free-verse18 lines
Greeting Verses
by A. R. AmmonsWhat do I find right at the center of my interpersonal
relationships: a slightly dispersed but indisputably
tinctured core of brutality: go to the hospital
the question is not whether your life is at stake
but whether you can pay the bill, guaranteeing it on
admission (or no admission) and proving it (or not getting
out) on release (if any): this bit of realism
clutches our floating values underneath like a bracket
under a bouquet: if someone pauses to
congratulate me on some slight nothing, I see the
quiver of a curse undermine his lip: he
tries to make a better world even while it crumbles in
on him and us (a brutality): when I give my body to another
(or take another's) I sometimes fear more
body being taken than was offered, an overextension
of contract: hearts and flowers, scented sentiment, garden
varieties greet us, how lost we want to be in fictions and
fabrications: a worm cores this world's doings, look out.