Ruth’s Anti-Sonnet of 1941
What to compare her to, this summer day
Of June that reaps the darkling buds of May?
This day has given cheeks and lips a red
Known to no rose. No lipstick and no rouge
Where she lies now with blood upon her head
And summer dawning on the failed refuge
She begged for at that blue-eyed fellow’s door
Who fucked her once then shot her twice out back
Where the dark ravens with no nevermore
Will come to pluck her sockets blank and black.
And this diurnal summer does not fade
Nor cease to shine on many a blond head.
Why would death need to brag about his shade
When in raw daylight she can rot so red?
She can no longer breathe. Men clearly see.
Summer can’t care, and cannot mean, but be.
Estranged Christmas
Behold the stranger face of normalcy
Turns in the night: a sickly herald star.
There is a something between you and me.
I don’t think we’ll like learning what we are.
Try to hear the music. Play the symbols.
Carol and dine together in wintering dark.
This is the way the festive cookie crumbles,
The little pieces learning what they are.
There is a something between you and me,
Between the past and future. It is pain.
I see it in the blazing of the tree.
I sense it in the stench of the champagne.
We sing. An age is buried in quicklime.
We can’t quite tell how much it’s wintertime.
A. Z. Foreman is a language-acquisition addict working on a doctorate at the Ohio State University. He is very proud to have had his work featured in at least two people’s tattoos.