Stop Making Sense
Alan Catlin

Summer transforms the City, hundred
degree heat presses clouds of smog down
against concrete, melts tar papered roof
tops, black hot drops of it fall on
the yellowed linoleum flooring, are sliding
between cracked wall boards; outside,
the fire escape rods are hot curling irons,
tightly welded growths on the skin stretching
down the body, pointing toward the Park
where the fat women are jogging in sweat suits
on the unshaded cinder paths; inside, the poet
is the man in the black hat who turns up
the stereo, the man who listens to the
Gotterdammerung, Brunnhilde's Funeral Music,
while outside, in the Park, the lake begins
to burn.

isbn 1-882983-53-X
37 pages/$6