So nice to appear in such fine company, Borges and Boland, Niedecker and Oppen, Neruda and Patricia Smith, Gary Snyder and Alicia E Stallings, Billy Collins and Maryann Corbett, Michael Harper and Claudia Emerson, Jack Spicer and Gerald Stern, so many others, and seated right beside Mr. Garrett Hongo in the newly-issued Best of the Asheville Poetry Review, 1994-2014 20th Anniversary Issue. Note that my poem, as it appears here, differs from what you will see in the new anthology. The two sestets have been reversed at the suggestion of Bill Coyle and Justin Quinn, and this is the version that will appear in my upcoming book Caligulan, out in September.

The helpers sweep remains of past events,
Banks of crushed paper cups, banana peels,
Broken tape. Bored, they go about their chore,
And make the park the way it was before
The “Zombie Fun Run.” No point being dull
When waging war on a disease that kills.
The Good Humor truck was once an ambulance.
You can tell. It’s shaped oddly like a skull.
It’s spring but cold. An ice-cream cone brings chills.
Dog shit piles up in bags or sticks to heels.
Along the pier men slouch and fish for eels.
A navy destroyer, widowed by war,
Waits with its Ghost Fleet, rocks faintly in its berth.
The wind blows more trash. No one thinks of death.