Jessica Dylan Miele
The Porcupine
How will porcupines fair themselves
between tornadoes and hospitals
Forget your legends
Bitter root we too came where the others lost
What's keeping us now has nothing to do with
last minute, the same,
in St. Petersburg they know everything
but the porcupine is still worried
Somewhere billy goats pray for us all,
think in a hospital bed,
tubes sticking out the maypoles
And so we ought to ask
What's keeping us now?
The raven is bored
What's keeping us?
The porcupine has its arms full of timing
As what you call a fair day indoors
the porcupine has only to be ambling on the lazy stones,
how happy we all ought to be ambling on the lazy stones,
how much waste of a busy body.
Weather, our sense of pecks and harpoons, is thinking
in its corner but our honesty
chances on a golden purchase fish
All over swimming we ought to push ourselves
in the mysteries of empty clams, with juggling applause
Farewell porridge, tea cups, scarecrow,
the porcupine has finished his project
As when lumberjacks from a shining castle
or from the best saloon of the west
What's keeping us princess, your needles are falling out
Feet dancing cracks into shoes and the pieces, sparkle
What happened to the porcupine concern us
Every year someone else joins the other team,
the fish are drowning from making faces at the hooks