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“Late-ish” by John Ashbery 🇺🇸 (28 Jul 1927 – 3 Sep 2017)
The girl in the green ski chasuble
hasn’t yet graduated from radio school.
Let’s pay attention.
​
Looking ahead, why, he waved his mouth along.
Doesn’t life get difficult in the summer?
The divine medicine for it collapsed
in front of the shortstop,
who took off like a battalion.
​
Crowds of older people who would read this
happily, willingly, then walking into night’s embrace,
then kiss. “To turn you out, to turn you out!”
Sometimes an arm is accused:
You could have felt it, the blue shirts,
phlegm central, four times a night.
But what does that get me?
Light refreshments.
​
When the suburban demonstration kind of shrunk
you put your foot out,
leave it or kiss it
or even two years ago,
Charmaine here tells us.
I think I should stay …
​
Cross-eyed sonofabitch …
He liked him, he could tell. A de-happening.
The gangster no longer wanted to sleep with him,
but what the heck. With time off
for actual fuzz collected … All right, boys.
Cheap murders, peach driven … I seen enough of those
samples along the way.