years in the life of a city.
Cities end like rivers running onto sand.

Our river --
the umbilical out of the valley --
is a copper wire.
On waking, the fuse is irretrievably lit.
Before chronic electricity, we were the ones
who loved the sun most --
now with the last bridge secured
to a dot, the August moon,
everyone's amphetamine
is a complex intent.



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