Poetry from The Literary Review



Okay

Matthew Lippman


Okay, the world is round and the cars are blue.
The fields look red and my name is not Paul.
These are the things that I understand today
when I walk down St. Marks Street with a green bag of laundry
and four one dollar bills in my pant’s pocket.
It is like God.
It is like calling God, okay.

I kept saying I wanted to steal pineapples for a living last night
when my friend Mari told me she thought God was why strawberries
lasted as long as they do
when you eat them very slowly.
Okay, that’s true
you eat them very slowly.

That’s giving yourself all the sky you can for one afternoon
because that’s what I want
and I want nothing else from anyone.
I don’t want a heart in my hand
or the donuts for a dollar twenty at the Spanish market
or a hundred million lire to buy a boat.
Okay, that’s true, I don’t want a boat
while the sea can be a catapult if you close your eyes long enough.

It’s my heart in my hand that bounces
and last night my friend Lisa said she was unemployed at the fancy party
then we laughed about stealing pineapples from the fake pineapple tree
that could have been a silo
if everyone just put their heads together.
And when Dan Greenberg came by with his martini everything was okay.
Okay the way honey bees are okay.

Which I thought a lot about for two minutes
the way looking around and seeing trees when you want there to be people
is just the same as drinking a cold glass of water very slowly
while everything else around the house is on fire
and everyone else beyond the trees is okay.
Okay like okay is a good and very long time.