She danced in front of the window, snowflakes glowing behind her under the streetlight. The blue silk blouse slipped off her arms and floated out of sight. Black slacks into a shadow, then the quick shiver, the beautiful awkward gesture into nakedness. Her skin startled me-- luminous or pale, depending. We
poem index
occasions
- Anniversary
- Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month
- Autumn
- Birthdays
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- Breakfast
- Breakups
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forms
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schools & movements
- Nuyorican Poetry
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- Harlem Renaissance
- Imagism
- Jazz Poetry
- Kanaka Maoli poetry
- Futurism
- Fugitives
- Poets of World War I
- Flarf
- Formalism
- Acmeism
poet
Jim Daniels

Jim Daniels is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently The Middle Ages (Red Mountain Press, 2018) and Street Calligraphy (Steel Toe Books, 2017). His third collection, Places/Everyone (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), won the inaugural Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 1985. He lives in Pittsburgh and is the Thomas Stockham University Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.
by this poet
poem
2002
poem
1985
An average joe comes in and orders thirty cheeseburgers and thirty fries. I wait for him to pay before I start cooking. He pays. He ain't no average joe. The grill is just big enough for ten rows of three. I slap the burgers down throw two buckets of fries in the deep frier and they pop pop, spit spit. . .