Anabel Lee/Disco Version

(in the background
rolling stones & memories w/complaints
devices doing marvin gaye
& behind it all
that high chick chorus coming in
and coming loud)

last month—maybe the month before—
could've seen you/laid out on your silk shroud
for the childbride but now
I don't know no John Donne anymore
didn't care so much before
maybe it was friday night/or saturday
maybe it was a roman or a norse memory:
you kept kissing me
or I kept kissing you

(knew you/voodoo you
this might be revelation/slip on through)

last year, on the lake
north of lost parallels
Gary A. told me there was no truth
in a woman and no sense
in that breathing/we both knew
that was funny/even in a killing rain
we were unconnected. That night
looked like nothing different.

(call it voodoo/make me disappear
clear the heart/slip in to you . . .)

I had a kingdom/or I will
nothing's straight this season
ol man river's got guards and you
you're pale/on imported marble
but there's no good reason
I'm the one dead, fr chrissake.
all you do is bitch about the chances
and the status quo/but I saw
the angel turn

(call it heartfood
my nation is mars/I remember you
from the stars/it's only in you)

only/in you (mick as marvin gaye)
only in/you (marvin gaye as mick)

only in you


Published in the Alchemist Review in the Spring of 1979. I believe it was the issue edited by Ron Deverman. I have always had a specific relationship to Edgar Allen Poe's work. I still read Poe more often than anybody else.