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Incompetent Translation: Le Bateau ivre


by Bill Yarrow


At five o'clock in the afternoon, at five o'clock
in the afternoon, I got on (or boarded) to embark
the intoxicated dingy, the restive inebriated skiff

of last week's dreams, with a muskrat, cockroach,
and Richard Parker (the CGI tiger from Life of Pi)
to drift, elementally and continentally, infinitely

and augustly, past honeymoons and industrial
cantilevers, vats of lovers' hats and laundry,
through boulevards of bacon bits and coarse catacombs

of honey. Who would have thought? I ask you: would you
have thought? And what the sky. And what the pock-marked,
red-faced, foul-mouthed, slim-hipped sky. What price

allegiance? (Circular gunfire in Orion's head) What man has
planted can break his self-regard. Perfume from an unseen
censer. O Jamesy, Jamesy, let me up. Let me up out of this.

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