Barbara Guest

Send Me a Telegram

Will you please?

and have it delivered like a pineapple today

not yesterday's pineapple but really I would prefer

a daily pineapple if you can arrange it I mean

with a telegram not always a telegram a yearly

one will be sure if it reaches me

if first it goes on an air land and later comes

to me by foot I will like it better than a telegram

read to me over a telephone I would like this

new and fresh telegram to arrive with an old-

fashioned person dressed in a delivery suit

the words will be so contemporary so avant-garde

it being you who shall send it but I can discard

that idea I should like an ordinary person to deliver

my telegram not necessarily in a delivery-suit one

must respect tastes and not parenthesize them as

telegrams do not risk punctuation and my joy in

receiving your words hardly needs embellishment

I almost forgot oh genuine you of delicious pineapples

thank you in advance as you have always wished.

                                                           1965

--Barbara Guest

in The Blind See Only This World: Poems for John Weiners

[New York: Granary Books, 2000]

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