Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press. He teaches creative writing at Endicott College outside of Boston. Doug Holder’s work has appeared in Constellations, Rattle, Caesura, Boston Hassle and elsewhere. The Doug Holder Papers Collection is being processed at the University at Buffalo.

I walk with Ginsberg and Whitman

and we will talk.

I’ll dream of tomatoes

rich red draping from a vine

my naked hands

feeling  the

blush

of their,

rippling skin

I will bathe in

the wet jungle of grapes

bubbles of fruit

dancing on the contours

of my balding scalp.

Yes

I will join the bunch….

of bananas

that hang like a fruit bat

yellow and bruised

just to get in

under their peeling

skin.

I will tell them about the predicament we are in.

Vinyl, cloth and plastic

wrap the world

but I dream of mangoes

or a sad-eyed haddock

joyously twirled.