The Iowa Review
Volume 12
Issue 2 Spring-Summer: Extended Outlooks: The Iowa
Review Collection of Contemporary Writing by Women
Article 76
1981
Key West (Triple Ballade with Enjambed Refrain,
Plus Envoy)
Judith Moffett
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Moffett, Judith. "Key West (Triple Ballade with Enjambed Refrain, Plus Envoy)." The Iowa Review 12.2 (1981): 246-249. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol12/iss2/76
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KeyWest (TripleBalladewith Enjambed
Refrain, plus Envoy) JudithMoffett
for David Jackson
The
Tea
garden's shading. Let
in the deck-and-louvre
there be
tent
degree by slow degree,
its
Upon
languid, smooth descent
Toward
eighty. Rose and succulent
Begun,
Look up from blooming peatbeds thick
With
strangeness,
lush, ebullient
against white-sand-and-brick
Displayed
From frond to shrub to tree
Paving.
(So that'swhat Orphan Annie meant!)
Lizards are leaping ?skittery,
Dirt-colored,
slim, belligerent,
a
prominent
featured in their shtick,
Each furnished with
Accessory
Unvocal,
Displayed
yet grandiloquent
sand and brick.
against white
Say X has accidentally
Invaded turf big Z has spent
His little life defending; Z
Does
does Present
jerky push-ups,
a
Throat-flat
vent?),
(inflated? through
erotic
tic
Out-in,
out-in,
and skitter went
Of warning?Pounce!
Displayed-Against.
White
sand and brick
Are not much
Frankly.
less intelligent,
a leaf or stick,
They'll "flap"
Bright membrane flashing Go! Repent!
Displayed
against white
sand and brick.
246
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The reptile brain is cold and small,
No space, no need for judgment
there.
In the deepest Turtle Kraal
Watch.
A monstrous
head pokes up for air,
chased from lair
Lairpet of Grendel's,
To scare up dinner.
Gasp
open.
Jaws of dread
Eyes of earthenware
Identify. The loggerhead
on cue; the
guide will
Lunges
trawl
A chunk of rotten lobsterwhere
He'll strike. Abruptly I recall
The moth
Floorboards,
aflutter on the bare
the little lizard's
stare,
Fixed, from the threshold, how it sped
Across
the varnish
. .
.yes.
Compare?
Identify? the loggerhead
tries to climb the wall,
wallows,
ton of
can tear
Whose
crushing-power
man
A
in chunks and eat him all,
Whose
fins thrash up the mal de mer,
Who
Who
now, with
all that force to spare,
Crushes the bait and sinks like lead.
A blond child shrieks. These kinds of scare
Identify the loggerhead
And lizardwith its charming flare
as a flannel
Round
Look
tongue and red.
think well before you dare
long,
the loggerhead.
Identify
247
A green iguana
spined with plates
a ques
Blinks at the tourist with
not
Tion
Where
these flattened welterweights':
of yes
are the dinosaurs
Ter-Age? New Zealand and Loch Ness,
poor thing.
Pygmy
Iguanodon,
That clockwork,
kneejerk, passionless
Instinct persists, but Reason's
king.
rex who baits
It's Sophosaurus
I guess
sea-troll Instinct now.
The
I'm glad?though
how
That filthy pool?
Whatever
he tolerates
! (As Freudwould stress,
we
dragon
repress
Befouls its prison.) Evening
Brings
Instinct
us to ours, we both undress,
. .but Reason's
persists.
king
Here where
awhite
Of filtered water
bar melts,
and spates
effervesce,
Pure azure balm
that liquidates
the turtle mess,
Disturbing
thoughts,
?
S.O.S.?
The saurian heat, the
Again? This same dumb lizardling
?
the same success
Keeps trying, with
Instinct persists (but Reason's
king
Or
else) ?to
scale the tiles. Noblesse
Oblige, a royal palm's frayedwing
Retrieves
Instinct
248
him from a giantess.
persists but Reason's
king.
These
trinkets, David?waterslick
Pool tiling, tiny splayfeet spread
On
surface tension
(rhetoric?),
in his muckbath
fed
?
rot, display in tropicbed
Sea monster
On
All thanks to you. The length of string
They're
threaded on is only
thread:
Instinct-persists-but-Reason's-king.
249