MY NIGHT WITH GEORGE COSTANZA
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
—William Blake
Another blue stretch
in the Black Eye Galaxy—
it might have been
if groggy lamblets one, two, three
were not spilling out
into the secret world I share
with George Costanza;
George and I are met upon a klieg-lit plain
and I have on my Little Bo Peep costume
while George leans on his shepherd’s crook
and lambs as soft as heaps of sugar-dust
as light as new spring snow
are romping in the heavenly bright
till all I know
all that I ever need to know
is herding lambs with George Costanza.
~
George Costanza’s lambs
are plump as macaroons
and mine, as whorls
of white meringue.
Let those who never
gamboled with a lamb
suck on sweet bones,
make wicked plans;
I’m off now
herding lambs
with George Costanza.
~
Word to the cynics, you who laugh
so sure no codswallop with lambs
could ever make you weep;
that George Costanza’s nothing
but a sham, and I perhaps a wolf
sent out among the sheep
to shear their souls: but I say No,
and I am half-asleep, with all
the strange authority conferred
on sleepers. So you believe
that it is good and meet we met
and flew our stuttering craft
out of the Black Eye Galaxy
into a universe so daft
that you and I and all
the syncopating lambs
are one, are one at last!
With George Costanza.
—Rachel Loden
____
forthcoming in Dick of the Dead (Ahsahta Press)