Thought Helen’s breasts were cups
we drank from troughs,
failing to invent the world’s economy.
We wrap fish,
search out Cleopatra’s needle in a haystack.
(“Latin & grain are sacred,” Ezra Pound said.)
I waited. Genet kissed me.
The world left a mousetrap at the door.
Poet and filmmaker Frank Kuenstler (1928-1996) was the author of Lens (1964), Selected Poems (1964), Paradise News (1966), Fugitives. Rounds ;(1966), 13½ Poems (1984), Continued (1987), Miscellany (1987), In Which (1994), and The Seafarer, B.Q.E., and Other Poems (1996). Today, three volumes of Kuenstler’s work are still in print, including The Enormous Chorus (Pressed Wafer, 2011), from which this selection was drawn. Thanks to Nico Alvarado, Emily Kuenstler, and William Corbett for allowing Petri Press to aid in their efforts to revitalize public interest in a great poet.
