from The Soft Blare

More Reading Habits

     for Graham

His son has become a great lover of books

And is just now tearing through his first novel,

The Brothers Karamazov. He's six-months-old,

A prodigy in diapers seated on the floor.

Ripping along page after page, he curls

The deconstructed fragments in his fingers,

Waves them overhead to see how they fly,

Then sticks them in his mouth, chews, savoring

The complex flavors that survive his translation.

Pausing, reflective, he decides for himself

Whether to swallow the story or to spit it out,

for he's already a connoisseur, a shrewd

Poststructuralist founding his own school.

And there, at the table, is Pops, Daddy, Old

Blood and Guts, heaped over his platters,

Trying to digest what happens to the father

In this tale, buffoon who gets, alas, what he deserves.