DISAKNOWLEGEMENTS 3 by Duane Locke

We moved from the poverty
Of  a Georgia farm smokehouse
To the poverty of one room
In a Tampa boarding house
Located in the proletariat
Section of the city called “Gary.”
Digression: I often wondered
If this section of the city
Was named after Gary
Grant, or Gary Cooper.
It has to be named after a movie star,
For everything in this impoverished
Section of a depression city
Was named after a movie star.
Every girl was named Lana.
There was Lana Jones, Lana Smith, Lana Brown,
Lana Rodriquez.
The bacon of our poverty in Tampa
Was different from the bacon of our
Poverty of the Georgia smokehouse.
The Tampa bacon was thin-sliced.
Artificially colored to conceal fatty sections,
And left one’s mouth dry.
The Georgia smokehouse bacon
Was thick sliced, naturally colored
With a surplus of fatty sections,
And left one’s mouth greasy,
The tongue was slick and could
Easily articulate the materiality of the signifier.
Digression: It takes a greasy mouth
To write post-modern poems, and a dry
Mouth is helpless. Perhaps, this is
Why Georgia farms have produced
So many excellent postmodern poets, and the
City of Tampa has never produced
One poet, postmodern or otherwise, worthwhile.