Gwyn McVay
 

Catoctin Furnace
 

A merry-land, damn it!         Let's go round
the old brick furnace, damp bats gathered

as if waiting for the waltz
at a cotillion, now the brick dust
chokes off what used to be the flue

'Isabella' they called it, made pig iron
(sucking at fire's hind tit)
and it's ore-some, the great high ceiling.

You had to stand well back in those days.
You couldn't climb the back crumble.

Now as it is black bears are in the park,
people camp there. It says so in the shadow

of the tight wall fortified round it.
Air smelled like sulfur. You, coated with brick dust,

survived the toolmaking test.

 

 

My Girl, My Country Sweetheart
 

as strawberries
hot as backseat sex
she names her boat
The Destructoress
                   --the "ess" trailing,
long hair and scented drapes
heavy on her past, a mane
of white cloth and regency

Marie Antoinette could not be more regal,
Joan of Arc not more saintly,
         yet she rages, races
against the knotted neckcloth "night,"

magician of knives emerging from her palm,
she folds diapers for a baby made from air,
a superstition, a supper, the news from Basra

strips her like a plum in its coffin,
she holds live eels in her teeth
 

 

 

 

 

 

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