John Latta

Lengthening Traces of Unwashable Grit

In the heydays of which, spectator
To a probable reversal, I sat regularly around
And yakked my big head off.

I only say so in order to make a scene,
Limn in a hazard, some pothole
In the steeplechase of the hereabouts.

It’s a people-to-people thing, though
Any one of them who know me would be the first
To indicate to a casual interlocutor,

Yeoman-level or moving right on up
Into you exchequer ranks, that
Nothing takes more of a backseat

Than they, at least in my book.
That’s why the word is out in my toolshed,
Nickname I give to my place of employ,

That he’s a bang-up cashier,
Though red flags go up whenever
The, uh, shills for confrontation make any thrice-

Assented hilarity beholden to yet
Another corker like he. I mean me.
Such was that era, and did not behoove us.

JOHN LATTA lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His first book of poems, Rubbing Torsos, was published in 1979 by Ithaca House. A new book, Breeze, winner of the 2003 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, was published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

“Lengthening Traces of Unwashable Grit” appears in our Winter 2003 issue.

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