Sites featuring Thomas Lux:
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Recent Titles:
All titles at barnesandnoble.com:
NEW AND SELECTED POEMS 1975-1995
BLIND SWIMMER: SELECTED EARLY POEMS, 1970-1975
Beggar's Bowl Stolen
Gone with it: one thin coin (400 buy
They led him from his candy store in cuffs, the cops
a litchi nut), a hairpin.
The three flies, sentinels
on its rim, they're gone too.
A small blue bowl,
scratched, dull. Otherwise
in it: air.
The beggar's still here.
The beggar's still here but blind
and didn't see who stole his bowl.
From Grade School Window
Watching Local Bookie Arrested
whose sons played ball with his, for whose teams
his numbers' money bought caps and suits.
In his suit once, at the cleaners: two grand,
in a roll, wrapped in rubber bands.
My father and my father's friends bet a buck
or half every day on their lucky digits.
Once, hitting it meant a washing machine,
a dryer, and an orange rug, which made my mother happy,
some. They hauled him out,
to a bigger town nearby–over a mountain,
across a river. He did his time,
90 days, and when released
(it was his third offence)
he never took a bet again
until some decades later
in the black black belly of tumors
when the Dr. told him: The 8 horse, Quicksand,
(out of Leadmine, sired by Tub of Dust)
in the 4th at Aqueduct,
going off at 33-1, don't
bet on him, don't bet on that dead horse.
