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World Poetry Translation Project


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Shut Up And Eat Your Toad

by James Tate

The disorganization to which I currently belong
has skipped several meetings in a row
which is a pattern I find almost fatally attractive.
Down at headquarters there's a secretary
and a janitor who I shall call Suzie
and boy can she ever shoot straight.
She'll shoot you straight in the eye if you ask her to.
I mow the grass every other Saturday
and that's the day she polishes the trivets
whether they need it or not, I don't know
if there is a name for this kind of behavior,
hers or mine, but somebody once said something or another.
That's why I joined up in the first place,
so somebody could teach me a few useful phrases,
such as, "Good afternoon, my dear anal-retentive Doctor,"
and "My, that is a lovely dictionary you have on, Mrs. Smith."
Still, I hardly feel like functioning even on a brute
or loutish level. My plants think I'm one of them,
and they don't look so good themselves, or so
I tell them. I like to give them at least several
reasons to be annoyed with me, it's how they exercise
their skinny spectrum of emotions. Because.
That and cribbage. Often when I return from the club
late at night, weary-laden, weary-winged, washed out,
I can actually hear the nematodes working, sucking
the juices from the living cells of my narcissus.
I have mentioned this to Suzie on several occasions.
Each time she has backed away from me, panic-stricken
when really I was just making a stab at conversation.
It is not my intention to alarm anyone, but dear Lord
if I find a dead man in the road and his eyes
are crawling with maggots, I refuse to say
have a nice day Suzie just because she's desperate
and her life is a runaway carriage rushing toward a cliff
now can I? Would you let her get away with that kind of crap?
Who are you anyway? And what kind of disorganization is this?
Baron of the Holy Grail? Well it's about time you got here.
I was worried, I was starting to fret.


American Review | www.PaperLyon.com | McGill Live Radio | Publish
 

  Translations for this Poem
 English  Spanish  French  Italian
 Portuguese  Korean  Russian  Chinese
 Japanese      
 

  Poems by James Tate
  1. A Knock On The Door
  2. Goodtime Jesus
  3. Happy As The Day Is Long
  4. Like A Scarf
  5. More Later Less The Same
  6. My Great Great Etc Uncle Patrick Henry
  7. Never Again The Same
  8. Shut Up And Eat Your Toad
  9. Success Comes To Cow Creek
  10. The List Of Famous Hats
  11. The Lost Pilot
  12. The Wrong Way Home
  13. Thinking Ahead To Possible Options And
 
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPRSTVWY[ALL] 
  Jack Gilbert 
  Jack Kerouac 
  Jack Prelutsky 
  Jack Spicer 
  James A. Emanuel 
  James Schuyler 
  James Tate 
  James Wright 
  Jane Kenyon 
  Jean Cocteau 
  Jean Toomer 
  Jim Carroll 
  John Betjeman 
  John Clare 
  John Donne 
  John Dryden 
  John Keats 
  John Masefield 
  John Milton 
  John Wilmot 
  Jon Anderson 
  Jonathan Swift 
  Jorge Luis Borges 
  Jorie Graham 
  Joseph Brodsky 
  Joseph Warton 
  Judy Grahn 

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