Poetry
The Man of Warts
By the truncated back porch
he stands, skin rankling like a wool
sweater in almost imperceptible
rain. In winter he tosses
birdseed on the kitchen table
and opens a window to
the sparrows. Or turns
the oven on low and crawls
mostly in. Now he stands beside
the yard? pool of mosquito-
water, heating a bobby-pin
with a blue plastic lighter,
pushing the prick hissing
into a finger? snail-nosed horn
of skin?ut what is one
in a field of two-hundred-
and-twenty? hill
of black cypress dressed
in cocoon sacks, and amid
the yard of broken bricks
two dead moles blue in the night.
