Gavin Volpe: Friendly Fracture, Michael Cluff

Michael Cluff is a poetry machine. We should give him a Toucan column.

Gavin Volpe: Friendly Fracture
- based on John Cheever's "The Five Forty-Eight"
by Michael Cluff

Lying down in the mud
in my fourth best suit
was not so defeating
as she planned it
to be.
I found it equalizing
elevating and eloquent:
I can be dirty now
exactly like the exposed part
of my once-pristine, virginal
white dress shirt,
the silk purple tie
now gratefully is
a measure of the muck
I have leased and loved
in this place of a soul sold
to lounging in carnality
and cupidity.
My black wingtips
are encrusted toe to heel
in this earth alike
my parents once plowed
as I did her
in a third rate flat
on the border of the
not-so-bad from
the nearly bad
side of time.

When I reluctantly rise,
My front now shows the soiled
sullied side
while viewed from the back
I look as pure as ever.
My split
can now
freely
enjoy both vantages