Robinson Sends a Letter to Someone (Cento III)

by Kathleen Rooney

For some reason or another I seem to have a car.
It runs;
        though the interior must have been used
exclusively for hauling porcupines & railroad spikes.
Looks a little like an unmade bed in a Bowery fleabag.
Drove down to the Cape—
                               Wellfleet—
                                         Provincetown.
Live here in a state of almost uninterrupted sloth;
occasionally totter over to the piano to play "Someone
to Watch Over Me," or walk across the dunes to swim
& beachcomb, or to the Tennis Club to play ping pong.

Most of the nightclubs are deserted:
                &from the quality of their entertainers,
                                        well deserve to be.

But the beaches are wonderful. On the bureau:
a huge seashell that looks like Paul Klee had a hand in its design,
an odd cork object, a piece of driftwood shaped like a dolphin,
a stone with a pattern out of Arp, a number of dried starfish...
Feelings of uncertainty & inadequacy keep playing hell with me.

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and the author, most recently, of For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs (Counterpoint 2010). Her first book of poetry, Oneiromance (an epithalamion) was released in 2008 by Switchback Books, and her collaborative collection, That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (with Elisa Gabbert) was published by Otoliths, also in 2008. Her latest chapbook, After Robinson Has Gone, is now available from Greying Ghost Press.