Three Poems from Louie Crew

Found in the 1988 Register

Susan B. Atwood


cook, chauffeur, housekeeper, and mother

cordially invites you

to attend her divorce

from Henry James Atwood

attorney, financier, and trustee,

at the Cook County Court Number One

on the 29th, at high noon, high time.


Reception afterwards at the Battered Women Center

on Halstead

Presumption

If I had said that you,
--eyes bright, like those your
little boy returns,
shoulders soft, like
your red velvet trousers--
are far too lovely to suffer such sadness,

I would have presumed.

It is better to tell a stranger
in a poem, make him know
how meaningless is one's first spoken word,
how mild the shock of one's first breath.


Chocolate Fishing

Quean Paul takes willing country boys
fishing with a Vaseline tin rolled
in the blanket and a shotgun to fend off
any uninvited crackers who stray
upon their rubbings by the creek.
She can hear strangers a mile off,
and one blast suffices.

She likes only the sweet ones, not the toughs.

Leaving her job at the flour mill, her Afro
still pressed under a dusty stocking,
she can spot the girl in a lad a block away.
She has nurtured a score of orphans
and the fatherless into raising guineas
and smooching at the drive-in.

She spurns more conspicuous queans,
except in the dark, and never is suspected
by any but the boys she woos as Dad.


Louie Crew has edited special issues of College English and Margins. He has published four poetry volumes: Sunspots (Lotus Press, Detroit, 1976) Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987), Lutibelle's Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990), and Queers! for Christ's Sake! (Dragon Disks, 2003). The University of Michigan collects his papers. More information can be found on his website.