Unknown Streets

By Hungry George

In Search of a Poem

A man crisscrosses this birdless beach,
Word after meaningless word,
Beaked to his tiny, improbable prey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387574810

Book preview

Unknown Streets

Unknown Streets

A Collection of Verse

By Hungry George

This work is dedicated to all poets

who have yet to make their voices heard—

(you know who you are)

To change your language you must change your life.

—from Codicil, a poem by Derek Walcott

In Search of a Poem

A man crisscrosses this birdless beach,

Word after meaningless word,

Beaked to his tiny, improbable prey.

Guns

Were poems guns

I would not squeeze this pigeon pale,

But would instead press lead

Into bird’s head.

A bullet-word or two would do

To color fancy’s blight—

Red answering this garish black,

This inconclusive white.

On the Front Porch with Your Mother

Rubbing a naked earlobe between forefinger and thumb,

Your mother tells me of a childhood fascination you once had

With toilet bowls and the swirls of things.

I suggest there’s a poem in that.

She laughs and says there probably is.

She then describes the day your two-year-old fingers

Found her favorite pair (her only pair) of diamond earrings

Resting on the counter by the sink.

I smile carefully—

Certain only that her swirling memories

Sparkle nothing like your eyes last night,

As twenty-year-old