James Tate

Color Record No. 18, Side B:

and James Tate:

Poem to Some of My Recent Poems

By James Tate

My beloved little billiard balls,

my polite mongrels, edible patriotic plums,  

you owe your beauty to your mother, who  

resembled a cyclindrical corned beef  

with all the trimmings, may God rest  

her forsaken soul, for it is all of us  

she forsook; and I shall never forget

her sputtering embers, and then the little mound.

Yes, my little rum runners, she had defective  

tear ducts and could weep only iced tea.  

She had petticoats beneath her eyelids.  

And in her last years she found ball bearings  

in her beehive puddings, she swore allegiance  

to Abyssinia. What should I have done?  

I played the piano and scrambled eggs.  

I had to navigate carefully around her brain’s  

avalanche lest even a decent finale be forfeited.

And her beauty still evermore. You see,

as she was dying, I led each of you to her side,

one by one she scorched you with her radiance.

And she is ever with us in our acetylene leisure.

But you are beautiful, and I, a slave to a heap of cinders.