Room would like to apologize to Yoko’s Dogs for the formatting errors made in “Yellow” in issue 36.2.
Room would like to apologize to Yoko’s Dogs for the formatting errors made in “Yellow” in issue 36.2.
Yellow
I
her cardinals return
from the west
printed on napkins
wine smears
on top of lipstick smears
April in Montreal
even the detours
have detours
this gravel road
ends in a ditch
spring peepers—
the marsh grass slick
in moonlight
his yellow wheelbarrow
loaded with split alder
II
monkeys
juggle windfall pears
for the villagers
a scarecrow has a brain
only in Oz
storm-stayed
he mistakes his neighbour
for his wife
train uncoupling—
one half pulled north, the other east
crossing the prairie
one February
snowless
fields of stubble and silos
nothing like England
tourists chip fossils
from the cliff
then leave them on the beach
twenty-million-year-old razor clams
candle-lit
microwave vermicelli
with clam sauce—
Haiku brand!
mulberry festival?
I’ll wear my Bengali sari
it’s not her party
that Georgie girl
dancing in drag
fortunes rise and fall
while the Aegean remains Aegean
III
no need
for the steel-plated hull
of an ice-breaker
she slices cheddar
passes it on the knife
one man’s garbage—
a squirrel runs off with a baguette
in its teeth
a rain-soaked cedar
shaking the moon from its branches
chanterelles
fill his hat
with musty apricot
she rakes leaves into piles
he kicks them apart
a stolen kiss
comes back to me
as leaf smoke
old letters wrapped in ribbon
burn hotter in the fire
unfolding crisp tissue
from the pink box—
new ballet slippers
Nureyev
my feet are dogs
drawn there by sweetness
she picks the first
lilies-of-the-valley
ducks lift from the river
into the rainclouds
IV
she checks the rice
mops her face
with the skirt of her sundress
all the orchard ladders
are in the orchard
rishis tell us
surrender the fruits
of our labours
the bees don’t know
they’re in the jardin des refusés
mimosa
the Italian tenor
is homesick
each year
celebrating the yellow fever vaccine
