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NOW

San Francisco, Ca, 1963

David's poems “For The Daughter of Old Thelma,” “A Centerpiece,” and “Ecce Puer” appeared in NOW's first issue, among other notable contributors such as:

• John Steinbeck
• Charles Plymell
• Alan Russo
• Allen Ginsberg
• Michael McClure
• Roxie Powell
• Thomas Jackrell
• J. Richard White
• Daniel Moore
• Andrew Hoyem
• Philip Whalen
• Robert Branaman

To learn more about this publication, visit jstor.org or download PDF.

For The Daughter of Old Thelma

Rose-clothes enfolding unctuous lily-skin
Begin at once the burning contract: "Come,
Suck mine tonight, these jelly-slippery thighs."
I saw a quiver in the buttock make
"Thick man, let lust be clumsy. Staggor, come."

Blood forms the groin into a turkey-neck.

wet under paired-parts
O smooth under chin,
flesh slick with love-slime
clean as glycerine.

The line confuses; where the rose-cloth lights
The breasts (who hide their eyes) a burning white,
The brain is stunned askew; falls into fits;
Plunges down chasm-cleavage between teats.

Blood forms the heart-rose on the butting stem.

moist unto putty
underneath the hair
the pinguid juices
are purling there.

There darkness.
Darkness converging on a darker place
And the slip slip of the sucking floods of blood
And the far jealous quibbling of rose-clothes
And the kissing red and white bright lines
And the meeting eye to eye of the fuck-blind

A chant is writ for love of naked witches.

A Centerpiece

for Martin Cochran

Smooth fruit posed in a bowl
arranged for looks, with awned wheat heads
stickering out. Eyes were alright,
they saw the apple of the eye,
pear-bell and grape,
but mind did not do well
imaging how sealed, how carefully
the melon's center heart, the apple's core,
is closed about by fiber which organically
inserts no door

A seedy spirit known as through a rind
ingrows in the form quick of this stillife;
stuff grown harmoniously and lawfully
and not unkind
but awful to this mind, welded and dumb.
What empathy (touching the even sheen)
for melons and the like feels the aesthete,
seeing his agony in mouthless fruit or grain:
in the taut place around black apple seeds
and tight in tiny khaki pearls of wheat.

Ecce Puer

In what gramarye can he tell
how at birth he was transported
to slaughterhouse rafters
never to go home never
but that a pure calf
was butchered near his tiny soul
and the falling rain of blood
robbed his twin of substance
leaving immaculate pinned diapers
empty botties tied with real ribbon
a little crib in a shabby living-room
two anxious troglodyte parents
and a named human baby on beams
hung with the drenched degraded beasts?