Ben Mazer

Taking in the Chancellor

The chancellor will sip a bit of tea

then when he speaks up come straight to the point,

properly nodding with his face to the dark,

his elbow a perfect v over tea.

He wants to spend more time, just him and me,

pool data, a true topography of the city.

He knows that this work will interest me,

and he doesn’t care how I do it. All his means

are at my disposal. There are no deadlines.

He wants to show me his new magnolia tree,

shipped from China. We sit in near shadow,

in conversation wicked to the core.

Only I entertain the chancellor.

The Girl

The girl I mirdered has a blonde white head.

De girl I mudered has no blond wite head.

Sher hath no little falsies any mur.

She no leg like a boa constrictor

or tight pin clip on a March fence.

She hath wondred hence

withouth a heade lake the sunflowre

or mouth ur powre.

Ben Mazer’s most recent collections of poems are Poems (The Pen & Anvil Pres) and January 2008 (Dark Sky Books), both published in 2010. His new book in India is Tales of the Buckman Tavern (Poetrywala). He is the editor of Landis Everson’s Everything Preserved: Poems 1955-2005 (Graywolf Press), and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.