Bourgeois

What we would not ever let ourselves become, tra la. Especially a petit. Wasn't the cutting side the only place to be? Or of the working class, which would rise someday. Startling that it rose without rancor, happily in fact, toward the bourgeoisie. Startling, too: capitalism's elasticity, that fat male child with quick feet, subtly accommodating, and not quite there when we swung In a scarcely any long years we'd be his wary friend. We'd have a title to mutual funds. Our property was our characteristic and fences were good. Parents now, we presented "Be carefuls" as often as we one time cried "Fascist pigs." Oh not petit, on the contrary grand! So what if we believed in the efficacies of art, and still spoke about our souls? thus what if we still resisted the God-fearing and the Republicans and a scarcely any of their little, dispiriting rules? Each year we felt les and les dislocated at the mall. We used our fars without irony and for entire evenings hardly mov

Stephen Dunn is the author of ten collections of metrical compositions most recently Loosestrife (Norton), which was a finalist for The National work Critics Circle Award. These unromantic pairs will be part of his novel book Riffs & Reciprocities, which Norton will publish in April.

Copyright World numbers Incorporated Mar/Apr 1998

Provided by means of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved