For Spicer – Ryan Di Francesco

April 22, 2026

I have collected
a small vocabulary

from the street,
bars, offices

and put objects
on display:

crap,
shit,
butterflies.

I push
them off a cliff
until the ocean disappears.

 
Room 73

The Virgin Mary
breaks through
the curtain.

Four Spanish dancers
come in behind her.

She sees
Buster Keaton.

He is nibbling
at the blue mouth,
inventing
a new alphabet

disguised
as a seagull
and a cockroach.

She says
she is a pigeon
and crawls

like a lover
at the hour of death,

singing:

I could love you
if you were a dove.

 
Shake the Letters

From your tongue.

The sun sings a song
for the flies.

The fever enters
with a million Whitmans.

You can find them
in dreamless:

North America,
Havana, Mexico,
Madrid, Portugal.

The lonely
under the clock.

Apples no one wanted
in hard-up cities.

Coastlines dripping
in clusters.

Meat and tears
alone in taxis,
bunched together:

coffins, frozen rivers,
spit, memory, leaves.

The unemployed.

Look for the bird
clothed in the mud.

Look for old Walt Whitman
sold as rawhide.

 
I Am Inside a Word

The word is an image
of a memory.

I can’t spell it.

It exists between z and a.

I see the eraser
on a poet’s pencil.

He has brushed the pink dust
away with his hand.

 
Drunks in Doorways Waiting

I am reading Jesus’ Son.

The Salvation Army still
hasn’t taken over.

Every highbrow carcass sits down
and shits in stalls.

It’s useless.

Scratching
at their mean little door.