And another

Well now I'm on page 68, reading and re-reading the title poem, and just have to share it:

POTSCRUBBER LULLABIES

I
The Potscrubber completes a cycle
so vigorous the knives were rattling,
and pauses, waking Evan Michael,
who finds all silences unsettling.

There's no resemblance. It's too early.
Everything is still so round.
But we've occurred to him as surely
as silence has occurred to sound,

and when he's finished sharpening
into himself, and when we've blurred,
we're going to go on happening
in silence like he's never heard.

II
I wore him like a broken arm
all summer, slung
from my right shoulder in a paisley hammock
so deep the sides closed over him.
When I walked he swung, and slept,
kukked by the time his body kept
against my stomach.
When I stopped I had to sing.

An Eric McHenry poem

I EZB'd Potscrubber Lullabies because of the title, because I've got my radar out for poems with working-class themes (for the other blog), and of course the book is something completely different, but a fun read nonetheless. I'd never heard of Eric McHenry before. His book came out in '06 from Waywiser Press. I'm going to look up some more of their titles. Here's one poem:

"Larkin at Sixty"

I did the South Bank Show today. It went
no worse than I'd expected, though they spent
rather too much time talking
about four-letter Larkin for my liking.

What will survive of me will no more live
than an appendix in preservative,
and now it's clear to me
"They fuck you up" will be my Innisfree.