Charlotte Davidson
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[Selections from Delirium of Uselessness]
An innumerable crowd of servants
each with a different specialty, lived in my library. One, a jeweler, was forever trying to interest me in encrustations. I feared the ruby, diamond, sapphire, and emerald covered sand pails that he proposed for my friends and me were not terribly practical for building castles. I feared other things too – lead in the pipes and the way bricks looked so orange when stacked on a truck. Sometimes I slept with my mason.
Garden Landscape with Bees
Scorn for classic labor and hell-bent for gods’ temples, we wandered the city, stepping over jewel and jewels, cunningly past wagging wastrels. If I, allergic to opulence, still love everything excessive and elegant, then what is sneezing without turning up my nose but one of my talents? The park: wall bound, flower bound, home to insects – wasps and bees – not allergic, not thankful, not proud. We watched gardening young men on mounds of fresh-dug soil, dirty hands digging-in small, nursery-raised impatience. What young men: their classic labor, their gods’ temples, and their earth perfectly mulched, fertile, impatient. What topography, desire.
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Charlotte Davidson's chapbook, Fresh Zebra, was the winner of the 2006 All Nation's Press chapbook award.