Couplets

by David Lehman

Originally published on July 1, 2004

Say the brokers: buy shares now. Dance the orange: ask Rilke how. The girls undress when no one looks. The boys keep their noses in books. The joker puts a color in every line, Adds an ice cube to a glass of white wine. To you I say good morning, But the red sky is [...]

With Tenure

by David Lehman

Originally published on August 1, 1998

If Ezra Pound were alive today                     (and he is) he’d be teaching at a small college in the Pacific Northwest and attending the annual convention of writing instructors in St. Louis and railing against tenure, saying tenure is a ladder whose rungs slip out from under the scholar as he climbs upwards to [...]

Operation Memory

by David Lehman

Originally published on August 1, 1998

We were smoking some of this knock-out weed when Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs And apartments and wives. Nobody [...]

Rejection Slip

by David Lehman

Originally published on August 1, 1998

“Oh, how glad I am that she Whom I wanted so badly to want me Has rejected me! How pleased I am, too, That my Fulbright to India fell through! The job with the big salary and the perks Went to a toad of my acquaintance, a loathsome jerk Instead of me! I deserved it! [...]